Transportation infrastructure

“ To meet America's future needs, our Nation must take advantage of scientific and technological innovation to improve existing transportation systems and develop new ones. We must strive to enhance their reliability and efficiency and close the gap between the demand for transportation and the capacity of the transportation infrastructure. ”

“ We Americans enjoy the benefits of the finest transportation system in the world. Our Nation has built a wide network of airports and seaports, railroads and bridges, highways, waterways, and subways. This infrastructure is a mainstay of our economy, an essential part of our national defense, and the means by which our citizens enjoy unprecedented mobility. ”

“ This new era requires a new way of thinking about transportation needs. The challenges we face in today's transportation arena involve making what we have already built work better. By reinforcing and modernizing the existing infrastructure, we can create jobs, spur even more technological development, and fuel long-term economic growth. Even in this time of limitation and deficit reduction, strategic investments and continued leadership can make technology work to meet the needs of our country's transportation system. ”

“ The program shall— `` (1) address, among other matters, intercity rail passenger and freight rail services, including existing rail passenger and freight technologies and speeds, incrementally enhanced rail systems and infrastructure, and new high-speed wheel-on-rail systems; `` (2) address ways to expand the transportation of international trade traffic by rail, enhance the efficiency of intermodal interchange at ports and other intermodal terminals, and increase capacity and availability of rail service for seasonal freight needs ”

“ The large transportation companies, the railways, the steamship lines, electric street cars, canals, trolley lines, pipe lines, and so on, when held under private ownership, are all organized in this manner. There are many bus lines and many truck lines already incorporated, and with time the number will, no doubt, rapidly increase. ”

“ Nevertheless it seems probable that new methods of operating the motor truck transport, and possibly new types of trucks or trucks and trailers will be developed so that freight traffic over many roads will be of considerable tonnage and an established part of the transportation system of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the steam railroads are feeling the competition of the motor, the interurban trolley lines and the street-car companies are harder hit. The interurban lines are most of them short and depend upon local traffic. Their cars stopped at any cross-road along the way to pick up passengers and freight. But the motor transport is going them one better; it picks up its load at the front gate, saving the trouble of even a short walk, or in the case of freight, of loading and unloading and a short haul to the track. ”

“ This, in the growing, progressive, and expanding states of the West, is a steady and constant complaint, and it requires much time, money, and energy for the railroad-owners and officers to keep the supply of transportation up to the demand. The complaints come in for more freight-cars, for more passenger-trains, for better passenger-stations, for more side-tracks, for more switch-engines, for under-crossings and over-crossings in growing cities, for branch lines into new and undeveloped sections of the country ”

“ It is obvious that the element most wanting is the service described as “collect and delivery,” necessary between consignor and railway at the beginning and railway and consignee at the conclusion of the act of transportation. Our country is utterly deficient in this respect as to the “country” or farming population. In towns of about 3,000 or 4,000 population up the present express companies do render this service for such traffic as their rates permit to move ”

“ There seems to be no doubt but what the railroads can and do transport large quantities long distances quicker, better, and more efficiently than can be done on the highways. Highways may be considered as feeders of the railways. With good roads the zone from which the railway can profitably draw products for long distance or quantity transportation is widened, and again widened very materially when better roads allow the use of motors in place of horses. This, if no other railway interferes, means a larger grand total of traffic hauled. ”

“ Third—I advocate the regulation of competing motor-carriers, by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Where rail service should be supplemented by motor service to promote the public interest, the railways should be permitted in this manner to extend their transportation facilities. They should be encouraged to modernise and [Pg 170] adapt their plant to the new needs of a changing world. ”

“ The country as a whole with almost 250,000 miles of line in 1911 seems to be fairly well supplied with transportation routes. It seems as if the main trunk lines and systems had now been provided, leaving for the future the problem of constructing branches and feeders and of increasing facilities upon the main lines already built by duplication of tracks and enlargement of terminals. A comparison of the rates of growth of mileage and traffic, or of density of traffic, shows how new construction is lagging behind the development of business. ”

“ In Europe the passenger rates average higher than in the United States, though the accommodation is inferior.
Railway transportation has almost entirely superseded barge, canal, and river transportation, except in special cases. This is due to the greater speed, the greater efficiency of service, the greater carrying capacity, and the extent to which spurs and branches are built to enable cars to reach mills, factories, and other industrial plants. ”

“ Out of all our past efforts—planning, designing, constructing, bridge building, and organizational efforts at all levels of government—has come a superb system of highways to serve a growing Nation. The challenge now and in the future is to preserve and enhance the performance level of our highways and at the same time promote within a multi-modal transportation family a more flexible and innovative transportation system. ”

“ The motor trucks transport less than carload lots of freight in complete coordination with the rail service. The railroad instituted this additional method of transportation in order to furnish an improved and more convenient freight service to the public in certain areas of light traffic and in order to curtail car mileage and way-freight service. Motor vehicle transportation, in other words, is merely a new method of carrying on part of its all-rail freight business in which it had been engaged for many years. ”

“ In the words of one executive, “Its terminals are the heart of a transportation system. If the terminals are inadequate to handle the traffic currently, then congestion follows, traffic is set off between terminals, the arteries become clogged, and the system fails to perform its functions properly.” [5]
↑ It was estimated that in 1916 an average carload of less-than-carload package freight was only 7 tons, whereas the capacity of a properly loaded car was several times that amount. ”

“ Rail transportation well serves this need. There has been historically, however, an imbalance between the low-rated agricultural, mineral, and forest produce traffic flowing out of the region, and high-rated manufactured goods flowing into the region. ”

“ The motive power and cars thus freed from short-haul work can be employed in very important long-distance service. The Railroad Administration has indorsed motor transportation for this work and reported that this form of relief will make it possible for the railroads to operate more effectively under the present traffic congestion; hence shippers using the highways are assisting in the solution of transportation problems and rendering a patriotic service. ”

“ Hoists, cranes, tipping bodies, combination bodies, conveying belts and chains and many other devices facilitate rapid unloading and loading.
By sending goods from factory to retailer by motor railway terminal expense is cut out. Just how far it is profitable to send goods by truck is a question depending on the relative terminal charges, the hauling rate, and the collecting charges. ”

“ Electric signals and other safety devices to lessen accidents are universal, while the bewildering network of tracks in the ordinary city yard are operated easily from distant towers by interlocking switches. That railroads have brought about an industrial and social revolution, that they have increased enormously the country’s transportation, that they have thus been very instrumental in bringing the present civilization to its high and uniform state of attainment, cannot be denied. ”

“ That it will sooner or later be greatly extended over the entire field of public transportation, is absolutely certain; and the people will duly appreciate the aid of those who assist in its extension and development. As far back as 1837, Rowland Hill, of England, promulgated to the world the law that once a public transport service is in operation, the cost of its use is regardless the distance traversed upon the moving machinery by any unit of traffic within its capacity, and upon this law he established the English penny-letter post of 1839. ”

“ The primary objects have therefore been, to sketch briefly and simply the development of the transportation systems of the United States, to indicate their importance and mutual relations, to present some practical methods used in the operation of highway transport and to make occasional suggestions for the betterment of the road as a usable machine for the benefit and pleasure of mankind. ”

“ The Nation's transportation network is one of our greatest physical assets. We have more than 25,000 miles of inland waterways, 200,000 miles of railroads, four million miles of streets and highways, and 12,500 airports. ”

“ Interconnecting networks of railroads, ports, and waterways have transported millions of passengers and billions of dollars' worth of freight. Our national highway system connected cities to rural communities and people to jobs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He thinks “in the use of the railroads constructed by the state it will probably be best for the state to furnish the motive power, leaving the cars for the conveyance of freight and passengers to be furnished by individuals or companies, from whom the [107] state will exact the proper toll for the use of the road, and for the motive power.” The idea seems everywhere to have prevailed that a railway was a public highway to be used by and for the benefit of the public. ”

“ To lessen this distance is in the interest of the railroads and can be accomplished by decreasing the terminal charges and the cost of transportation per ton-mile. Express companies have for years accomplished this by employing the system of free collection and delivery, and railways in England do likewise. The motor transport companies will have to decrease their cost per ton-mile in order to increase the distance that it is profitable for the shipper to utilize motor trucks. ”

“ Every effort has been made to provide for this immense and rapidly increasing local passenger traffic, by the construction of surface, elevated, and subterranean railways; but the demand for transportation has increased much faster than the facilities can be provided, and it is evident that the limit of down-town passenger traffic facilities has been very nearly reached.
Apparently, the only remedy for these conditions is the movement of business and the people transacting it up-town or to the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, which are now readily accessible by tunnels and subways. ”

“ According to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, $225 billion is needed annually for the next 50 years to upgrade our surface transportation system to a state of good repair and create a more advanced system. ”

“ At the same time, more rigorous analytical procedures will be needed in making such large transportation investment decisions through cost-effectiveness studies and analyses of alternatives. Highway builders, the engineers who developed the highway system that is the envy of the whole world, may be expected to assist in the rehabilitation of the fixed rail systems in the Nation. We may expect that State and Federal highway organizations will become more closely involved in this new major thrust within the transportation family. ”

“ A system enabling each mode of transportation to perform the service for which it has the greatest inherent advantage would contribute to more efficient use of resources, the greatest need of today. The development is as yet in an early stage, since the setting is highly institutionalized and the American transportation industry has always been aggressively competitive. ”