Transportation History Quotes

In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time - the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car.

America’s history is the history of her transportation.

In the same way that when the car got going, people thought it would be an electric car, people thought it would be a steam car. Actually, the dark horse in that race was internal combustion, but because of the energy density of gasoline and discovery of oil in large amounts at that point in first Pennsylvania and then Texas, it won out over those other two, to the point that those other two are actually viewed as obscure footnotes in history.

It's been argued that of all the animals humans have domesticated, the horse is the most important to our history. For thousands of years, horses were our most reliable mode of transportation.

The reason the Romans built their great paved highways was because they had such inconvenient footwear.

I remember in '37 when trolley cars were so big in New York. It was five cents for a ride... There used to be open-air buses, and you could go up a spiral staircase and sit up on top. Those were great, great days.

[Bill] Clinton's voice, his manner of speaking and his terminology, "Back in those days... Yeah, back those days... You know, we didn't have the internet back then." My grandfather said, "Back in those days, we didn't have automobiles".

I shed many a tear when the steam engines went out of style on the railroads. I'd like to seem them come back, but I realize the diesels are more efficient.

And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today's big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.

In the same way that when the car got going, people thought it would be an electric car, people thought it would be a steam car.

The substitution of the internal combustion engine for the horse marked a very gloomy milestone in the progress of mankind.

I think Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be a good chap to have supper with. Anyone who builds a railway and then builds a steamship when he gets to Bristol and can't go any further must be a good chap.

The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress.

The urban middle classes found the bicycle so appealing because it was the first transportation mode that was both private and within their economic grasp. The price of new bicycles ranged from $100 to $150 in 1893 and averaged $80 in 1897. Used bicycles were also available at cheaper prices

I once drove a pair of horses from New York to Vicksburg, and to this day I can almost map out that country as I saw it then, with its hills and valleys, villages and rivers. Yes, I naturally attribute something of my success in railroad building to the interest I take in such things.

No nation owes more to the steel wheel on the steel rail though it is not always clear whether railways were built to unite Canada, or Canada was created to justify the rail building.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to severn strode, / The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

Historically, the French have had a romantic attachment to their bikes. Though the first functioning two-wheeler is thought to have been invented by a German in 1817, it was the French who popularized and marketed the device in the 1860s, giving it the name 'bicycle.'

The first thing I ever rode when I was a kid was a motorcycle, so I knew how to drive a motorcycle before a car.

We don't realize how hard it was to drive anywhere outside the major cities less than a century ago.

In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government.

During the 1890s the middle classes and the wealthy began bicycle touring en masse. The result was the creation of a tourist service sector in the national economy. The building of these tourist services has been attributed to the automobile, but actually had its inception during the hegemony of the bicycle.

Horses are in our DNA. We used them way before cars for commuting.

On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.