The Problem of Long Hauls versus Short.—It is easily seen that the railway system in America is built to facilitate long rides, long hauls, and large loads, as contrasted with the European system built for short rides, short hauls, and small loads. This condition gives rise to one of the most difficult railroad problems. As a region becomes more thickly populated there is a growing need of short hauls and frequent service. That is what is needed in New England and the densely populated Atlantic seaboard. There a large amount of traffic takes the form of small irregular packages, manufactured goods in boxes, and miscellaneous raw materials which often come in small lots. The West, on the other hand, ships much of its freight in carload lots or train loads of wheat, stock, or other commodities. The same is true of Pennsylvania with its coal and the South with its cotton. A similar contrast is seen in the need for terminal facilities. The West and the ports where raw materials are shipped want terminal facilities where a train load of homogeneous quality can be quickly handled. They want to be able to load or unload cars of grain or ore by merely opening a chute and letting the material pour out. Many of the efforts of American inventors have been directed along this line, so that an entire train load of coal cars or oil cars can be emptied in a few hours by running onto a high track and opening the bottom of the cars. On the other hand the intensive manufacturing industries are calling for an equally fine development of methods of loading irregular boxes and bales. That is why the problem of movable trucks and of overhead cranes as discussed in Chapter VIII is primarily a problem of the eastern United States.
The Railway Problems of Power and Ownership—Another business problem which confronts the railways is the type of fuel and the method of the application of power. Today railroads in the United States are run chiefly with soft coal, but some burn hard coal, some oil, and some are run by electricity. Everyone agrees that the present methods waste power and that it is a pity to use fuels like anthracite and especially oil which are limited in quantity and are likely to be exhausted. Never the less, the low cost of these commodities at the places where they are produced and their great convenience and cleanliness compared with.
soft coal cause their use to continue. The use of electric power would be cheaper than any other kind, provided it did not cost so much to change the equipment and adapt it to the new source of power. Elec tric power on a large scale has been tried in only a few places such as the 75 miles between New York and New Haven and 420 miles on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Puget Sound R. R. through the Rocky and Cascade Mountains. In California the Southern Pacific went exten sively into the problem of using hydroelectric power. It believed that this would be the cheapest method in the long run, but gave up the attempt because of governmental regulations hedging in the use of water power. It seems probable, however, that in course of time one of the important railway developments will be the use of hydroelectric power at least in the mountains and the Pacific states, and of electricity derived from coal burned at large central power plants on the eastern seacoast or at strategic interior positions to which coal can be brought cheaply.
Another railway problem of the United States is created by the demands for nationalization. With the expansion of commerce and with improvements in methods of transportation the railway system of a large country must more and more function as a single unit. Also it is more and more apparent that the railroads are so important that it is not right that they should be in danger of being put out of com mission either by strikes or by the incompetency of private owners. On the other hand a great many people believe that the running of rail roads by the general government is an extremely inefficient and unpro gressive method. Thus far the line along which these two conflicting views have been harmonized has been more and more rigid government control under the Interstate Commerce Commission while the railroads still remain in private hands.
The American Trolley System.—Trolley lines are even more dis tinctly American than railways. They are the natural result of the growth of large cities and their distribution in the United States is almost like that of the cities. The only important exception is that in the level regions of the Middle West, especially from Ohio to Illinois, interurban trolley lines, which are practically railroads, have been developed more than in the manufacturing regions farther east.
The nature of the transportation system of an ordinary town depends largely on the number of inhabitants. In a small village practically everyone walks to work. In a small city the majority still walk, but there are a few trolley lines and a moderate number of persons use automobiles. In a large city of 100,000 or more inhabitants the trolley system is generally quite well developed, but most of the lines run fairly straight toward the center. In such cities automobiles become an important method of going to work among the people who are well-to-do, and jitney buses are rapidly coming to be an important means of carry ing people on routes where the traffic is not heavy enough to warrant the building of permanent tracks. The next stage in the development of the urban railway system is the building of what are often called crosstown lines, or lines which run wholly or partly around the city at a distance from the center. As the city grows still more, the surface lines become too slow and are too much interrupted by the heavy traffic to accommodate the people who live far out. The steam railways help to meet this condition by running local passenger trains and selling commutation tickets at low rates. This, however, often fails to meet the situation and elevated lines are added. The last stage in the evolu tion of city transportation is the subway. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia are the American cities where subways are important. Although London, Paris, and Berlin also have subway systems none of them can compare with that of New York. The New York system is due not merely to the size of New York but to the peculiar way in which the city is hampered by being on a long narrow island. It requires not only subways north and south but tunnels under the rivers to the neighboring mainland and Long Island.