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553 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1997)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0553 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE TO THE MILLENNIUM This end-of-the-century, end-of-the-millennium collection of articles is the first transportation issue of The Annals since volume 345, Tansportation Renaissance, in January 1963. Renaissance-seventeen years of postwar economic growth and transportation innovation had produced a climate of heady optimism. Rail dieselization had been completed. The replacement of propellers with jets had halved the time of the ordeal of an air journey. Recent seminal management discoveries would lead to the logistics revolution. The St. Lawrence Seaway was expected to trigger an unprecedented international trade stimulus in America's heartland. The 1956 beginning of the interstate highway system promised faster, safer, more efficient intercity travel, while the contribution this system would make to the destruction and decay of our urban centers was not yet clearly seen. Smog was still the subject of jokes-a peculiarity of Los Angeles excess. Browsing in the Annals archive provides a way to contemplate the trans- portation time line of the twentieth century and the swiftness of transport change. The January 1902 issue has two articles on the Isthmian question, one on the boom in American shipbuilding, three on railroads (on nationali- zation, on the need for railroad advisory councils in the department of commerce about to be formed, and on the concentration of ownership and control), and finally a note on light rail in Belgium. The Trans-Siberian Railroad (with a water link over Lake Baikal) had just opened. Transportation in 1902 meant water and rail. There was no mention in the issue of some other changes at about that time. In 1902, the American Automobile Associa- tion was founded. The Wright brothers were experimenting and soon to be aloft. Electrification of surface transit had occurred with lightning speed in the preceding dozen or so years and now was ready to go underground. Two years earlier, the Paris Metro had opened, and in 1904, the New York subway would follow. Electrical and mechanical technologies promised urban relief. No longer would New York City face the health problems from 15,000 dead horses per year and the sale of enough horse manure to account for 10 percent of the receipts of the entire transit system. A cleaner and less chaotic urban environment was anticipated. The November 1919 issue, The Railroad Problem (published while the railroad system was still under wartime seizure), dealt with the appropriate role of government in what was still considered the transportation system. But 1919 was also the year of the first traffic light (Detroit), the introduction of the first gasoline tax (Oregon), and the first transatlantic flight. In November 1924, the American Academy published volume 116, The Automobile-Its Province and Problems. In that year, the United States had five-sixths of the world's stock of motor vehicles and was manufacturing 93 8

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