文章分析：

Blurb:?

Straphanger

para 1:?

Though there are 600 million cars on the planet,

and?counting, there are also seven billion people,

which means that for the vast majority of us getting

around involves taking buses, ferryboats, commuter

trains, streetcars, and subways. In other words,

traveling to work, school, or the market means being

a straphanger: somebody who, by choice or necessity,

relies on public transport, rather than a privately

owned automobile.

大多數(shù)人還是使用公共交通的；

para 2:?

Half the population of New York, Toronto, and

London do not own cars. Public transport is how

most of the people of Asia and Africa, the world’s

most populous continents, travel. Every day, subway

systems carry 155 million passengers, thirty-four

times the number carried by all the world’s airplanes,

and the global public transport market is now valued

at $428 billion annually. A century and a half after

the invention of the internal combustion engine,

private car ownership is still an anomaly.

私家車還是少的；

para 3:?

And yet public transportation, in many minds, is

the opposite of?glamour—a?squalid?last resort for

those with one too many impaired driving charges,

too poor to afford insurance, or too?decrepit?to get

behind the wheel of a car. In much of North

America, they are right: taking transit is a depressing

experience. Anybody who has waited far too long on

a street corner for the privilege of boarding a

lurching, overcrowded bus, or wrestled luggage onto

subways and shuttles to get to a big city airport,

knows that transit on this continent tends to be

underfunded, ill-maintained, and ill-planned. Given

the opportunity, who wouldn’t drive? Hopping in a

car almost always gets you to your destination more

quickly.

但是公共交通的不好讓人們選擇開車；【讓步段】

glamour 魅力

squalid /?skwɑ?l?d/?

para 4:?

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.

公共交通可以變得更好；

para 5:?

If you credit the demographers, this transit trend

has legs. The “Millenials,” who reached adulthood

around the turn of the century and now outnumber

baby boomers, tend to favor cities over suburbs, and

are far more willing than their parents to ride buses

and subways. Part of the reason is their ease with

iPads, MP3 players, Kindles, and smartphones: you

can get some serious texting done when you’re not

driving, and earbuds offer effective insulation from

all but the most extreme commuting annoyances.

Even though there are more teenagers in the country

than ever, only ten million have a driver’s license

(versus twelve million a generation ago).?/?Baby

boomers may have been raised in?Leave It to Beaver

suburbs, but as they retire, a significant?contingent?is

favoring older cities and compact towns where they

have the option of walking and riding bikes. Seniors,

too, are more likely to use transit, and by 2025, there

will be 64 million Americans over the age of

sixty-five. Already, dwellings in older neighborhoods

in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Denver, especially

those near light-rail or subway stations, are

commanding enormous price premiums over

suburban homes. The experience of European and

Asian cities shows that if you make buses, subways,

and trains convenient, comfortable, fast, and safe, a

surprisingly large percentage of citizens will opt to

ride rather than drive.

Leave It to Beaver

a US?television?programme?that was?popular?in the late 1950s and?early?1960s, about a?boy?called?Beaver?Cleaver?and his?family, who lived in a?typical?suburban?area

人口統(tǒng)計學(xué)家發(fā)現(xiàn)年輕人、老年人都更加愿意選擇公共交通。

題型解析：

11 結(jié)構(gòu)題之段落功能題

就是選讓步段的作用

12?直接細(xì)節(jié)，緊踩原文

13 上一題定位

14 主旨題之段落大意

15 上題定位

16?單詞意思

17?單詞意思

18 獨(dú)立循證

19 圖表題 干擾是D，數(shù)據(jù)無法體現(xiàn)頻率。

20 圖表題

作者簡介：

Taras Grescoe

Taras Grescoe was born in 1967. He writes essays, articles, and books. He is something of a non-fiction specialist.

In his internationally acclaimed book?Straphanger?(Henry Holt, HarperCollins), Grescoe visited fourteen cities around the world, from Bogotá to Tokyo, to look at which places are getting the sustainable mobility formula right. He is also a leading voice on urbanism, whose writing on cities has appeared on the op-ed page of the?New York Times, The Guardian, Monocle,?and?The Atlantic's CityLab. A familiar presence on CBC radio,?television, and NPR, he has been named one of the top influencers on the theme of urban transportation on Twitter.

op-ed:?short for?opposite?editorial,?the?page of special features usually opposite the editorial page?that contains?comment on the news and articles on particular?subjects?（報紙的）專欄版，評論版

For more info:?

http://tarasgrescoe.com/index.html