Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/61

CITIES, TOWNS AND VILLAGES

One of the chief agencies in promoting progress in cities and creating wealth throughout the industrial world has been the street railway. It is the facilities for street transportation that have made the modern city possible, and created many of the most difficult city planning problems. The development of transportation in the United States has been due largely to private knowledge and private capital. Public authorities have seldom aided or encouraged the men who conducted the first experiments in city railways. The same spirit of conservatism together with the apparent impossibility of establishing continuing policies has obstructed the vision, limited the energy, and furnished inadequate appropriation for public enterprises of magnitude, outside of the ordinary routine of the city.

It is not surprising that the needs of modern transportation were not provided for in the early planning of cities. It is surprising, however, now that the transportation needs are clear, that means are not taken to provide for them. While every form of transportation is called to the service of the city, those forms which represent the daily flow of traffic through the public highways, and particularly the street railways, come most closely in touch with the masses of the people. The extent to which they serve and satisfy the public need may be taken as one of the indications of the progress and enterprise of the community. But whether the business of the street railway drifts into public ownership and operation, or whether it continues in private control, thoroughly efficient and satisfactory service can be given to all parts of a community only by a well-distributed and well coordinated system which shall provide the most direct and speedy routes. This is true not only between existing important business and residential centers, but to and from