'Maybe it’s psychological but I feel better already! EDITORIALS Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man __. _1_ And He May Be Wrong The 'Missing Link Without modem transportation pro gress is impossible. The history of man’s progress runs parallel to transportation. It has since the beginning of time, and it still does. Transportation is the real key to the unbelievable success story of the Unit ed States. It is not the existance of na tural resources, nor raiw materials. Many countries have far more natural resourc es than the United States and many others have as much or more arable land for the production of the foods and fibers a civilized society demands. But no nation has such a transportation sys tem. It is not the availability of intelligent, hardworking men and1 women. There are --- -imany lands that have more eager and The American I excellent workers per square mile than the United States can boast. But it is the ability developed to a finer degree in the United States than anywhere else in the world to bring all of these things together and to dis tribute them quickly and, economically that has made America great Today there are terrible pressures on this transportation system, and many very well informed people believe that nothing less than a transportation revo lution win keep this arterial system of the American body politic in good! work ing order. ationi case of.,* ’ pressure nearing the r of money jecuons oi great quantities of imagina the short hauls, leaving railroads and airlines to do the long-distance tnn^ moving of people and produce. Hundreds of billions of the taxpayer^ dollars have been spent in recent yean trying, to keep roads and streets it tempo with the accelerated production and speeds of motor vehicles. W< arel further behind today than tion are necessary to repair the damagi this arterial system is already sufferinj and the total collapse it is threatenec by today. ' Without doubt the single most neglect ed facet of American transportatior is the railroad. Capable of moving mor< pounds, more miles, more quickly, mor< safely and more cheaply than all othei systems the railroad is not being usee to a fraction of its .potential. And in a time when petroleum fired methods of transportation are under di rect scutiny because of their heavy con tribution to the pollution of our environ ment the steam engine and electric train offer a,sudden and enormous po tential for relief, in this area. - - - One train can move as much freight into a metropolitan area as a thousand trucks; as many people as a thousand cars. On some not very distant d$j it may very well become necessary tc limit truck and automobile traffic tc We who live here In Hurricane Alley have very good reason to be moat re spectful of these terrible ladies who sometimes slam into us with winds of 130 miles an hour. : ,‘v> But tjitngs could be worse. We could live in Tornado Territory. A recent is sue of “Weatherwise,” the magazine of meteorologists, surveys the tornado toll of 1968 and mcludep a study of wind velocities in1 the most terrible df nature’s phenomenon. Of course, we are not exempt from. tornadoes in this section, since these deadly twisters dip down in North Carolina, too, but not with toe frequency of other sections of toe nation. In 1968 there were seven tornadoes reported in North Carolina. Oklahoma had1 58, Texas had 149 and Florida was hit by 56. The nation had 656, making it a pretty bad year, but not So bad as ’67 when the record was set with ©12. Last year these terrible twisters killed 133 people, 75 of these being killed in two Arkansas storms. No wind velocity instruments are built to measure the speed of tornadoes, and if there were any built it is unlikely that they would survive being hit by one. So scientists use a rather elaborate but sensible formula for making accur ate estimates of the wind yelocity in a tornado, and using this formula and an assortment of evidence 458 miles per hour is given as the top speed of one of the worst of these killer storms. Fortunately toe width of these killers is very narrow, nothing compared to the width of a hurricane, but what they lack ^n size they much more than make up in intensity. The storm with the es timated 458 mile per hour winds was only 250 feet wide where it hit the ground. , ■