Motor Transportation in the United States--Discussion

From the position of the typical railway traffic officer a decade ago-that the motor vehicle would have no appreciable influence upon either the volume of railway traffic or the methods of handling traffic-to that of a United States Senator-elect who recently asserted that better and cheaper transportation could be had by his electorate if the railway mileage were duplicated in hard-surfaced roads and all trackage within the state abandoned, is a far cry. Yet this may be said in mitigation of the traffic officer's error; even its proponents failed to appreciate the possibilities of this new agency of transport. Today, on the contrary, students of transportation have sensed its possibilities in large measure, though traditional methods of doing business have served as a serious obstacle to the adoption of progressive practices. But the transportation student has also come to appreciate the limitations of the motor vehicle, so it would seem both courteous and charitable to draw the curtain upon such extravagant claims for motor transport as set forth in the pronouncement just mentioned. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere between the old pessimism and the new optimism, if such they might be termed, concerning the place of this new agency in the field of transportation.