Automotive transportation may be considered to include all conveyance from one place to another by means of motor vehicles. A motor vehicle is one which carries within itself the source of mechanical power which propels it providing that source be not muscular. This definition would include the tractor, the road roller, the torpedo, and the locomotive, which are ordinarily excluded. For the purposes of this discussion an automobile or motor car may be considered as a self-propelled vehicle which transports a burden other than itself as a weight upon its own wheels. This will exclude the tractor and the locomotive, which though self-propelled, are intended to draw other vehicles rather than to carry the load; also the road roller and the torpedo, which have no burden to transport other than their own weights. Some definitions would confine a motor vehicle to one designed to move on common roads or highways. However, motor cars are now being used on railroad tracks; they are entitled to and should be allowed the use of the name. The automobile may have as the source of power internal-combustion engines using such fuel as gasoline, kerosene, benzol, and alcohol; it may use steam generated by these fuels; or an electric storage battery charged by sources outside the engine may furnish the propelling force. The load transported will either be passenger or freight. Passenger traffic may be classified as business or pleasure. If a vehicle is used mostly for business, first cost and economy of operation may play a more important part in the purchase of the car than if used for pleasure, in which case appearance and luxurious appointments may be the deciding factor.

The Evolution of the Steam Automobile

Business Passenger Traffic.

—All machines that haul passengers for hire, that are used as a means of performing, promoting, or extending business relations, while so used, may be rightly considered business machines and the traffic business traffic. The physician who finds that he can quadruple the number of his daily calls; the traveling salesman who can double the territory covered and do it much more efficiently; the business or professional man, of whatever kind, who uses his automobile in going from one place to another in the performance of his duties; the farmer who comes to town to get his mail and information relative to markets or otherwise to assist him with his farm industry; and the multifold other uses which are for the advantage of financial or industrial enterprise may constitute a legitimate business passenger traffic. The transportation, however, by taxi-cab, jitney or bus is considered by many persons to be the type that should be classified under the term business passenger traffic.

Jitney and taxi-cab traffic are of vast importance in the cities and are of real economic use in furnishing a rapid means of transit from point to point. The jitney is usually a privately owned vehicle not especially constructed for the business, which plies with more or less regularity over a route that may or may not be set out in the owner’s license. In early days the price of a ride was a “nickel” or “jitney” hence the name.

Taxi-cabs are regularly licensed automobiles that carry passengers for hire, usually making the charge dependent more or less upon the distance traveled, which is registered by a taximeter. For example, the charge may be 25 cents plus 15 cents per mile or fraction thereof. This would make the charge for distances less than 1 mile, 40 cents; from 1 mile to 2 miles, 55 cents; from 2 to 3 miles, 70 cents; and so on. The driver usually turns the taximeter up to the fixed charge plus 1 mile, if fractions are counted as full miles, when the passenger enters, and the instrument adds on as the cab travels. Of course the taximeter may be made to register every quarter, every fifth, or every tenth of a mile, or even continuously. A special waiting charge is made if the cab is held by the passenger. Taxicabs are variable in form, from “flivvers” to limousines. Many of the larger cities are supplied with cabs owned in quantity by substantial companies which put on a line of cars usually all alike and painted with some striking feature or color. The larger ones are limousines seating five or seven passengers in the tonneau and one on the seat with the driver. Some of these cars are almost luxuriously fitted with fine cushions and special lighting. They have speaking tubes or electrical devices to signal the driver. The drivers for the large companies wear the livery of the company. Taxis, as may be inferred, have no established routes, but go wherever the passenger may desire.

The motor-bus is well established both in city and cross-country traffic. As at first made motor-buses consisted of special bodies with seats placed upon freight truck chassis. This did not prove altogether satisfactory because of their excessive weight, too much of which is “unsprung.” They also have a high center of gravity, high floors, long turning radius and rather rigid suspension. A bus, to be efficient, durable and comfortable, should be especially designed. There should be lightness and strength; small unsprung weight; a low center of gravity; a flexible control; special transmission; wide treads; ample wheel base; short turning radius; low step entrance and exit; low top clearance; curb receipt and delivery of passengers; ample brake capacity; and high lowgear efficiency.[167] Pneumatic tires on account of their resiliency make the bus much more comfortable for the passengers by absorbing shocks, and for the same reason they also increase the life of the car and make it possible to travel faster. Cushion tires are next in order of merit and are an effort to combine the durability of the solid tire with the easy riding qualities of the pneumatic. Tests made by the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads show that the cushion or semi-solid tires stand between the solid and the pneumatic as regards riding comfort. With many bus operators a combination equipment is being used—pneumatics are used on the front to protect the engine and gasoline tank from vibration and cushion tires on the rear where the hardest wear comes.