An examination of how the automobile has ravaged America's cities and landscape since the end of the 19th century together with a strategy for reversing their automobile dependency. The text provides a history of the rapid spread of the automobile and documents the huge subsidies commanded by the highway lobby, to the detriment of once-efficient forms of mass transportation. Demonstrating that there are economic, political, architectural and personal solutions to the problem, it shows that radical change is entirely possible.;The book should be of value to everyone interested in the history of America's relationship with the car, and in the prospect of returning to a world of human mobility.

'This book provides a very good history of the Los Angeles experience. Urban sociologist, among others, will find it an important addition to their shelf on urban social change.' --James R. Hudson, Contemporary Sociology

Long-haul trucks have been described as sweatshops on wheels. The typical long-haul trucker works the equivalent of two full-time jobs, often for little more than minimum wage. But it wasn't always this way. Trucking used to be one of the best working-class jobs in the United States. The Big Rig explains how this massive degradation in the quality of work has occurred, and how companies achieve a compliant and dedicated workforce despite it. Drawing on more than 100 in-depth interviews and years of extensive observation, including six months training and working as a long-haul trucker, Viscelli explains in detail how labor is recruited, trained, and used in the industry. He then shows how inexperienced workers are convinced to lease a truck and to work as independent contractors. He explains how deregulation and collective action by employers transformed trucking's labor markets - once dominated by the largest and most powerful union in US history - into an important example of the costs of contemporary labor markets for workers and the general public.

An effective transport infrastructure and its associated services are widely regarded as key components of an efficient, equitable, and sustainable society. But the link between transport provision (especially car ownership) and growing global levels of, for example, social exclusion, congestion, pollution, and road deaths is also increasingly recognized. The need to understand how to satisfy a seemingly insatiable appetite for mobility while minimizing its harmful impacts grows ever more crucial.

The subdiscipline of transport economics has made a substantial contribution towards a more sophisticated understanding of such dilemmas, and how detailed strategy and policy might be better developed and implemented. Indeed, especially in the last thirty years or so, there has been a veritable explosion in research output, and this new four-volume collection from Routledge s Critical Concepts in Economics series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to help make sense of a rapidly expanding and ever more complex corpus of scholarly and practical literature.

Volume I includes an overview of the subdiscipline, and then focuses on choice and demand; and transport networks. Volume II, meanwhile, is organized around the themes of willingness to pay and the valuation of: travel time; reliability and trip-time variability; crowding; life and injury; noise; and emissions. Volume III emphasizes institutional reform, costs, and performance. The final volume in the collection includes the best and most influential work on: infrastructure; pricing, subsidy, and funding; congestion charging; subsidies; case studies in passenger transport economics, and analyses of freight and logistics economics.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Transport Economics is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar and sometimes overlooked texts. For researchers, students, practitioners, and policy-makers, it is as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

A call to redefine mobility so that it is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized, as well as sustainable, adaptable, and city-friendly. The twentieth century was the century of the automobile; the twenty-first will see mobility dramatically re-envisioned. Automobiles altered cityscapes, boosted economies, and made personal mobility efficient and convenient for many. We had a century-long love affair with the car. But today, people are more attached to their smartphones than their cars. Cars are not always the quickest mode of travel in cities; and emissions from the rapidly growing number of cars threaten the planet. This book, by three experts from industry and academia, envisions a new world of mobility that is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized (the CHIP architecture). The authors describe the changes that are coming. City administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people. Nations and cities will increasingly employ targeted user fees and offer subsidies to nudge consumers toward more sustainable modes. The sharing economy is coaxing many consumers to shift from being owners of assets to being users of services. The auto industry is responding with connected cars that double as virtual travel assistants and by introducing autonomous driving. The CHIP architecture embodies an integrated, multimode mobility system that builds on ubiquitous connectivity, electrified and autonomous vehicles, and a marketplace open to innovation and entrepreneurship. Consumers will exercise choice on the basis of user experience and efficiency, aided by "intelligent advisors," accessible through their mobile devices. An innovative mobility architecture reconfigured for this century is a social and economic necessity; this book charts a course for achieving it.