A potent re-examination of America’s history of public
disinvestment in mass transit. Â 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. Â 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.
General
Imprint: |
University of Chicago Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Historical Studies of Urban America |
Release date: |
May 2023 |
First published: |
2023 |
Authors: |
Nicholas Dagen Bloom
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 28mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
368 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-226-82440-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-226-82440-3 |
Barcode: |
9780226824406 |
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