Transportation system

“ If we just live long enough, we will have lived in every state in the Union.”
But transportation as we understand it to-day refers to the moving of freight, express, and mail, as well as to the moving of men and women. Man himself was the original burden-bearer and became the first transportation system, carrying combined freight and express. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the task of the transportation system to carry commodities from points of production to consuming centers throughout the United States and to the ports for export. The more freely and cheaply the products are carried, the more competition there will be, the more production there will be, and the better will our transportation system serve our national economy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The success of existing lines of rural express is convincing evidence that the expansion of the system is an immediate necessity, both for its value in meeting the present emergency and as a means of permanently improving rural transportation. What has already developed becomes an integral part of our national transportation system. ”

“ Each year, America's transportation system helps many travelers reach their destinations and carries more than 16 billion tons of freight worth almost $12 trillion. In addition, our transportation systems play a critical role in deploying and sustaining our troops and their equipment around the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Importance of roads in the present transportation292 system.—A word of warning may be advisable before we leave this subject to study more recent means of transportation. Not many years ago a French economist estimated that not one twentieth of the settlements of the inhabited world were within less than a day’s distance from a railroad. Even in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products reach the consumer without having traversed a stretch of common road. ”

“ The trolleys, or surface lines, carry something like two million passengers per day, and the elevated railways nearly a million and a half, while the subways take in just about a million fares, But there is a transportation system here in this city that carries more than all the rest put together—eight million passengers per day. ”

“ 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 construction of roads, and in particular of railways, connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to such of the upper courses of the rivers and streams as are broken by rapids and cataracts, with a view to substituting economical and rapid means of transportation for the present system of carriage by men. ”

“ Historically, transportation has opened America's frontiers. Transportation gave our Nation's territorial and industrial pioneers access to the country's resources. More than any other element of our society, transportation has been a vibrant economic catalyst, building cities, generating new industries, spurring ambitions, providing jobs and linking us to the peoples of the world. Our transportation systems and facilities, including America's merchant fleet and road, rail and aviation networks, support the Nation's defense readiness and emergency response capabilities. ”

“ Auto-transportation companies, maintaining a mixed service of light passenger cars and the heavier, immense autobuses, have elaborated and organized an ideal system for speed and safety in this unsettled region. ”

“ Among the Americans who contribute to transportation are the hundreds of thousands who build machines, construct the facilities, operate and maintain the equipment, and provide the services that make our transportation systems work. Countless others labor to make transportation better and to meet the needs of our changing times. ”

“ As the Nation grew, so did its need for mobility. During the last century, this need was well served by expanding rail and water transportation systems. Today, the need is served by a broader range of systems. Motor vehicles and aircraft provide rapid access to every region. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Implementation of priorities for all transportation resource requirements for service, equipment, facilities, and systems; (b) Allocation of transportation resource capacity; and (c) Emergency management and control of civil transportation resources and systems, including privately owned automobiles, urban mass transit, intermodal transportation systems, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation and the St. ”

“ As has been true throughout our history, transportation today is critical to our economy and necessary to our defense. America's transportation systems have made our society the most mobile on earth. A diverse transportation network has assured the rapid, safe, and dependable movement of people and goods throughout the country and around the world. ”

“ To illustrate this thought, let us assume that a railroad needs one hundred flatcars to carry its peculiar freight and needs one hundred passenger cars for the accommodation of the people. It is self-evident that if the road uses all the flatcars and half the passenger cars to carry its freight, the balance of the passengers will have to make some other provision for transportation or walk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Great quantities of money have been spent to make safe river transportation. Elaborate national and international codes of rules for navigation have been adopted. Laws to regulate railways have been passed. The newest form of transportation, aviation, has already been a subject for the law makers’ wisdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The general rule is that where transportation has acquired an interstate character 'it continues at least until the load reaches the point where the parties originally intended that the movement should finally end.' Ill. ”

“ Leaving the old world there is sketched all too briefly the development in the United States of transportation facilities from the coastal and natural waterways, from the pack and trail, used by the aborigine and early settlers, through the treks of the pioneers, the periods of canal digging, the toll road competition, and the railway frenzy, to the advent of the modern road with the coming of the bicycle and automobile and their wonderful accelerative impulse. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The traffic with which we are concerned does not move on through bills of lading, but the movement is, nevertheless, from points of origin to a foreign or coastal destination, or vice versa, and is therefore essentially through transportation. ”

“ Thus the congestion of traffic in the land of magnificent distances forming the interior and the west in 1906 was inevitable; production and trade had simply outgrown transportation facilities; the railways failed because the marts were too far apart for their carrying capacity—and the old-time packets were gone! ”

“ 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 originates in pressing industrial expansion and broad education, it flows through modern channels, and along those thorny, old-fashioned highways of endeavor such as persistent, methodical solicitation of passenger and freight traffic, a conscientious interest in its handling and disposition after acceptance, and above all depends upon the good will and very essential aid of each one of that many sided army employed by the transportation corporations whose arteries provide the means for commercial life’s activities. ”

“ Compare the railways, canals, highways, cars, automobiles, ships, and aircraft of the present-day United States with the pack animals and ox-carts of many less favored nations and the further evidence of amount of traffic and travel per person, will be unnecessary to establish the relative states of civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I believe there is room and need in the United States for all forms of transportation, and that each can thrive in its respective field just as do wheat and corn but none will thrive if they attempt to occupy the same field at the same time. ”

“ Capable students of American transportation do not support that view. As Professor Ripley of Harvard has pointed out, if you tried to carry all railway freight by motor-truck, you would have to have a fleet of trucks which would make a solid line, bumper to bumper, all the way from New York to San Francisco ”

“ 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. ”