II. Look through the text again and answer the following questions:

1. Why did the car become increasingly popular for travelers?

2. What other convenience did the automobile give to people?

3. What were the fuel taxes in the United States used for?

4. Why do you think during the war, automobile motors, fuel, and tires were in short supply?

5. Why there was the political and economic pressure to expand the road network after the war?

6. Did the appearance of the automobile influence the development of suburbs and big cities? What way?

III. Match the words with their definitions and make up your own sentences with these words:

1. technology a) an engine of a vehicle;

2. ownership b) to create or set up smth. on a permanent basis;

3. demand c) a residential district on the outskirts of a city;

4. motor d) agility, liveliness, ability to move physically;

5. to establish e) legal right of possession, proprietorship;

6. available f) to keep in proper or good condition

7. suburb g) an interconnected group or system;

8. mobility h) obtainable or accessible;

9. network i) the application of practical sciences to industry;

10. to maintain j) an urgent requirement or request;

IV. Read the following statements and discuss them with a partner:

1. At the beginning of the 20th century the automobile entered the transportation market as a toy for the rich.

2. The convenience of the automobile freed people from the need to live near rail lines or stations.

3. Motor fuel taxes were used to build and maintain highways.

4. After World War II plenty of production capacity turned off the war machine.

5. The automobile became mass transportation’s chief competitor.

6. The auto industry, the road networks and the suburbs grow together.

Giving your opinion you may find the following expressions helpful:

By the way as for me I’d like to know

I see I’m afraid I wonder

It seems to me that I don’t know exactly If I’m not mistaken Text 5

I. Read the continuation of the story about the postwar growth of mass transportation system.

The automobile and mass transportation (part II)

In many western European countries, postwar automobile growth was constrained by government policies, which heavily taxed both cars and their fuels. Mass transportation systems were maintained and expanded with government subsidies, and public policies kept central areas strong suburban growth in carefully designed higher-density nodes, in some cases (particularly in Britain and Sweden) in the form of systematically designed new towns linked to older central cities by high-quality mass transit lines. In less-developed parts of the world, mass transportation was shielded from automobile competition by the inability of citizens to afford cars and by government policies that kept both automobile and gasoline prices high.

The analogue to the automobile for the mass transportation industry was the motor bus, a self-propelled vehicle operating on the highway. Buses were introduced into mass transportation services in the 1920s. Like the automobile, they offered operating in the short term, to route street obstructions, and in the long term, to be shifted easily into new areas needing service. By the 1960s in the United States, the bulk of urban mass transportation services were operated with buses. Some lines serving downtown areas were operated as express services, picking up and discharging travelers at the ends of the routes and skipping intermediate stops to provide faster travel. While buses offered economy and flexibility to operators, they brought important disadvantages. Operating on city streets mixed with other traffic, they could not travel faster than cars, and, because they made frequent stops, they were usually slower. This problem can be avoided by operating express buses on freeways or special lanes and roadways reserved for high-occupancy vehicles. When the demand for bus service increases, addition of more vehicles requires additional drivers, which makes operating costs increase as fast as rider ship. As a result there is less advantage to be gained from serving high-density corridors with buses compared with trains. This problem has been reduced by using larger buses—double-deck vehicles in Europe and longer, articulated buses in both Europe and the United States.

Because bus routes are so flexible, builders do not have the same incentive to locate developments near bus lines, which may be rerouted on short notice, as they do to locate near rail lines.

The 20th century began with rapid growth in transit service in the United States. Transit riding has consistently moved with the state of the economy, growing during the boom period after World War I and dropping during the Great Depression, when unemployment was high. World War II saw a large increase because employment was high and automobiles were scarce. The steady decline after the war shows the impact of growth in automobile travel and the migration to the suburbs.

Since the 1970s, a considerable amount of federal and state money has been directed toward improving and extending mass transportation systems, and rider ship has increased in response. The population of the United States has grown steadily over the 20th century, and the fraction of people living in urban areas increased to nearly 70 percent, and therefore the urban travel market as a whole has grown considerably. The mass transportation, however, has declined substantially during the latter half of the 20th century.