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

1. What favorable circumstances towards mass transportation were in less developed parts of the world?

2. Why did the government of the postwar Europe collect taxes from cars and their fuels?

3. What kind of transport was the analogue to the automobile?

4. What disadvantages brought buses on the roads? What was the situation?

5. What service was introduced in the United States in the beginning of the 20^th century?

6. Where has a considerable amount of federal and state money been directed to?

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

1. to constrain a) the choice of roads taken to get to a place;

2. to shield b) stimulating, provocative, exciting;

3. transit c) the vehicles coming and going in a street, town,etc.;

4. disadvantage d) rarely encountered, insufficient;

5. route e) another name for expressway, a major road;

6. incentive f) occurring or situated between two points, places;

7. intermediate g) to compel or force, esp. by persuasion;

8. traffic h) the passage or conveyance of goods or people;

9. freeway i) an unfavourable circumstance, thing, person etc.;

10. scarce j) to cover, defense or protect;

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

1. Mass transportation systems were maintained and expanded with government subsidies.

2. Because of gasoline and automobile high prices there was an inability of citizens to afford cars.

3. The analogue to the automobile for the mass transportation industry was the motor bus.

4. When the demand for bus service increases, addition of more vehicles requires additional drivers.

5. As the population increases the urban travel market grows considerably too.

Text 6

1. Read the text about the first tires. The first tires

The Indians of Central America were using rubber almost 1000 years ago. They used it to make balls for playing games.

The Indians collected their rubber from a tree. They called it hevea, the weeping tree. It weeps tears of latex, rubber, when its bark is cut.The early methods for making rubber from latex were simple: they used fire and smoke for it.

The Indians probably got two or three pounds of latex from a tree each year. The first sample of rubber arrived in Europe about 1774. It was brought there by a French explorer named Charles de la Condamine.

For a time it was considered an interesting novelty. It would bounce higher and stretch more easily than any substance known.

An English scientist named Joseph Priestley discovered that it could be used to erase pencil marks. It has been called Indian rubber, from about 1770.

Everyone was fascinated with rubber from the New World. But no one could think of any important use for it.

In 1823 Charles Mackintosh took a patent for making raincoats from cloth and rubber. That’s why raincoats were called mackintoshes.

Early things made of rubber were sticky and hard to handle. Real success didn’t come until 1839, through the efforts of Charles Goodyear, a smith of Connecticut. He became so interested in making rubber easy to handle that he neglected his business. He was jailed for debt. But nevertheless he solved his problem. Goodyear discovered the process called vulcanizing. By this process, heat, sulphur and other things turn soft rubber into material tough enough to make automobile tires and conveyor belts.

The hevea tree has been cultivated in many parts of the world. It grows in hot damp climates. A tree begins to yield at the age of six and goes yielding for another 25 years. The latex oozes from slanting cuts in the bark and gathers in a bucket below. Modern rubber plantations often yield 30 lb of latex from a tree each year. Three pounds of liquid latex are used to make a pound of soft rubber.