TransportationVisitors to America are immediately struck by the tremendous numbers of auto

Transportation

Visitors to America are immediately struck by the tremendous numbers of automobiles filling the highways and crowding the city streets. The automobile, which has transformed the American way of life, is the most indispensable workhorse of the family. During the week the father drives it to his job in the city, alone, or in a "car pool" arrangement with several of his fellow workers. When he leaves it at home, his wife uses it constantly to do errands(差事), to haul groceries, to drive children to lessons or appointments, to shops or swimming pools. On weekends the family drives out to the country for a picnic lunch or may take a trip of several hundred miles. On vacations, no corner of the country is beyond the family's reach.

Transportation Changed People's Life

All of America has felt the changes which came with the automobile and with the network of highways that have been built to serve it. Farmers, who live far from their neighbors, are no longer isolated. Tractors do the work of the many farmhands they cannot afford to hire; trucks carry their products to market, to storage elevators or to railroads.

Ownership of cars has made it possible for families to move out of cities to suburban areas and to small towns in the countryside, sometimes as much as 50 miles from where they work. Many businesses and stores have followed their customers to establish rural factories and suburban shopping centers surrounded by huge parking lots.

Traffic Problems

Traffic jams in cities and along the approaches to cities, especially at morning and evening rush hours and at the start and end of weekends, are difficult problems. How to find enough parking spaces in the cities, even with underground parking lots and many-storied "pigeonhole" parking structures, is another problem. More highways and wider ones are needed as fast as they can be built.

New Means of Transportation

America's good roads are very recent. When pioneer families crossed the country in covered wagons little more than 100 years ago along deep-rutted(有车辙的) roads, they were fortunate if they could make the trip in 109 days. Less than 60 years ago an automobile made the same trip and it still took 74 days, rather than 7 days it might take today. America had very few good roads before the mass production of the automobile made them necessary.

Now it takes a tremendous road building program, great sums of money, thousands of men, machines with wheels taller than the men who drive them and a great deal of planning to keep up with the highway needs of American. Thousands of miles of roads, most of which four and eight lanes wide, are being built, including expressways through and around large cities. They will scarcely keep up with the need, for there are many more cars each year. The number of cars in America is growing faster than the population. In two cities there are already more cars than families.

Before the modern highways were built, America's railroads carried people and products across the country. Railroads played an exciting and colorful part in the growth of America in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their iron tracks bound the country together and along their lines sprang up the cities, towns and villages that served as the market places for Americans moving West. In 1869 the first transcontinental railway was completed and at the point in Utah where the track from the East met the track from the West, a solid gold railway spike was driven in to fasten down the rail.

Today the railroads still serve as America's largest carrier of freight, hauling raw materials and goods to factories and stores, but they no longer carry many of America's travelers. In 1971 part of the railroads were put under government control when the National Passenger Corporation(known as Amtrak) took over responsibility for all intercity passeng

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