Public transport

“ As has been indicated, every day over 36 million people travel on forms of mass transit or public transportation in this country. More than 11 million commuters use rail and mass transit, while over twice this number, more than 25 million, use public or private school buses to travel to and from their schools. ”

“ By contrast, have you ever seen an ad for public transit showing people zooming to work in a modern transit train, while they were snoozing, chatting or reading the newspaper, and racing ahead of a parallel highway clogged with trucks, vans and cars moving in slow motion? ”

“ The degree to which a nation or a community perfects its transportation facilities is an index of its industrial progress and public highways constitute an important element in the national transportation system. ”

“ But in the early fifties these very inconveniences fired the imagination of a young traveler who had bought a ticket on a night train between Buffalo and Westfield, and in his alert mind was inspired, as he tossed sleepless in his bunk, the first vision of a car that would revolutionize the railroad travel of the world and of a system that would present to the traveling public a mighty organization whose first purpose would be to contribute safety, convenience, luxury and a uniform and universal service from coast to coast. ”

“ Railroads, street car lines, express and steamship service would be among the principal means of transportation; while included in the list of principal means of communication there would be the public telephone and telegraph systems. Automobiles, horses and carriages, if used without the assistance of hired labor, would not be considered as being principal means of transportation. ”

“ But it is necessary that a single railway should have a recognised field of operation and a part to play in the entire national scheme of transportation. It is necessary that each rail service should fit into and be co-ordinated with other rail services and with other forms of transportation. Let it be noted that our postal service uses every variety of transport: rail, automobile, steamship and aeroplane ”

“ UT—Union Transport, spread the meshes of its transportation service through almost every city of Earth and the hamlets and roads and bus and railroad and airlines between—and even to the few far ports where mankind had found a toehold in space. ”

“ Transportation on the public highway, whether of raw products to the market or finished products to the consumer, is denominated primary; transportation by railroads, canals, and ships as secondary. Practically all secondary transportation is of products which were first or last or both subjects of primary transportation. ”

“ As our cities grew, transit systems developed to provide people with affordable and convenient transportation. This century brought the automobile, truck, intercity bus, and an expanded road system that includes thousands of miles of Interstate Highways. ”

“ Start out in the morning, number your every minute’s occupation, watch what your neighbors are doing. The man on the stairs, the wagon on the street, the rumbling subway train in a three million dollar a mile right of way, the elevator in the skyscraper, the office boy at beck and call—it is all transportation. Run over in your mind the work of the office and brain workers in a city business section, how many of them are engaging in planning, directing and accounting the various forms of transportation. ”

“ Transportation is essential to American life. Our safe, fast, economical, and convenient movement of people and goods is the cornerstone of our country's social and economic welfare and of our national defense. Now, as in the past, our transportation systems-highways, airports, inland waterways, railroads and public transit, our merchant fleet and the Great Lakes and St. ”

“ It will be observed that the principal, indeed almost the sole, object contemplated by the projectors of the undertaking was the improved carriage of merchandise and coal, and that the conveyance of passengers was scarcely calculated on, the only paragraph in the prospectus relating to the subject being the following: "Moreover, as a cheap and expeditious means of conveyance for travelers, the railway holds out the fair prospect of a public accommodation, the magnitude and importance of which can not be immediately ascertained." ”

“ Every railway corporation in this state which now is, or may hereafter be, engaged in the transportation of persons or property, shall give public notice of the regular time of starting and running its cars, and shall furnish sufficient accommodations for the transportation of all such passengers, baggage, mails, and express freight as shall, within a reasonable time previous thereto, be offered for transportation at the place of starting, at the junction of other roads, and at the several stopping places ”

“ Even in England, though the roads are private like ours, the working-people have cheap trains, and public officials pay full fare. The King of England pays his fare when travelling, and if he has a special train he pays regular rates 16for that too. Members of Parliament also and minor public officers pay for transportation. Passes are not given for political reasons. ”

“ Transportation is the most exacting, the most diversified, the most far-reaching of commercial and industrial activities. It follows then, under the law of the survival of the fittest, that those who can survive in the art and science of transportation must be the fittest of the fit. ”

“ To have this great transportation machine work smoothly, with the fewest points of obstruction and interruption—the least amount of friction—and with the greatest harmony among all its constituent parts, means, in the long run, the furnishing of the best transportation service to the people of New England. ”

“ You have none of you ever heard of a second-class railway carriage—didn’t know that such things were made. You want a first-class Pullman car reserved for each two of you. Some of you have seen an omnibus in the distance, and have wondered what it was used for. To suggest that you should travel in such a plebeian conveyance, is to give you a shock that takes you two days to recover from. You expect a private carriage, with a footman in livery, to take you through the mountains. You, all of you, must have the most expensive places in the theatre. ”

“ Greater stress than in the past on the improvement of urban transportation and the development of transportation plans calculated to raise the quality and satisfaction of urban life.
3. Additional emphasis on the coordination of highways with other modes of transport, both intra- and interurban, to ensure the optimum provision of the best features of all modes and continuing emphasis on making the highway a salutary influence on the environment, both in rural and urban areas. ”

“ Whatever, again, the dangers and discomforts of so many even of the new turnpike roads, there is no doubt that a distinct stimulus was given to trade and travel as the result not only of the better roads but of the better vehicles that could be, and were being, used on them. Agriculture, industries, commerce and social progress all, in fact, took another step forward as these opportunities for transport and communication relatively improved. ”

“ They should seek to improve the transportation system and increase its efficiency with resulting lower rates and superior service. Differential treatment which benefits one type of transportation to the detriment of another should be avoided save when it is demonstrated clearly to be in the public interest. ”

“ It is remarkable, however, that, notwithstanding the large increase of population in the West, the facilities afforded for travel, reduction in rates, and a general increase in railroad business, passenger traffic has decreased, indicating, as the auditor believes, either that the people could not afford to travel, or that the railroad companies have not yet solved the problem of passenger transportation. ”

“ Many people living at the present time, who have grown up amidst the exceptional and possibly very transient characteristics of this time, will be disposed to regard the traffic in the streets of our great cities as a part of the natural order of things, and as unavoidable as the throng upon the pavement. But indeed the presence of all the chief constituents of this vehicular torrent—the cabs and hansoms, the vans, the omnibuses—everything, indeed, except the few private carriages—are as novel, as distinctively things of the nineteenth century, as the railway train and the needle telegraph. ”

“ Passengers, luggage, horses, carriages, dogs, merchandise, minerals and live stock constitute the whole of the traffic, as well as the whole of the receipts of railway companies, with one only exception. ”

“ Some of the difficulties and inadequacies of the transportation machine of the United States to-day are the result of drifting away too far from the idea that transportation is business, which, in the long run, must be governed by the same great human and natural laws that affect all human affairs. ”

“ Passenger transportation obviously has to meet the following needs:—First, carrying people to and from work; second, carrying people about their business during working hours, including shopping; third, carrying people about on social, educational, and recreative objects. ”

“ All very pleasant except when the cogs in the cable slip, and you become part and parcel of a promiscuous mix-up, all passengers tumbling over and on to each other into the front end of the car, and if you are at the bottom of the struggling heap, with your nose banged against the door, and suffocating fat parties wedged on top of you, this rapid transit slide is not quite so delightful as when you ride on the top of the crowd. ”

“ Under the combined influences of fast trains, corridor carriages, dining, luncheon and sleeping cars and cheap fares, whether for day excursions, short-date or long-date periods, tours at home or abroad, or any other of the various combinations for which facilities are offered, the making of pleasure trips has entered so thoroughly into the habits and customs of all grades of society that the social and domestic conditions of to-day offer a complete contrast from those that prevailed in the pre-railway period. ”

“ And on the crowded routes and in the thickly-populated cities, if one vehicle of transportation cannot render the service now requiring two, at least in many cases four such vehicles can render the service now requiring five. ”

“ To all the processes of industry and commerce, the service of transportation is essential, and it is a plain duty of the people of this country to keep the railways from “loss, decay, or injury,” and to preserve them from destruction. ”

“ Transportation is one of the major fields for both public and private investment. Our facilities for transportation and communication must be constantly improved to serve better the convenience of the public and to facilitate the sound growth and development of the whole economy. ”

“ Many of us will live to see railway companies in places pulling up their rails and making their tracks suitable for motor-car traffic, charging a toll for private vehicles and carrying the bulk of the traffic in their own motor-cars. ”

“ The travel habit has thus undergone a greater expansion of late years than has ever before been known, so that a falling-off of railway traffic in some directions ought, sooner or later, to be compensated for by increases in others, if, indeed, that result has not already been attained. ”

“ In the country what is most wanted is an increase in transport facilities between existing railways and outlying districts, the traffic from which would not be sufficient to justify the construction of branch lines of ordinary railway. ”

“ A statement of the State’s passenger rail service objectives, including minimum service levels, for rail transportation routes in the State. `` (4) A general analysis of rail’s transportation, economic, and environmental impacts in the State, including congestion mitigation, trade and economic development, air quality, landuse, energy-use, and community impacts. `` (5) A long-range rail investment program for current and future freight and passenger infrastructure in the State that meets the requirements of subsection (b) . ”

“ When people do not move about freely commerce is practically at a standstill. But if two passenger road trains, travelling at an average speed of not more than eight miles an hour, one going up and the other down, and connecting two or more market towns and lines of railway, passed through the village, how different would be the state of things! Ease of transit multiplies business, and, besides passengers, a large amount of light material could thus be conveyed. ”

“ Altogether, forming one continuous system of broad, free highways, the finest the world ever saw! Aided by trains of horseless carriages, there will be developed between the centers along this highway, a new system of transportation, distribution, commerce and exchange. ”

“ Americans, due to the liberal baggage provisions of our railroads, travel each year with increased impedimenta. Each year the task of the baggage-handlers multiplies. Making room for trunks has come to be an important terminal provision. In the large terminals, this traffic is divided, an in-baggage room receiving from incoming trains and distributing to various forms of city baggage delivery and an out-baggage room receiving and checking baggage for outgoing trains. ”

“ These figures give evidence of, on the whole, a substantial advance in railway passenger journeys and receipts, notwithstanding all the competition of alternative facilities, and we may assume that although tramways, motor-cars, motor-omnibuses and even the latest new-comer, railless electric traction, may supplement and more or less compete with the railways, there is no suggestion that they are likely entirely to supplant them for passenger travel. ”