Here then is an ideal opportunity for a dual-city rapid transit development--and, aside from the suggested subway under Washington, to be built at a minimum of cost. An installation such as this awaits only the abandonment of the rather silly show of competition between the railroads, which as we shall see in our own good time in this book is no competition at all, while the opportunities offered for the development of both Washington and Baltimore are too multifold to be set down within many pages. * * * * * A similar opportunity is offered through and between the bustling Great Lake cities of Toledo and Detroit, where the passenger service of the steam railroads that connect them has not been changed or improved in more than forty years. Forty years ago these were small cities; their total population hardly exceeded 166,000 persons. To-day Toledo alone has 250,000 people and Detroit very close to a million. To a population of 1,250,000 people the same steam railroad passenger service is given as was given to but 166,000. True it is that since then the country has passed through the age of the interurban trolley as well as that of the automobile. The traffic by both of these agents of transport between Toledo and Detroit is vast. Yet each is subject to great delays in the streets of these huge and steadily growing cities. The railroads that render the most direct passenger service between Toledo and Detroit--sixty miles apart--are the single-tracked branches of the Michigan Central and the New York Central running for the most of the way almost side by side. Yet until a very few years ago, no one came along with the sagacity to operate these two single-tracked roads as one double-tracked one, by the simple process of using one line in one direction and the other in the reverse one. The Michigan Central was always a conservative property, and so was the Lake Shore, which preceded the New York Central in this territory. Yet conservatism, valuable as it is in many ways, should never be permitted to impede progress. And real progress long ago would have dictated the electrification of this intensive stretch of railroad; particularly so in view of the fact that the Michigan Central, a New York Central property, was going ahead with a rather extensive electric installation in connection with the new tunnel that it was boring under the Detroit River and with its elaborate new passenger terminal in that city. For many years the Michigan Central, like the other railroads that essayed to cross into Canada at Detroit, was compelled to ferry its cars and trains across a swift and rather narrow river. At the best this was a tedious time-taking process. At the worst it was a battle against floating ice and zero weather and all that follows in their trails.