Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

The bolder spirits are usually those who come in motors. They can destroy more, steal more, and get away faster than the man on foot. They meet remonstrance with effrontery and resent the notion that a hick has any rights of property and privacy that they are bound to respect. The flowers, the shrubs, the orchards, and occasionally the unguarded gardens are their prey. They camp beside the woodland brook or the shaded spring, hack the trees, trample the flowers, and turn the spot into a garbage hole with their greasy papers, tin cans, bottles and refuse food. Then up and away to the snug flat in the big town, throwing out the wilted flowers as they go.

Spooning in automobiles parked along the roadways is a subject of regulation in the city of Omaha. An ordinance makes it a misdemeanor subject to fine.

However, the motor car will not be discarded or outlawed because unscrupulous persons put it to illegal and immoral purposes. A net cast into the sea gathers fishes of every kind, and among the wheat there will always spring up tares.

Conclusion.

—The world cannot now get along without the motor car. What was a luxury yesterday has become a necessity to-day. Automotive transportation is carving out a path for itself. While it perhaps will take much from the older forms of transportation it can never hope to supplant them. The final result will come only after the world has had opportunity through competitive experience to determine which is most economical in time and money and which is most desirable and comfortable from a personal or a sociological standpoint for the various purposes and various kinds of transportation.

At present it would seem as though the automobile will be used more largely than ever: I. As a pleasure and business vehicle driven by its owner for passenger traffic: (a) for local travel near home; (b) for short runs from town to town; (c) for more extended tourist traffic, and (d) for the use of salesmen. II. For pay passenger traffic: (a) Taxi-cabs in the cities: (b) Motor-bus service in the cities either in competition or in conjunction with street car service; (c) motor bus service to suburban and outlying districts; (d) motor bus service between towns up to 75 or 100 miles, with towns not more than two hours apart, (e) motor bus service between railway terminals. III. For freight and express traffic: (a) Haulage of farm products to market or shipping point in owner’s truck; (b) Haulage to market of perishable farm products in rapid going privately or coöperatively owned trucks; (c) Heavy trucking lines through farm districts; (d) Light express lines through farm districts; (e) Suburban or radial distribution of goods from large cities; (f) Short-haul traffic between towns; (g) Short branch-line or stub-end transportation to be taken over by trucks either in competition or conjunction with railways; (h) Trap car and store to door service by railways; (i) Terminal distribution allowing cars to be loaded and unloaded at a greater distance from congested centers; (j) Terminal distribution between different lines of railway or between railway and waterway either to relieve congestion or where there is no physical connection; (k) Longer hauls where there are no rail facilities; (l) Logging and lumbering formerly done by horses, oxen, or even light railway, (m) Rural mail service, and IV. By modified or combination motors: (a) Trackless trolley; (b) Rail motors.

Addendum.

—Since the above was written President Harding has issued the annual legislative message to Congress (December 8, 1922), in which he discusses at some length the transportation problem in the United States. Among other things he says:

Manifestly, we have need to begin on plans to coördinate all transportation facilities. We should more effectively connect up our rail lines with our carriers by sea. We ought to reap some benefit from the hundreds of millions expended on inland waterways, proving our capacity to utilize as well as to expend. We ought to turn the motor truck into a rail feeder and distributor instead of a destroying competitor.

It would be folly to ignore that we live in a motor age. The motor car reflects our standard of living and gauges the speed of our present-day life. This transportation problem cannot be waived aside. The demand for lowered costs on farm products and basic materials cannot be ignored....