新SAT阅读官方题型解析-Central Ideas主旨题例3

Questions 11-20 are based on the following

passage and supplementary material.

This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe, Straphanger:

Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. ©2012

by Taras Grescoe.

35

40

45

50

55

It doesn’t have to be like this. Done right, public

transport can be faster, more comfortable, and

cheaper than the private automobile. In Shanghai,

German-made magnetic levitation trains skim over

elevated tracks at 266 miles an hour, whisking people

to the airport at a third of the speed of sound. In

provincial French towns, electric-powered streetcars

run silently on rubber tires, sliding through narrow

streets along a single guide rail set into cobblestones.

From Spain to Sweden, Wi-Fi equipped high-speed

trains seamlessly connect with highly ramified metro

networks, allowing commuters to work on laptops as

they prepare for same-day meetings in once distant

capital cities. In Latin America, China, and India,

working people board fast-loading buses that move

like subway trains along dedicated busways, leaving

the sedans and SUVs of the rich mired in

dawn-to-dusk traffic jams. And some cities have

transformed their streets into cycle-path freeways,

making giant strides in public health and safety and

the sheer livability of their neighborhoods—in the

process turning the workaday bicycle into a viable

form of mass transit.