Getting There:
The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail In The American Century
by Stephen B. Goddard
Railroads carried the coffin to their
own funeral?
President
Eisenhower hated the urban interstate highways?
Automobile
and oil interests conspired to kill America's trolleys?
How did America go off the track? Why is it the only leading country to spend more to move vehicles than to move people and goods? In this panoramic epic, presented through the eyes of people who lived it, Stephen B. Goddard reveals how the United States became an auto-centric society, what this has done to its culture, and why it may lose out in the world marketplace unless it changes course.
Getting There is a critically-acclaimed human saga of opportunity, greed, high ideals, raw ambition, and heartbreak, told with wit and excitement. Beginning in the glory days of American railroads, Goddard discloses why the robber barons led campaign for good roads and how government joined automakers, industry, and road-builders to create a self-perpetuating highway system. Drawing on original sources, he takes his reader behind the doors of corporate boardrooms and congressional hearing rooms to document dramatically how the 'highwaymen' and the railways rocked the financial markets for six decades as the grappled with each other for advantage.
Goddard brings to life angry regulators who nearly destroyed the railways, and backroom wheeler-dealers who perverted President Eisenhower's dream of interstate highways in order to save it. He describes how trolleys were born, suffused American life, and died with the help of conspirators, all within a half-century, and how Amtrak became America's first national railway system.
Getting There describes how road and rail leaders learned that they must cooperate or die, as their global competitors became more productive. Goddard contends that for America to prosper in the new century, it must seize the potential of high-speed trains, 'smart' roads, the information revolution, and a landmark new law that empowers citizens to demand balance in transportation.
