Man’s common transportation until the automobile was the horse and buggy. Few remember the time before cars and expressways. The speed of transportation has increased from the horse to 24,000 mph in space!

Automobiles

The first U.S. gasoline automobile was invented in 1885. By 1900, only one in 9,500 Americans owned a car. Today there are over 600,000,000 cars, trucks and buses in the world! Americans spend over $91 billion on new cars alone! And $43 billion on used cars! U.S. auto plants produced 6.0 million passenger cars and 5.7 commercial vehicles in 1996. [Japan produced 7.8 million passenger cars and 2.4 million commercial vehicles.] The U.S. has over 3.9 million miles of public roads! Private automobiles carry 80.5% of all intercity traffic.

Railroads

The U.S. railroad industry began in 1826 with the horse-powered 3-mile-long Granite Railway used for hauling stone. By 1860, over 30,000 miles of railroad track had been laid; by the 1880s, over 70,000 miles of track. Although railway passenger travel continues to decline due to automobile and airplane travel, double stack freight trains carry containers across the continent. Automatic Car Identification, a nationwide computerized network, provides a system for quickly locating rolling stock. In 1979, Japanese trains using magnetic levitation achieved a speed record of 321.2 mph.

Air and Space Travel

In 1918 the first U.S. airmail service began. By 1926 U.S. airlines carried just under 6,000 passengers. Today, commuter air traffic is growing 6% to 10% a year, with over 1,315,269 passenger arrivals and departures worldwide in 1996. In 1982 U.S. air travelers spent less than $15 billion. Today, over $25 billion is spent on air travel.