America's Rail Revival

"Public transportation in America is often dismissed as a nostalgia trip. Yet worsening traffic congestion and climbing gasoline prices are now encouraging many people to give transit another try. Progress, the newsletter of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, reports (Nov. 2000) that public transportation ridership jumped from 7.9 billion in 1996 to 9.1 billion in 1999, a 15 percent increase—nearly double the 7.8 percent increase in automobile miles driven over the same period."