Transportation: Megaloplar

Transportation experts have a mouthful of a phrase to describe the area between Washington and Boston. It is the "Northeastern Megalopolitan Corridor," and it implies just what "megalo" means in medicine: an abnormal enlargement. Not too many years hence, the metropolitan centers of Washington. Baltimore. Philadelphia. New York and Boston will have crept so near each other that they will be one huge, headachy city. These urban areas already comprise better than 20% of the nation's population, account for almost 30% of U.S. manufacturing, 20% of its retail trade and 27% of the federal income tax take—and make for a horrible, continuing traffic jam.

When that great mega-megalopolitan day comes, will those cities and their transported citizens be ready for it? Obviously, the answer is no—unless they prepare for it now. A few of the states are spending millions just to survey future needs, but the effort will not help much unless it is coordinated.

In Washington last week, a seven-man presidential task force submitted a report on the problem that recommends the federal spending of at least a million dollars on a survey to find new, faster and cheaper ways of moving people and freight through the megalopolis. Curiously, the report points out, the passenger capacity of existing intercity transportation is greater than the demand, although there is chronic congestion at the airports and along airways.

The problem that needs examination, then, is the deficiency of service—frequency, comfort, convenience, speed, safety, reliability and cost. Among the possibilities listed in the report: improvement of existing railroad rights-of-way that would provide line-haul running speeds of 100-150 m.p.h.; new railroad rights-of-way or "tubes" to provide speeds of perhaps 200 m.p.h.; electronically controlled auto or bus highway systems; "ground and surface effects machines'"—that is, vehicles that ride on a cushion of air over land or water; improvement of helicopter services and development of VTOL aircraft (vertical take-off-and-landing craft"); and improvement of high-speed hydrofoil boats.