新SAT官方指南阅读第十二篇全解析
This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe,Straphanger:Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile.©2012by Taras Grescoe.
Though there are600million 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
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transport,rather than a privately owned automobile.
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 carry155million passengers,thirty-four times the number carried by all the world’s airplanes,and the global public transport market is now valued at$428billion annually.A 10
century and a half after the invention of the internal combustion engine,private car ownership is still an anomaly.glamour
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
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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.
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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 at266miles 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
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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 30
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.
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
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reason is their ease with iPads,MP3players,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 40
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 by2025,there will be64million 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
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percentage of citizens will opt to ride rather than drive.
11、What function does the third paragraph(lines20-34)serve in the passage as a whole?
A)It acknowledges that a practice favored by the author of the passage has some limitations.
B)It illustrates with detail the arguments made in the first two paragraphs of the passage.
C)It gives an overview of a problem that has not been sufficiently addressed by the experts mentioned in the passage.
D)It advocates for abandoning a practice for which the passage as a whole provides mostly favorable data.
正确答案：A
分析：文章当中，尽管作者支持使用公共交通，但是第三个段落，作者也意识到公共交通系统有一些局限性：资金少、保养差、规划差（underfunded,ill-maintained,and ill-planned）.
12、Which choice does the author explicitly cite as an advantage of automobile travel in North America?
A)Environmental impact
B)Convenience
C)Speed
D)Cost
正确答案：C
分析：作者提到：在北美坐车总是可以使你更快地到达目的地（hopping in a car almost gets you to your destination more quickly）.这句话说明，速度是在北美使用汽车旅行的优势。
13、Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?
A)Lines5-9(“In...automobile”)
B)Lines20-24(“ar”)
)Lines24-26(“In...experience”)
D)Lines32-34(“quickly”)
正确答案：D
分析：见第12题解释。
14、The central idea of the fourth paragraph(lines20-31)is that
A)European countries excel at public transportation.
B)some public transportation systems are superior to travel by private automobile.
C)Americans should mimic foreign public transportation systems when possible.
D)much international public transportation is engineered for passengers to work while on board 正确答案：B
分析：在文章第4段，作者认为：公共交通比私家车更快、更舒适、更便宜（can be faster, more comfortable,and cheaper than private automobile）.
15、Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?
A)Line20(“It...this”)
B)Lines20-21(“automobile”)
C)Lines21-23(“In...sound”)
D)Lines24-27(“ities”)
正确答案：B
分析：见第14题解释。
16、As used in line32,“credit”most nearly means
A)endow.
B)attribute.
C)believe.
D)honor.
正确答案：C
分析：文章最后一个段落，作者解释说：20世纪末的人比上一代人更喜欢使用公共交通工具；如果你相信人口统计学家，那么这种趋势就有了支撑。在此处，credit表示相信。

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