welcome to the series that takes you to the heart of america and reveal the

inner workings of our country as you have never seen them before

I'm you'll quan I've worked in many different fields from law to government

to business

I've even one the reality show survivor but in every part of my life I've been

fascinated by the same things systems and networks we're going to go on quite

a journey coast-to-coast across this sprawling land to discover the habits

the rhythms and the secrets that you only notice when you step back and see

the big picture interchanges oddly elegant in the next hour

aerial photography and satellite tracking will reveal how America's

transportation systems make us the most mobile people on earth

we built the vast networks of roads rails and airwaves and an army of

workers keep the wheels turning

hey let's like the bus driver but it's getting harder and harder to keep all

these systems running well i think the freeways will get so slow where a lot of

people just decide it's not worth the grief many of them are aging designed at

a time when America was far less crowded you have a disruption at one place and

it ripples all the way across country it does have a ripple effect but even as he

struggled to keep up every day our systems miraculously managed to get us

where we need to go

this is a story of 310 million Americans on the move

this is America revealed

yeah

America revealed is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you

thank you

monday morning just before dawn

but this isn't the night sky

this is America this is us

each of these points of light represents 7,500 people they create brilliant

constellations that span the continent from the faint glow of small towns to

the blaze of cities like Chicago and New York to connect these dots we built four

million miles of roads 200,000 miles of rails 5,000 airports the largest

transportation network in history

but keeping it all moving that's America's challenge in the 21st century

and nowhere does that challenge loom larger than in New York City it's the

perfect example of a powerful but aging transportation network that moves

millions even while straining under their weight take the island of

Manhattan 23 square miles home to 1.6 million people every weekday morning is

population nearly doubles swelling with an army of commuters these people are

essential to the life of the city getting all of them onto this tiny

island in only a few hours is a daily adventure that teeters on the edge of

chaos and it's about to begin at 630am I'm coming in on the red-eye from LA to

JFK International Airport and I've got plenty of company reported the path of

every plane landing in New York's three major airports in a 24-hour period a

flight comes and goes every 24 seconds that's more than 3,500 flights a day

I 7am thousands of yellow cabs are picking up their first fears of the day

at the airports and heading for men hand this taxi is one in 50,000 vehicles that

will leave its way through New York's necklace of bridges and tunnels in the

next power just below these bridges more than a hundred thousand people are

traveling to and from the island by boat

these are the traces of those vessels darting around New York's rivers and

harbor including one fleet which alone Carrie 65,000 commuters a day

staten island ferry

yeah

as thousands descend on the island by here road and water even more arrive by

rail

long island railroad trains carry suburban commuters into Manhattan every

two to four minutes along with pack trains from New Jersey and amtrak trains

they all converge at America's busiest commuter hub New York's penn station

while only a few blocks away

trains from the north stream into another bustling train station grand

central terminal

but getting people on to Manhattan is just half the battle

now they have to deal with this

the streets run yellow with taxis competing with thousands of trucks and

cars and bus routes crisscross the island adding another layer to the

traffic

I'm not surprised the word gridlock originated here

it's ATM and it looks like nobody's going anywhere

but beneath the streets it's a different story

i'm talking about the subway every day this system carries over 5 million

passengers citywide without it

traffic would overwhelm Manhattan streets and the city couldn't function

but the subway has had an even bigger impact than that starting in the early

nineteen hundreds when the first track was laid to build a transportation

system in America whole cities and towns will spring up around it the subway

system is a prime example it determined how New York City took shape and dictate

the patterns of its inhabitants lives look beneath this forest of midtown

Manhattan skyscrapers multiple subway lines converge here funneling in

hard-working commuters from the city's outer boroughs like Queens

this is a snapshot of what Queens look like in 1917 when subway construction

was just getting started and here is what it looks like today a busy vibrant

borough the subway made Queens possible

but how

100 years ago to combat overcrowding and lower Manhattan tenements New York

expanded its fledgling subway system to the sparsely populated outer boroughs

critics call them the tracks to nowhere but New Yorkers soon got onboard lured

by the promise of open land just a short ride from their jobs

by the nineteen-twenties these lines were carrying more passengers than they

could handle the city plan to add over 100 miles of new track but first the

Depression hit then World War two

yeah

today we're stuck with the same basic wheels that were out of date in the

nineteen thirties and the number of passengers keeps going up with every

passing decade it's a pattern will see all over the country enormous but aging

system was working hard harder to keep up with the growth to help create it's

ten a.m. in the morning commute is winding down the city has survived

another rush hour and millions have made it to their destinations New York's

public transit system may be old and crowded but without it this teeming

metropolis would come to a screeching halt the same is true across the country

are public transportation systems are what keep the nation moving there's one

system that carries a whopping 26 million Americans every day more than

any other form of public transport

there it is

there it is again the humble school bus

what's up guys good morning and come to kingman arizona to meet a guy who keeps

one of these yellow Marvel's moving here

rush hour is just beginning for many students in this desert community buses

are the only way to get to school around the country kids rely on a half-million

member army of transportation experts the nations school bus drivers here

let's make the bus driver when these kids are on the bus

they're my kids and I'll mess and I don't take that lightly

you have to be the mother the father the mediator the nurse the cool uncle

like how many miles you drive every day on average all do about a hundred

sixty-five miles a day and that's a few that's just me

this is mike's bus it's just one of kingdoms 53 buses replanted gps devices

on them and found that they drive one-and-a-half million miles every year

to every corner of the school district an area the size of Delaware that's

repeated nationwide in thousands of school districts large and small tho

system quite like this anywhere in the world here in the US

if you can't get there on foot you can get a ride to your local school even if

it's not that local so you guys are really kind of like the lifeblood of the

system right i mean without you these kids wouldn't even be able to get an

education

no they wouldn't be able to get the school now we keep pumping the kids in

so they can get educated

our school buses worked amazingly well which is good considering how much we

rely on them but there are other transportation networks out there that

face big challenges including the system that first connected the country from

coast to coast and made modern America possible

the railroads

to create a nation wide web of tracks the federal government launched one of

the most ambitious and expensive infrastructure projects in human history

and for nearly a hundred year's America's railways were the fastest and

most popular way to travel but not anymore to get a glimpse of what keeps

our trains going and what slows them down

I've come to the rail hub of the United States Chicago

more trains pass through this city than any other because in the eighteen

hundreds Chicago's politicians lobby to make sure all national rail lines and

here

that created jobs but also logistical nightmares

today there are three different systems here with different needs all fighting

for space on one set of tracks commuter trains making local pickups amtrak

trains traveling longer distances with fewer stops but those two passenger

networks are dominated by the biggest slowest network of all

yeah

free

our economy depends on goods carried by rail from coast to coast

we have the world's most efficient and profitable trade system moving nearly

ten times as much as $MONEY euro

it's so successful that free companies owned most of America's tracks and many

of our freight trains pass through one small section of Chicago's freight yards

27 miles of track behind me will move about 1.75 million free cars each year

but this phenomenal success has come at a price

the system isn't nearly as good at moving something else people so what is

it about the freight system that gets in our way

this is Jack strength is using a remote control to push that train of a man-made

he'll be call the double hump shipping companies built this hill so that men

like Jack can process all the free coming through this yard and reassemble

cars according to destination the network we depend on to ship our goods

depends on Jack his remote control and a surprisingly simple process known as

pumping pumping is exactly a slang word for classifying the cars sorting kind of

like a postal facility but instead of sorting mail your starting these kinds