Anatomy of an ‘American Transit Disaster’

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FangKC
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Anatomy of an ‘American Transit Disaster’

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Anatomy of an ‘American Transit Disaster’

In his new book, historian Nicholas Dagen Bloom chronicles the collapse of public transportation in US cities — and explains who really deserves the blame.
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The ascent of the automobile tells only part of this story. Public officials’ reluctance to subsidize transit — even as car owners enjoyed publicly funded roads and free parking — made it virtually impossible for streetcars, buses and trains to compete. Racism played a role too: As higher-income white residents decamped for the suburbs, transit’s core ridership was increasingly composed of the Black and Latino communities left behind. Their needs were often cast aside in the suburbs and at state capitols.
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“Americans ignored transit problems and created cities favorable to cars thanks to public policy choices rather than inevitability or secret conspiracies. The same mobility, planning, and social decisions are before Americans today as they face the challenges of meeting equity goals and a global climate crisis.”
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But I will say this: On the public policy side, a lot of the impetus was driven by the goal of getting the streetcars off the streets.

Because they got in the way of car drivers?

Exactly. They were definitely seen as being in the way of cars and slowing down traffic.
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I think a lot of people today mourn the loss of streetcars. But you wrote something interesting in the book: You proposed that consistency in transit service matters more than a particular mode of mass transportation. Can you elaborate on that?

My finding from history is that the vehicle itself is far less important to riders than the frequency and reliability of whatever shows up. Boston has a comparatively strong transit system, and they’re still running vehicles that look like they’re from the 1950s or so.
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But there are other elements too. For instance, these are cities that canceled more highways, such as the proposed Inner Belt in Boston. I call it the aggravation factor: The aggravation factor must be very high for drivers to force them onto transit. Boston and San Francisco did that more than most places.
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I think always the compelling case for greater ridership is the aggravation of driving. For that reason, the most positive things might be rezonings, the multifamily boom, and the end of parking minimums. If we remove highways in certain areas, there’s an opportunity for transit to be competitive. But barring that, it’s very hard to know what an agency on its own can do because they’re now in survival mode.

At the end of the day, someone’s got to fund transit. Otherwise we can end up with almost nothing.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... nt=citylab
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