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464 HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

In describing this kind of national growth pattern Pickard has forcast that there will eventually be ten such areas in the nation.  The largest geographic area would be in the Great Lakes-Midwest area and would consist of a strip running along the lakes from east of Buffalo to the Chicago-Milwaukee area including 27 metropolitan areas. This is less well developed at the present time than the area on the East Coast for there the outline of a major metropolitan area stretching from Boston to the Norfolk-Portsmouth area is already evident.  This region also would include 27 metropolitan areas accounting for 22 percent of the nation's population.  The third, the California Metropolitan area, would include both Los Angeles and the San Francisco-Oakland areas and development signs are evident here also.  Eventually this area would include ten metropolitan areas with populations accounting for 11 per cent of total US population.  By that time the Los Angeles area would be two-thirds the size of the New York area.  The other super-metropolitan regions located in other parts of the country would have less population density than these three areas and would take longer to develop.

It will require the better part of 25 years for the three largest super-metropolitan regions to develop as described above. Although the time period for this study does not extend that far, this discussion has been included because of long range developments in transportation must be kept in mind in considering near term events.  Unless there is a radical and unforeseen departure from present trends in the pattern of the nation's growth, it is clear that there will be a continuing development along these lines.  Demand for short-haul intercity travel in these relatively confined geographic areas will result in increasing traffic congestion and will require continuing increases in the capacity of regional transportation systems.

The emphasis placed upon transportation needs in these large urban areas does not imply that the nation will have no transportation problems in rural areas.  But in many rural areas the problem is one of traffic scarcity rather than traffic congestion. It is for this reason that the government is now encouraging the development of a low-density aircraft that can economically accommodate light traffic flows at points served by subsidized local service airlines.

Although the continuing trend toward concentrations of urban growth may be incompatable with the nation's Colonial origins, it is a fact of life and it must be recognized by those responsible for developing our transportation system.

Application of Vertical-Lift Aircraft to US Transportation Needs

The use of vertical-lift aircraft in transportating intercity passengers in densely populated areas represents a logical development in the application of technological capability to the nation's economic and social needs. The economic and social value of the use of time saved in travel will continue to grow and vertical-lift aircraft can be used to accomplish transportation time-savings in densely populated areas by operating in confined and congested areas where fixed-wing operations are not possible. Looking to the future, it is easy to visualize vertical-lift aircraft of various kinds providing shuttle, feeder and pick-up transportation services within these large metropolitan areas.
[[Note]]
1 Metropolitanization of the United States, Jerome Pickard, Research Monograph 2. Washington, DC, Urban Land Institute, 1959.
2 The Department of Commerce is now studying the total 1980 transportation needs of the East Coast region in the current Washington-Boston Corridor Transportation Study.

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