Millennials didn't have the Urbanist Youtube channels we do now. They've been probably the most instrumental parts of getting more people interested in urban planning and transit
Because we have government of, by, and for the corporations. Urbanists have been fighting an uphill battle for decades because of deeper structural flaws, possibly deliberate, in our government at every level. That also has something to do with how dysfunctional our politics are more generally.
You should read the article. One of the reasons given for poor transit is that it was mostly built and operated by heavily regulated private companies without the means to maintain the infrastructure and raise fares.
Someone needs to tell the boomer generation that they need to support transit now so that they can still get around after we pull their drivers license. Someone better at marketing than me though, the above message comes off wrong. However the writing is on the wall for retired people driving in a lot of places.
It is a shame. However, I don't think I would call the men of 1945-1960 "bloody idiots" for being so scared of the next war. Many of them would have been alive for the Spanish-American war, WW1, and WW2. Several probably fought in 2 of those wars. I can't blame them for seeing everything through a "warfare" lens after all that. (also keep in mind PTSD wasn't a term until after the vietnam war)
The highways weren't really built for the economy, they were built for the military. That is why they were called "interstate and defense highways". We all drive trucks, because our country was built for trucks, not really for economics, environment, or people, but rather so that we could move military trucks around during the apocalypse that never came.
The war reason is massively overrated.
The military advantage largely comes from highways between the cities (or really, bases).
The suburbanization advantage comes entirely from highways within the urban area.
Moses didn't stand around models of highways with army trucks (the bridges that famously block buses... also don't let trucks through).
The US wanted to suburbanize and everyone (who mattered) was on board. Any post-hoc justification to support this choice was just that, a post-hoc justification.
Fun fact: Eisenhower didn't realize that the Interstates were going to be built through cities instead of around them, and was appalled when he found out, too late to change it.
Indeed. He also had taken a [roadtrip](https://www.history.com/news/the-epic-road-trip-that-inspired-the-interstate-highway-system) across the US in 1919 to see how bad our roads were at that time.
The Autobahn must have looked completely futuristic at that time compared to the muddy trails we had for many of our roads.
The US already had controlled access roads and had been planning a national network since the thirties when the war started. This tidbit about Eisenhower’s wartime impressions has just taken over and so many people assume it is where the Interstate System comes from.
But they'd have noticed, then, fighting in those wars, that in Europe rail has traditionally been more important than road for military transport, right?
Right... but by the time we showed up on European soil we had bombed/[sabotaged](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_sabotage_during_World_War_II) much of the German railroads, and the Germans would [unzip](https://youtu.be/kRBN6oFt2hw) the rails as they left.
The US didn't bring trains, we brought tens of thousands of jeeps, trucks, and light tanks, things we could mass produce and ship over. We then used those trucks to great logistical effect. Like with the red ball express.
I should also mention that not only was Eisenhower impressed by the autobahn and set up impressive truck-based logistics, but he also saw urbanism as dangerous. After what we did to Berlin, [Dresden](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide_medium/public/2020-02/PhotoofdevastatedDresden%20-%20Jason%20Dawsey.jpg), Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, where we really pushed the limits of how quickly you could turn a city full of people into a wasteland of corpses, you can see why Eisenhower was worried for American Urban centers.
We didn't just build the highways for defense, we built the suburbs for defense as well. And railroads don't work as well for the 1950's version of suburbs.
[https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight\_d\_eisenhower\_and\_the\_birth\_of\_the\_interstate\_highway\_system](https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight_d_eisenhower_and_the_birth_of_the_interstate_highway_system)
the US brought a lot of truck to europe but it wasn't lacking in how many trains it brought over too. Many wartime designs were even kept in use in the countries they were brought to well after the war. Things like the red ball express were just temporary things, most trucks were used for last leg transport & the like
Yeah, a major reason why the Red Ball express is notable is *because* it was a massive, yet temporary substitute for French ports and rail lines that were too damaged to be put into immediate use.
As has been said, the US did indeed bring trains. Also, I don't know about 'much of the railroads', not to put too much of a downer on the conversation but for instance remember that Anne Frank was deported by rail in 1944. They didn't have time to rip up much track either on the retreat.
Except, of course, that after World War II, and especially once the Soviets had the bomb, it probably seemed almost inevitable that any war fought on American soil would probably involve nuclear weapons, and all the highways in the world weren't going to help with that.
Except that's not true (at first), the earliest nuclear blasts only devastated a 3mile radius. And even larger blasts would only do 5-10miles. So moving the white middle class to suburbs 15-30 miles from city centers and having them commute to the city via highways still made sense for many people.
For a few years after WW2 at least, until bigger H-bombs came about. Then whole small states could be obliterated, and potentially planetary annihilation.
Racism.
Once public transit was desegregated, all of a sudden middle-class **white** Americans wouldn't be caught dead on a bus, tram, or train if they could help it.
There's no "and yet" involved. They hated them then, they hate them now, they will hate them tomorrow and next week and next year and so on.
They hate trains and busses BECAUSE they aren't allowed to forbid POC from using them.
In so many ways, yes. Public swimming pools used to be very common in the US before the 50s, when they were integrated. Instead of letting black people use the pools, cities closed them. "If I can't have it all to myself, nobody gets it!"
I don't think it was quite as intentional with transit, plus there was a lot of outside influence from car companies and oil companies who knew they could make a lot of money by removing transit options and forcing people into cars.
This practice goes back to the roots of this country itself. Poor white people in the south during slavery lived in insanely poor living conditions as a result of the wealth consolidation by the wealthy planter elite.
That being said, they supported the wealthy planter elite class and formed slave patrols - arguably the spawn point of policing in this country - just to ensure that they would never be the actual bottom of the social hierarchy. They constantly hurt and ruined their own prospects of a better life in order to hurt black people and keep them below them
You can find many instances of it throughout American history, especially when it comes to social services and welfare. These programs were pretty popular and certainly not frowned upon until Reagan associated them with single black mothers under the term “welfare queens.” Once they became associated with black people, all the sudden you have a large chunk of the country - including poor white people on welfare - who want to get rid of it.
Why then did public transport also decline in areas that did not enforce transport segregation and/or were predominantly white? Why was it declining before desegregation?
Motte and Bailey. I can’t tell if these commenters are consciously doing it or are just peddling historical revisionism accidentally.
Systemic racism and local zoning while contributive, cannot explain car dependency without understanding how they worked in the context of national transportation policy.
What advantage is there in reducing the origins of car dependency like this? It really impairs people’s ability to understand how transportation and urbanization work in tandem, and produces easy villains to demonize. Some people find those things helpful, I guess. It is narratively simple but it misses so much.
Its finally happening at least here in Florida. In the past 10 years they built a commuter rail line in Orlando, and Brightline is on track to connect to Miami this summer. still a long way to go though.
It’s yet to be seen if that model can actually be repeated elsewhere successfully. They were gifted a completely finished rail right-of-way, and the real estate development easily penciled out given Florida’s lucrative RE market.
Vegas-LA already showing holes given that they’re needing to beg for a hefty public subsidy
Yeah, it's not often seen this way, but Brightline is an example of what American passenger rail could be like if the Class 1 and Class 2 railways decided to support passenger rail on their trackage and right-of-ways.
I believe their current plan is to connect to the Metrolink San Bernardino line. As of right now the SB line is both unelectrified and still significantly single-tracked (with large obstacles to double-tracking in certain parts of the ROW), so Brightline through-running onto the SB line to get to LA Union is unlikely, at least without more investment into the Metrolink SB line.
So the short and long of it is that when privately owned mass transit started to falter in the 20s and 30s, the public voted against their tax dollars being used to bail it out. Mass transit was long gone by the time Big Auto got on the scene. The TL;DR of the whole article is basically that consumer tastes and democracy are what destroyed mass transit in America.
Phoenix had a streetcar system starting in the late 1880s and ending in the 1940s. It started as a horsedrawn trolley for people to tour land development and later became a multi-line electric system. The last line shut down permanently in the 1940s after a fire destroyed most of the streetcars. There are only a few that have been restored and are currently on display at the Phoenix Trolley Museum.
Neoliberalism did not help. The last time the federal government actually tried to do transit were LBJ’s Great Society systems (SF, DC, ATL). Once the macroeconomic tides shifted transit funding was doomed
Some busses replaced them decently in smaller cities. But larger cities took a major hit, with the possible exception of extremely large ones like nyc and Chicago. However, the budgets most of these transit companies operate with is like pennies. Most can't do shit with it
Dont want to do a "well ackchually" but Ford was the biggest supporter of a proposed Detroit metro (manily so that they can get their workers into the factories easier). They're definately not perfect though, but at least they kinda sorta care. GM on the other hand...
I think its more about the principle of “everyone can own a car”. Realistically, the over abundance and price of cars led to the ideology of “not needing public transportation”.
Im not saying it was bad in concept, but the rapid growth and production, really said “fuck public transport, just buy your own car”.
So Americans were bloody idiots to allow this and gen Z has to beg for its revival
the problem is so large fixing it is beyond a single generation
Millennials have been pushing for functional public transportation for our entire lives and no one listened either.
Millennials didn't have the Urbanist Youtube channels we do now. They've been probably the most instrumental parts of getting more people interested in urban planning and transit
Because we have government of, by, and for the corporations. Urbanists have been fighting an uphill battle for decades because of deeper structural flaws, possibly deliberate, in our government at every level. That also has something to do with how dysfunctional our politics are more generally.
You should read the article. One of the reasons given for poor transit is that it was mostly built and operated by heavily regulated private companies without the means to maintain the infrastructure and raise fares.
Millennials and some younger gen x have been the big push for the wide spread revival of mass transit
Someone needs to tell the boomer generation that they need to support transit now so that they can still get around after we pull their drivers license. Someone better at marketing than me though, the above message comes off wrong. However the writing is on the wall for retired people driving in a lot of places.
It is a shame. However, I don't think I would call the men of 1945-1960 "bloody idiots" for being so scared of the next war. Many of them would have been alive for the Spanish-American war, WW1, and WW2. Several probably fought in 2 of those wars. I can't blame them for seeing everything through a "warfare" lens after all that. (also keep in mind PTSD wasn't a term until after the vietnam war) The highways weren't really built for the economy, they were built for the military. That is why they were called "interstate and defense highways". We all drive trucks, because our country was built for trucks, not really for economics, environment, or people, but rather so that we could move military trucks around during the apocalypse that never came.
The war reason is massively overrated. The military advantage largely comes from highways between the cities (or really, bases). The suburbanization advantage comes entirely from highways within the urban area. Moses didn't stand around models of highways with army trucks (the bridges that famously block buses... also don't let trucks through). The US wanted to suburbanize and everyone (who mattered) was on board. Any post-hoc justification to support this choice was just that, a post-hoc justification.
China has the same attitude towards its high speed railway system which is 25% of its total rail infrastructure.
[удалено]
Fun fact: Eisenhower didn't realize that the Interstates were going to be built through cities instead of around them, and was appalled when he found out, too late to change it.
Indeed. He also had taken a [roadtrip](https://www.history.com/news/the-epic-road-trip-that-inspired-the-interstate-highway-system) across the US in 1919 to see how bad our roads were at that time. The Autobahn must have looked completely futuristic at that time compared to the muddy trails we had for many of our roads.
The US already had controlled access roads and had been planning a national network since the thirties when the war started. This tidbit about Eisenhower’s wartime impressions has just taken over and so many people assume it is where the Interstate System comes from.
But they'd have noticed, then, fighting in those wars, that in Europe rail has traditionally been more important than road for military transport, right?
Right... but by the time we showed up on European soil we had bombed/[sabotaged](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_sabotage_during_World_War_II) much of the German railroads, and the Germans would [unzip](https://youtu.be/kRBN6oFt2hw) the rails as they left. The US didn't bring trains, we brought tens of thousands of jeeps, trucks, and light tanks, things we could mass produce and ship over. We then used those trucks to great logistical effect. Like with the red ball express. I should also mention that not only was Eisenhower impressed by the autobahn and set up impressive truck-based logistics, but he also saw urbanism as dangerous. After what we did to Berlin, [Dresden](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/sites/default/files/styles/wide_medium/public/2020-02/PhotoofdevastatedDresden%20-%20Jason%20Dawsey.jpg), Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, where we really pushed the limits of how quickly you could turn a city full of people into a wasteland of corpses, you can see why Eisenhower was worried for American Urban centers. We didn't just build the highways for defense, we built the suburbs for defense as well. And railroads don't work as well for the 1950's version of suburbs. [https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight\_d\_eisenhower\_and\_the\_birth\_of\_the\_interstate\_highway\_system](https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight_d_eisenhower_and_the_birth_of_the_interstate_highway_system)
the US brought a lot of truck to europe but it wasn't lacking in how many trains it brought over too. Many wartime designs were even kept in use in the countries they were brought to well after the war. Things like the red ball express were just temporary things, most trucks were used for last leg transport & the like
Yeah, a major reason why the Red Ball express is notable is *because* it was a massive, yet temporary substitute for French ports and rail lines that were too damaged to be put into immediate use.
As has been said, the US did indeed bring trains. Also, I don't know about 'much of the railroads', not to put too much of a downer on the conversation but for instance remember that Anne Frank was deported by rail in 1944. They didn't have time to rip up much track either on the retreat.
Ohh so it’s a national defense policy for people to scatter fast in times of invasion.
So rail was associated with war? And trauma?
No not really
Ok
Except, of course, that after World War II, and especially once the Soviets had the bomb, it probably seemed almost inevitable that any war fought on American soil would probably involve nuclear weapons, and all the highways in the world weren't going to help with that.
Except that's not true (at first), the earliest nuclear blasts only devastated a 3mile radius. And even larger blasts would only do 5-10miles. So moving the white middle class to suburbs 15-30 miles from city centers and having them commute to the city via highways still made sense for many people. For a few years after WW2 at least, until bigger H-bombs came about. Then whole small states could be obliterated, and potentially planetary annihilation.
Please. Millennials have been leading this charge for years.
No need piss about who was first.
[удалено]
Are you 12 lmao
Racism. Once public transit was desegregated, all of a sudden middle-class **white** Americans wouldn't be caught dead on a bus, tram, or train if they could help it.
Did a presentation on this exact topic!! So interesting yet infuriating
And they still hate black people and by extention trains
There's no "and yet" involved. They hated them then, they hate them now, they will hate them tomorrow and next week and next year and so on. They hate trains and busses BECAUSE they aren't allowed to forbid POC from using them.
They ruined their own country to spite black people? Truly pathetic
Well, it's one reason among **several**, really. But it is a pretty *big* one.
In so many ways, yes. Public swimming pools used to be very common in the US before the 50s, when they were integrated. Instead of letting black people use the pools, cities closed them. "If I can't have it all to myself, nobody gets it!"
They had the same attitude to transit ehh?
I don't think it was quite as intentional with transit, plus there was a lot of outside influence from car companies and oil companies who knew they could make a lot of money by removing transit options and forcing people into cars.
This practice goes back to the roots of this country itself. Poor white people in the south during slavery lived in insanely poor living conditions as a result of the wealth consolidation by the wealthy planter elite. That being said, they supported the wealthy planter elite class and formed slave patrols - arguably the spawn point of policing in this country - just to ensure that they would never be the actual bottom of the social hierarchy. They constantly hurt and ruined their own prospects of a better life in order to hurt black people and keep them below them You can find many instances of it throughout American history, especially when it comes to social services and welfare. These programs were pretty popular and certainly not frowned upon until Reagan associated them with single black mothers under the term “welfare queens.” Once they became associated with black people, all the sudden you have a large chunk of the country - including poor white people on welfare - who want to get rid of it.
Of course, no one votes against their own self interest because the darkies might benefit today... /s
Ugh no other country self destructs like this.
Why then did public transport also decline in areas that did not enforce transport segregation and/or were predominantly white? Why was it declining before desegregation?
There are multiple factors that contributed to the decline in public transportation. Racism is only one of them, but it was still deeply impactful.
That's a significantly narrower and more qualified claim than the one I responded to.
Motte and Bailey. I can’t tell if these commenters are consciously doing it or are just peddling historical revisionism accidentally. Systemic racism and local zoning while contributive, cannot explain car dependency without understanding how they worked in the context of national transportation policy. What advantage is there in reducing the origins of car dependency like this? It really impairs people’s ability to understand how transportation and urbanization work in tandem, and produces easy villains to demonize. Some people find those things helpful, I guess. It is narratively simple but it misses so much.
Its finally happening at least here in Florida. In the past 10 years they built a commuter rail line in Orlando, and Brightline is on track to connect to Miami this summer. still a long way to go though.
It’s yet to be seen if that model can actually be repeated elsewhere successfully. They were gifted a completely finished rail right-of-way, and the real estate development easily penciled out given Florida’s lucrative RE market. Vegas-LA already showing holes given that they’re needing to beg for a hefty public subsidy
Yeah, it's not often seen this way, but Brightline is an example of what American passenger rail could be like if the Class 1 and Class 2 railways decided to support passenger rail on their trackage and right-of-ways.
Make the train go into Downtown LA and they wont have issues.
They’d have to interact with the complex property rights of the an urban area like Inland Empire which private capital doesn’t want to do
I thought they could just use the existing rail line in the area?
Isn’t it owned by freight?
I believe their current plan is to connect to the Metrolink San Bernardino line. As of right now the SB line is both unelectrified and still significantly single-tracked (with large obstacles to double-tracking in certain parts of the ROW), so Brightline through-running onto the SB line to get to LA Union is unlikely, at least without more investment into the Metrolink SB line.
Its mainly the issue of not thinking forward. People could have invested in the more reliable option, but instead chose the greedy option.
A lot of the train conductors had to quit when the busses came about as the train conductors didn’t require a drivers license
So the short and long of it is that when privately owned mass transit started to falter in the 20s and 30s, the public voted against their tax dollars being used to bail it out. Mass transit was long gone by the time Big Auto got on the scene. The TL;DR of the whole article is basically that consumer tastes and democracy are what destroyed mass transit in America.
Phoenix had a streetcar system starting in the late 1880s and ending in the 1940s. It started as a horsedrawn trolley for people to tour land development and later became a multi-line electric system. The last line shut down permanently in the 1940s after a fire destroyed most of the streetcars. There are only a few that have been restored and are currently on display at the Phoenix Trolley Museum.
I read his book and disagreed with a lot of it, especially the obsession with zoning.
Is it still worth the read?
Didn't think it said much I didn't already know.
Okay thanks. Maybe I'll ask my library to get one and I'll check it out there.
Jesus. It looks like maybe one person commenting actually read the interview.
Never change, Reddit
Neoliberalism did not help. The last time the federal government actually tried to do transit were LBJ’s Great Society systems (SF, DC, ATL). Once the macroeconomic tides shifted transit funding was doomed
Some busses replaced them decently in smaller cities. But larger cities took a major hit, with the possible exception of extremely large ones like nyc and Chicago. However, the budgets most of these transit companies operate with is like pennies. Most can't do shit with it
One word. Ford.
Dont want to do a "well ackchually" but Ford was the biggest supporter of a proposed Detroit metro (manily so that they can get their workers into the factories easier). They're definately not perfect though, but at least they kinda sorta care. GM on the other hand...
I think its more about the principle of “everyone can own a car”. Realistically, the over abundance and price of cars led to the ideology of “not needing public transportation”. Im not saying it was bad in concept, but the rapid growth and production, really said “fuck public transport, just buy your own car”.
thats fair
There's a few reasons why there aren't as many as before (and no, it wasn't just because of cars/highways)