"Robert Snyder has compiled the tales and the war stories, sketches of the varied jobs and those who work on the buses and trains of the New York city mass transit system. These are the engrossing stories of the invisible workers-those who labor day and night to ensure a safe trip for the five million who ride the subways and buses of the city. Ever present, the workers have seen it all, and regale us with their experiences. It is an enjoyable read renewing our appreciation and respect for those who tend the transit systems."-New York History New York City may seem to be a place where everyone is a stranger, yet transit workers provide a human presence on a late-night bus or an empty subway platform. Few of us give any thought to these invisible workers-until something goes wrong. Transit Talk takes readers into the world of MTA New York City Transit employees, as they describe their lives and work, from the most visible subway conductor to the seemingly invisible mechanic. There are nearly 44,000 transit workers like those you will meet in Transit Talk, and every day they help five million of us travel to work, to school, to weddings, to funerals, to hospitals, to vacations. These workers labor daily on subway tracks inches from high-voltage powerlines, risking their lives for passengers they'll never know. The city can feel large and fragmented, but the transportation system and its workers create common threads in the lives of all New Yorkers, threads we take for granted. Nearly one hundred transit workers were interviewed for Transit Talk. These are the people who keep the country's largest transit system up and running. Together, their stories create a human tableau of life and labor in the city within a city that is the MTA New York City Transit. Transit workers find satisfaction in fixing a damaged subway car, gain wisdom from mastering a dangerous workplace, nurse emotional wounds from tending to someone injured in an accident, battle frustration from difficulties with management, and express satisfaction when reflecting on a productive career. They tell of how years spent in the same shop create bonds between workers. They talk of the burden of laboring in a twenty-four-hour system with night shifts and weekend workdays that take them away from families. You'll hear joyous anecdotes of workers delivering babies in a subway car as well as painful tales of informing next-of-kin of a death on the tracks. The stories weave together vignettes about race, unions, and the relations between men and women in the transit workforce. The memories recorded here cover the last fifty years of the twentieth century, a time when the transit system acquired many of the characteristics of contemporary modern American industry. Robert W. Snyder, a lifelong bus and subway rider and the grandson of a transit worker, is the author of The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York and coauthor of Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York. He lives with his wife and two children in Manhattan, where he is the editor of Media Studies Journal.

In developing and transition economies, 60 to 80 percent of all passenger and freight transport moves by road-the main form of access for most rural communities. Yet most of the 11 million kilometers of roads in these economies are badly maintained and poorly managed. This paper discusses one of the most effective ways to promote sound policies for managing and financing road networks--commercialization. It discusses the emerging central concept of bringing roads into the marketplace, putting them on a fee-for-service basis, and managing them like a business.

This study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and human resource management. Heralded as a model of lean production when it opened in 1989, CAMI promised workers something different from traditional plants a humane environment, empowerment, and cooperative labor-management relations. However, the enthusiasm workers felt during the orientation and early phases of production steadily declined, as did their involvement in participatory activities. Workers came to describe CAMI as "just another car factory." Union challenges and shopfloor resistance to key elements of the lean system grew, capped by a five-week strike in 1992. The authors attribute workers' disillusionment to lean production itself rather than to North American managers' inadequate implementation."

World Bank Technical Paper No. 376. Roads are agents of change and can be responsible for both benefits and damage to the existing balance between people and their environment. This handbook examines specific road projects ranging from minor rehabilitation and maintenance activities on existing roads to major works on new alignments. It provides a description of practical methods for designing and executing effective environmental assessments that are useful to those who are involved in various aspects of road projects, from planning to construction to maintenance.

This text examines the controversies surrounding state and federal regulatory oversight, and presents recommendations for changing transportation regulation and federalism.

"Smerk s account, thankfully, is not just another exercise in quantitative analysis. He makes his points with words and sentences, not numbers and charts. The result is a free-flowing narrative in which changes in federal policy over the years are shown to have occurred because people interacted within certain political frames of reference.... I highly recommend this book... " Brian J. Cudahy, Business Horizons

..". a solid history of an important component of modern public policy... ably integrated with scholarship on metropolitan development so that urbanists can learn much here." Choice

"This book is must reading for anyone who has deep interests in transit issues specifically and transportation problems in general, but it is also for all those who are more than casually curious about the dynamics of urbanization." Economic Geography

..". a highly in-depth study of the impact of governmental policies on the mass transit industry over the last few decades and where it may soon be heading." Railfan and Railroad Magazine

..". a timely and important book." Business History Review

This important new book is the only available comprehensive survey and analysis of federal policies and programs for urban mass transit. It is a must book for anyone interested in the plight of our cities and the efforts being made to solve our transportation problems."

Innovation - the imaginative attempt to introduce something new or to solve some problem - smashes routine and demands choice, even if only the choice to retain the status quo. This collection of fourteen essays provides a spectrum of historical perspectives on how, when, or why, individuals, societies, governments, and industries have made choices regarding the use of technologies. Through historical accounts that span centuries and national boundaries, exploring the complexity of a nuclear power plant and the apparent simplicity of an electrical plug, the contributors to this volume dramatically illustrate the push and pull between technology and society. General topics addressed include: Regulation of private industry Social acceptance of commercial innovation Negative perceptions of the "Technological Age" Cultural and artistic features of technology Provocative and accessible, this collection will serve both students and faculty in history, sociology, and public policy, as well as in history and philosophy of science and technology. These essays were originally published in the journal Technology and Culture

In a geographically dispersed country such as Canada, in which regions are distinguished resource bases, transport policies are a critical factor in economic development. In this study James Melvin considers the role of tariffs as they affect transportation costs within Canada. Melvin proposes application of the two-country model of neoclassical trade to the interregional economic structure of Canada, taking into account the costs of internal transport. He applies this basic theoretical approach to a number of different problems; taxation, capital flows between regions, short-run factor immobility, and increasing returns to scale. Melvin's findings indicate that tariffs induce resource waste by encouraging excessive internal transportation of goods between regions. He concludes that with an assessment of policy implications for Ontario arising from his study.

Safe and secure transport and storage of radioactive materials are essential for sustainable nuclear fuel cycle. The basic technologies are matured, but they have been progressively developed to make transport and storage safer and more secure. Safe and secure culture that encourages a questioning and learning attitude and that discourages complacency should be fostered and maintained. This book provides current basis of safe and secure transport and storage so that those technologies can be readily traced, improved, or modified, if necessary, for and by the future generations.This book overviews current available information in the literature. It also covers advanced technology on similar subjects in the literature. On top of that, new and valuable subjects are introduced for readers to grasp the wide spectrum of the safe and secure transport and storage technology. The contents are arranged and divided into three sections, I: Safety of Transport, II: Safety of Storage, III: Security of Transport and Storage.

From 1822, when the first wagons were used in the Santa Fe trade, until 1880, when the completion of major railroad lines made the wagon train all but obsolete, wagon freighting was essential to the trade, settlement, and growth of the American West, from the Missouri Valley to the Great Basin. Freighters carried goods to and from Santa Fe, bringing in much of the trade goods for the settlements of the Mountain West. Under contract to the government, they supplied the army sent to fight Mexicans and American Indians. Without the wagonmasters, the flow of gold from the mines of Colorado and Montana, which proved essential during the Civil War, would have been delayed at least a decade. The Wagonmasters is the first comprehensive account of this colorful bygone industry and the men who worked the wagon trains - bullwhackers and mule skinners. A breed apart, they developed their own customs and language, greatly enriching American speech. The business was hard, dirty, and dangerous, but the wagon freighters, like the U.S. mail, almost always came through.

The European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Inland Waterways (ADN) done at Geneva on 26 May 2000 under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine (CCNR) has been in force since February 2008. This version has been prepared on the basis of amendments applicable as from 1 January 2019. The Regulations annexed to the ADN contain provisions concerning dangerous substances and articles, their carriage in packages and in bulk on board inland navigation vessels or tank vessels, as well as provisions concerning the construction and operation of such vessels. They also address requirements and procedures for inspections, the issue of certificates of approval, recognition of classification societies, monitoring, and training and examination of experts. They are harmonized to the greatest possible extent with the dangerous goods agreements for other modes of transport.

The Filth of Progress explores the untold side of a well-known American story. For more than a century, accounts of progress in the West foregrounded the technological feats performed while canals and rail roads were built and lionized the capitalists who financed the projects. This book salvages stories often omitted from the triumphant narrative of progress by focusing on the suffering and survival of the workers who were treated as outsiders. Ryan Dearinger examines the moving frontiers of canal and railroad construction workers in the tumultuous years of American expansion, from the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 to the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in 1869. He tells the story of the immigrants and Americans-the Irish, Chinese, Mormons, and native-born citizens-whose labor created the West's infrastructure and turned the nation's dreams of a continental empire into a reality. Dearinger reveals that canals and railroads were not static monuments to progress but moving spaces of conflict and contestation.

The central policy objective of a national infrastructure bank is to increase investment in infrastructure. Greater investment is desired because high-quality, well maintained infrastructure is believed to increase private-sector productivity and improve public health and welfare. The magnitude of the increased productivity, however, is not settled, as empirical analysis does not always support the conjecture that greater infrastructure investment uniformly generates productivity gains. The type of infrastructure and the type of investment are critical elements in such an assessment. This book provides an overview of the infrastructure bank concept and some examples of existing infrastructure financing mechanisms. Discussed also are select legislative proposals for infrastructure banks, and the federal role in financing these proposals.

From its beginnings as a small studio in the 1920s, the Disney Company has become one of the most influential organizations in the world of entertainment. Why We Love Disney examines the influence of the Walt Disney Company and the reasons for Disney's universal appeal. Starting with the early days of Walt Disney, the book examines the company's evolution, and discusses the products and services Disney has created and marketed over the years to build its brand. Chapters focus on different elements of Disney - from characters and theme parks to music and home entertainment - to offer the reader a clear overview of the organization's history, products, management, and marketing practices. An examination of the many facets of Disney clearly shows the strategic steps the company has taken over the years to build its brand and make itself one of the major forces in the entertainment industry.

"Probably the most important book for the industry since Peter White's "Planning for Public Transportation," Professor Vuchic's contribution is valuable because in its pages it gives references to almost every basic hardware option likely to face the transport planner or entice the politician."
--Bus and Coach

"Contains between two covers for the first time most everything anybody would want to know about the history, evolution, technology, characteristics, and applications of transit systems."
--"APA Journal"

"Probably one of the most complete histories ever written on the development and growth of the various forms of urban transportation. It is a well-written, well-illustrated volume that belongs on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in mass transit."
--"National Railway Bulletin"

"Every engineer and planner of urban public transit facilities and systems needs [this] book."
--"ITE News"

A comprehensive modern guide to urban transportation

The founding, shaping, and growth of human communities throughout history have been products of complex interactions of many forces. One major force has always been transportation. Transportation has played a key role in determining the location of cities; their size; their form; and their structure. Today, the United States has a population of 300 million people driving 136 million cars and served by over 6,000 public transit agencies. With such daunting statistics, the challenge to the transportation professional is significant indeed.

In "Urban Transit: Systems and Technology," Vukan Vuchic has assembled the guide to urban transportation that the industry needs. Broad in scope and deeplyresearched, this book covers the entire field of transit in all its modes and aspects. Vuchic begins with an overview of the history of transit and its role in urban development, illuminating how transportation both responded to the needs of communities and, in turn, helped shape them.

Defining relevant terms and concepts, the text then examines: Urban transit modes--highway, rail, automated, specialized, paratransit, and unconventional concepts--and the most efficient systems designs for each System components, vehicles, travel ways, terminals, and control systems Vehicle propulsion (diesel, electric, and others), fully supported with equations and analytical methods for vehicle dynamic performance and travel times

Bringing every aspect of urban transport between two covers, "Urban Transit: Systems and Technology" is a primary resource for professionals and students who are designing and operating these key components of urban infrastructure.

This book reviews China's high-speed rail experience and highlights key factors in the areas of planning, capacity building, markets, service design, construction and operations, finances, and economics. Countries considering investment in high-speed rail may find many aspects of China's experience relevant and useful.

Public transit systems, which receive funding from the federal government, are vulnerable to catastrophic events, as demonstrated by the impact Hurricane Sandy and other events have had on transit systems. These events highlight our reliance on transit systems for access to jobs, medical care, and other services, as well as the cost of recovering from these events. Building resilience -- the ability to prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the risk of catastrophic events -- is one strategy to help limit the nation's fiscal exposure to catastrophic events. This book examines how DHS and DOT help transit agencies make their systems resilient; actions selected transit agencies take to make their systems resilient; and challenges transit agencies face with making their systems resilient. It also addresses the progress the Department of Transportation has made allocating, obligating, and disbursing the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act surface transportation funds; how the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) new Public Transportation Emergency Relief program compares to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) and Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) emergency relief programs; and the extent to which FTA and FEMA have implemented their memorandum of agreement to co-ordinate their roles and responsibilities when providing assistance to transit agencies.

The global growth of tourism has been matched by the significant growth in transport networks. In many ways, transport and tourism can be considered mutually dependent. Understanding the dimensions of tourism requires an understanding of how transport is governed, regulated and operated and how it subsequently facilitates tourism development. This book provides an overview of the relationships between various modes and types of transport and tourism. It views transport through various lenses, including inter-governmental regulations, national government regulation, the scope of transport networks and how this influences the shape of tourism, and the marketing and management of transport operations. The book ends with some considerations for the future of transport and tourism, including the management of environmental consequences and new forms of tourism-related transport.