The Great American Transit Disaster

A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

Nicholas Dagen Bloom (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

368 Seiten

2023
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-82440-6 (ISBN)

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A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit.

Many a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way.

Focusing on Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and San Francisco, Bloom provides overwhelming evidence that transit disinvestment was a choice rather than destiny. He pinpoints three major factors that led to the decline of public transit in the United States: municipal austerity policies that denied most transit agencies the funding to sustain high-quality service; the encouragement of auto-centric planning; and white flight from dense city centers to far-flung suburbs. As Bloom makes clear, these local public policy decisions were not the product of a nefarious auto industry or any other grand conspiracy—all were widely supported by voters, who effectively shut out options for transit-friendly futures. With this book, Bloom seeks not only to dispel our accepted transit myths but hopefully to lay new tracks for today’s conversations about public transportation funding.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom is professor of urban policy and planning, and director of the Master of Urban Planning Program, at Hunter College. He is the author of numerous books, including How States Shaped Postwar America, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Introduction

Pre–World War II

Part 1 Urban Transit Rise and Decline
Chapter 1 Baltimore: City Leaders versus Private Transit
Chapter 2 Chicago: A Limited Public Commitment to Transit
Chapter 3 Boston: Reverse Engineering Public Transit

The Postwar Transit Disaster, 1945 to 1980

Part 2 Unsubsidized Private Transit
Chapter 4 Baltimore: Urban Crisis, Race, and Private Transit Collapse
Chapter 5 Atlanta: Race, Transit, and the Sunbelt Boom

Part 3 “Pay as You Go” Public Transit
Chapters 6 Chicago: The Failure of “Pay as You Go” Public Transit
Chapter 7 Detroit: Racism and America’s Worst Big-City Transit

Part 4: Public Transit That Worked Better
Chapter 8 Boston Pioneers Public Regional Transit
Chapter 9 San Francisco: Deeply Subsidized Public Transit
Conclusion Beyond Transit Fatalism
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	20.03.2023
Reihe/Serie	Historical Studies of Urban America
Zusatzinfo	39 halftones
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	626 g
Themenwelt	Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe ► Nutzfahrzeuge
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
ISBN-10	0-226-82440-3 / 0226824403
ISBN-13	978-0-226-82440-6 / 9780226824406
Zustand	Neuware