Word: transite
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...change for a nation so recently rural. Hand in hand with this transformation has been the extraordinary spread of the auto: the U.S. auto population has tripled to 90 million in 20 years, is now growing eight times faster than the human population. Thus freed from dependence on rail transit lines that were laid for another era, Americans have sprawled into the suburban fringes, where they are so dispersed that public transportation is ineffective and housewives become chauffeurs for their children and husbands...
Inevitably, as transit service declines and roads improve, more autos not only crowd the routes to town but choke the city streets as well. Chairman George L. DeMent of the Chicago Transit Authority understandably bemoans "the 5 o'clock shadow of smog, noise, tension and wasted time." Freeway tie-ups have multiplied to the point where airborne traffic spotters in at least 25 cities now broadcast advice about how to dodge them. Frequently, a new freeway built to carry 100,000 cars a day no sooner opens than it is inundated by twice that many. Besides, one mile...
...solution to the worsening problem of getting people in and out of big cities with dispatch, efficiency and safety. While one lane of a freeway can move only 2,400 persons an hour past a given point, a train can move 30,000. To encourage a revival of mass transit by rail, the Government gave the movement a nudge in 1961 with a law that henceforward mass transportation must be considered a part of city planning. With close to $200 million of loans and grants, Washington has since helped to finance new equipment and several experiments which indicate that better...
...cities are to create better rapid-transit facilities and woo the driver back onto them, they may need to receive a bigger share of state and federal tax revenues than they now get. As for the cities and suburbs, they need to get together to form metropolitan transportation systems that will serve both more efficiently. And the public may as well face it: it will probably have to pay more. Many experts feel that low standards of transportation have been the result of artificial low-fare policies, frequently prompted by political considerations. Instead of driving more people to the auto...
Even with efficient rapid-transit systems, many cities in the future may find themselves forced to use fees to ration scarce downtown space for both trucks and private cars. New York, for example, is already considering raising tolls for incoming bridge and tunnel traffic during rush hours. With the new emphasis on national beautification-and the successful citizen protests against ugly bridge and freeway plans in San Francisco and elsewhere-highway engineers also need to learn that transportation systems, as Under Secretary Boyd puts it, "must give a predominant emphasis to esthetics." If the U.S. is to head...