Getting around in the city of the future

Excerpts from an address of the same title delivered at a meeting of the Engineers´ Club of Baltimore, November 29, 1939, by Charles Gordon, managing director of the American Transit Association. ONE of the most important, and at the same time most controversial and least understood, problems of the modern city is that of improving its transportation or circulatory system. American cities have grown in area and in population at a rate that has far outstripped the facilities for handling the increased volume of local travel. In addition, development of the automobile has vastly increased the travel habits of everyone. But by jamming millions of automobiles into our existing street systems, we have made it increasingly inconvenient, costly, and dangerous to move about in urban areas.