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The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been
A visual exploration of the transit histories of twenty-three US and Canadian cities.
Every driver in North America shares one miserable, soul-sucking universal experience—being stuck in traffic. But things weren’t always like this. Why is it that the mass transit systems of most cities in the United States and Canada are now utterly inadequate?
The Lost Subways of North America offers a new way to consider this eternal question, with a strikingly visual—and fun—journey through past, present, and unbuilt urban transit. Using meticulous archival research, cartographer and artist Jake Berman has successfully plotted maps of old train networks covering twenty-three North American metropolises, ranging from New York City’s Civil War–era plan for a steam-powered subway under Fifth Avenue to the ultramodern automated Vancouver SkyTrain and the thousand-mile electric railway system of pre–World War II Los Angeles. He takes us through colorful maps of old, often forgotten streetcar lines, lost ideas for never-built transit, and modern rail systems—drawing us into the captivating transit histories of US and Canadian cities.
Berman combines vintage styling with modern printing technology to create a sweeping visual history of North American public transit and urban development. With more than one hundred original maps, accompanied by essays on each city’s urban development, this book presents a fascinating look at North American rapid transit systems.
Every driver in North America shares one miserable, soul-sucking universal experience—being stuck in traffic. But things weren’t always like this. Why is it that the mass transit systems of most cities in the United States and Canada are now utterly inadequate?
The Lost Subways of North America offers a new way to consider this eternal question, with a strikingly visual—and fun—journey through past, present, and unbuilt urban transit. Using meticulous archival research, cartographer and artist Jake Berman has successfully plotted maps of old train networks covering twenty-three North American metropolises, ranging from New York City’s Civil War–era plan for a steam-powered subway under Fifth Avenue to the ultramodern automated Vancouver SkyTrain and the thousand-mile electric railway system of pre–World War II Los Angeles. He takes us through colorful maps of old, often forgotten streetcar lines, lost ideas for never-built transit, and modern rail systems—drawing us into the captivating transit histories of US and Canadian cities.
Berman combines vintage styling with modern printing technology to create a sweeping visual history of North American public transit and urban development. With more than one hundred original maps, accompanied by essays on each city’s urban development, this book presents a fascinating look at North American rapid transit systems.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published November 3, 2023
64 people are currently reading
2026 people want to read
About the author
Jake Berman
1 book5 followersJake Berman is a cartographer, writer, artist, and lawyer. His work has been featured in the New Yorker, Vice, Atlas Obscura, and the Guardian. A native of San Francisco, he now lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
August 17, 2024
The Metro, Underground, subway…….all describe mass transit below the surface. That’s what this book promises but it delivers that and something quite different…the history of urban mass transportation as told in chapters devoted to many of North America’s major cities. Here is the author’s approach:
“I examine four types of cities: American cities built in the pre-automobile era, like New York; American cities that came of age in the automobile era, like Houston; Canadian cities, which mostly decided not to build downtown freeways and followed a decidedly different trajectory than American cities; and smaller transit systems of special historical interest, like the abandoned Rochester Subway…. With each city, I’ve focused on a few key factors that influenced metropolitan transport and land use. But that’s not to say that these are the only factors, or that those factors aren’t present elsewhere. A few notes about the maps themselves: I’ve drawn the maps in this book using period-influenced design and typography, but I have freely used the mapping conventions of modern public transit agencies. Thus, if there is the potential for clarity and geographical accuracy to conflict, I have erred on the side of clarity. I’ve also used full color, which would have been prohibitively expensive for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.”
I was aware of Berman’s skill in using graphics to enhance the points of a narrative. Here, those skills are front and center as we readers are taken through many interesting and disturbing attempts by cities to cope with their growth and get people to and from work (and tourists to attractions).
For instance, it has a significant section on Cleveland’s hopes and dreams. The book discusses plans to redevelop the waterfront as other cities like San Francisco and Boston did. And Berman points out the failures of the Waterfront line and how Covid hurt these plans. It discusses why the hopes for Tower City were compromised when Cuyahoga County engineer, Albert Porter, refused to approve the “downtown underground loop” and put the money toward more freeways. All of this is shown in a series of maps to make it easy to understand.
Speaking of loops, Chicago’s famous downtown business district (The Loop) is given a great discussion. The, aboveground, tracks were often vilified as ugly or an impediment and the book tells why they are still around.
23 North American cities are included. Each has its own story, such as:
“Houston – The City of Organic Growth”
“Los Angeles – 72 Suburbs in Search of a City”
“Minneapolis-St. Paul – The Mob Takeover of Twin City Rapid Transit”
“Rochester – The Only City to Open a Subway, Then Close It”
Top marks for: vision, presentation and research!
“I examine four types of cities: American cities built in the pre-automobile era, like New York; American cities that came of age in the automobile era, like Houston; Canadian cities, which mostly decided not to build downtown freeways and followed a decidedly different trajectory than American cities; and smaller transit systems of special historical interest, like the abandoned Rochester Subway…. With each city, I’ve focused on a few key factors that influenced metropolitan transport and land use. But that’s not to say that these are the only factors, or that those factors aren’t present elsewhere. A few notes about the maps themselves: I’ve drawn the maps in this book using period-influenced design and typography, but I have freely used the mapping conventions of modern public transit agencies. Thus, if there is the potential for clarity and geographical accuracy to conflict, I have erred on the side of clarity. I’ve also used full color, which would have been prohibitively expensive for most of the 19th and 20th centuries.”
I was aware of Berman’s skill in using graphics to enhance the points of a narrative. Here, those skills are front and center as we readers are taken through many interesting and disturbing attempts by cities to cope with their growth and get people to and from work (and tourists to attractions).
For instance, it has a significant section on Cleveland’s hopes and dreams. The book discusses plans to redevelop the waterfront as other cities like San Francisco and Boston did. And Berman points out the failures of the Waterfront line and how Covid hurt these plans. It discusses why the hopes for Tower City were compromised when Cuyahoga County engineer, Albert Porter, refused to approve the “downtown underground loop” and put the money toward more freeways. All of this is shown in a series of maps to make it easy to understand.
Speaking of loops, Chicago’s famous downtown business district (The Loop) is given a great discussion. The, aboveground, tracks were often vilified as ugly or an impediment and the book tells why they are still around.
23 North American cities are included. Each has its own story, such as:
“Houston – The City of Organic Growth”
“Los Angeles – 72 Suburbs in Search of a City”
“Minneapolis-St. Paul – The Mob Takeover of Twin City Rapid Transit”
“Rochester – The Only City to Open a Subway, Then Close It”
Top marks for: vision, presentation and research!
April 1, 2024
I love trains
August 10, 2024
it was kinda dry but i love pretty pictures and this had lots of good subway maps pictures. i love a good transit map. hehe
léna i thought of u so much reading this! the commentary on policymaking as it pertains to the freeway mania of the US and our opposition to mass transit…i think this will both interest and frustrate you in equal measure lol
léna i thought of u so much reading this! the commentary on policymaking as it pertains to the freeway mania of the US and our opposition to mass transit…i think this will both interest and frustrate you in equal measure lol
November 30, 2024
Loved it! Easy read, beautiful illustrations :)
August 8, 2024
I love that this comes with several maps for different cities bc I love a good map lmao but I do think the author coulda gone further with their analysis of why cities decided to go in the direction they did in terms of transit and land use, and who has suffered most as a consequence of it. Especially for cities like LA, Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta. Also think NYC’s chapter coulda been longer. And! My pet peeve in these transit/urban discussions is that authors/creators say North America when they really only mean US and Canada 🙃
May 10, 2024
A good introduction to the history of rapid transport in the US and Canada. Each chapter focuses on both a different city and a different challenge of providing effective rapid transport, accompanied by gorgeous recreations of transport maps both historical and hypothetical, cleverly rendered to match the styles of the era. Only giving it 4 stars because several chapters felt like they were glossing over important information, and because despite being called "The Lost Subways of North America" It's incredibly US-centric, with only a few cities mentioned in Canada, none in Mexico (for the frustrating reason of "the history there is so different", as if that's not an even better reason to look at them) and not even bothering to mention the existence of any of the other North American Countries.
June 1, 2024
City-by-city history of urban transit systems in North American cities. The history of mass transit systems in North America reminds me of the trajectory of the internet (especially social media), with public services and infrastructure being built by private companies on the basis of speculation, followed by market consolidation by ever more hated monopolists, finally followed by the service being run into the ground once it's found to be unprofitable (or not sufficiently profitable). The maps in this book make are a great accompaniment to Arcadia Publishing's Images of Rail books that you see seemingly everywhere. The chapters on Rochester and Cincinnati are very interesting and informative. I wish that the chapter on San Francisco had more about the other Bay Area transit systems such as the Key System and the Southern Pacific Interurbans. I also wish there'd been a chapter about Denver which has been investing heavily in transit since the 90s, & one about St. Louis, which was a center of the U.S. streetcar industry (until the demise of the U.S. streetcar industry). Each of the chapters in The Lost Subways of North America could be expanded into a book, and there could have been many more chapters, and the result would be a kind of Borgesian library of mass transit history. I'll have to content myself with the further reading section at the back.
May 19, 2024
Jake Berman’s The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been is a comprehensive work detailing the histories of mass transit in two dozen North American cities, spanning from small cities like Richmond all the way to major metropolises such as Chicago and New York. Each chapter depicts the history of a specific city’s mass transit system, often beginning with the precursor to today’s metro systems: the streetcar (although in some cities other forms of transport was just as important, like the cable car in San Francisco). From there, Berman describes how many North American cities deliberately let their existing streetcar systems fade away in favor of freeways and the automobile, often forcing out thousands of city residents to pave new roads and destroying existing communities to make way for car-centric development. In several cities, particularly in the Sun Belt, urban sprawl has been the result of a fascination with making everything accessible by car, with little to no options by mass transit or for pedestrians. However, in a few select cities, this car-centric development has been suppressed by residential pushback or the realization by city leaders of the downsides of leaving no transit option other than the car.
I hugely enjoyed Berman’s account and learning about the transit history of so many different cities, especially since many experienced radically different tales of development. One thing I particularly appreciated about this work is that Berman doesn’t just discuss mass transit; he also talks about zoning laws and city density. In order for mass transit to work, cities must allow residential and mixed-use buildings near the transit if anybody is to actually use the system. Furthermore, these buildings must encourage density and walkability, which increases the convenience of mass transit and its use by residents. I was incredibly surprised to read the chapter on Houston and find that the city, often depicted in mass media as the epitome of urban sprawl and a jumble of highways (and justly so), is realizing the downsides to such horizontal development and is implementing greater changes than many other cities to try and reverse this trend. These changes, Berman writes, include doing away with parking minimums, loosening zoning restrictions to allow mixed-use development (especially near transit), and constructing a new light rail system in the middle of downtown. It was so interesting to read not only about the history of mass transit in an assortment of North American cities, but about what these cities are doing to implement new mass transit and encourage better urban development.
Overall, Berman’s work is well-researched, deep, well-organized, well-illustrated, and most importantly: fascinating. The only criticisms I have of the work are minimal: 1) I would have liked to see more historical context of certain cities. The chapter on New York described very little on how the city built such a massive system as it has today, which is one of the best metro systems on the continent, and instead spent, quite frankly, an exorbitant amount of time on the construction (or lack thereof) of the city’s Second Avenue Subway. While I wholeheartedly appreciated the reality check on even the city with the best mass transit system in the U.S., it would have still been nice to learn about what New York has actually done so well to build such an extensive mass transit system in the first place; 2) I would have liked a bit more of a discussion on urban development and zoning in more chapters. Although this is clearly not meant to be the focus of the book, mass transit and urban development go so hand-in-hand that it still would have been a nice mention in many chapters, especially for those cities that DO have density, DO have decent mass transit, and still see high costs of living and congestion; 3) This final criticism feels a bit nitpicky on what is undoubtedly an exhaustive account, but I would have loved to see a few extra chapters on some more cities. There were several major cities that felt “missing” from the work, like Baltimore, Denver, Buffalo, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and a few others.
All in all, a fantastic and fascinating read that piqued my interest in learning more about mass transit and urban development around the United States. I highly recommend.
I hugely enjoyed Berman’s account and learning about the transit history of so many different cities, especially since many experienced radically different tales of development. One thing I particularly appreciated about this work is that Berman doesn’t just discuss mass transit; he also talks about zoning laws and city density. In order for mass transit to work, cities must allow residential and mixed-use buildings near the transit if anybody is to actually use the system. Furthermore, these buildings must encourage density and walkability, which increases the convenience of mass transit and its use by residents. I was incredibly surprised to read the chapter on Houston and find that the city, often depicted in mass media as the epitome of urban sprawl and a jumble of highways (and justly so), is realizing the downsides to such horizontal development and is implementing greater changes than many other cities to try and reverse this trend. These changes, Berman writes, include doing away with parking minimums, loosening zoning restrictions to allow mixed-use development (especially near transit), and constructing a new light rail system in the middle of downtown. It was so interesting to read not only about the history of mass transit in an assortment of North American cities, but about what these cities are doing to implement new mass transit and encourage better urban development.
Overall, Berman’s work is well-researched, deep, well-organized, well-illustrated, and most importantly: fascinating. The only criticisms I have of the work are minimal: 1) I would have liked to see more historical context of certain cities. The chapter on New York described very little on how the city built such a massive system as it has today, which is one of the best metro systems on the continent, and instead spent, quite frankly, an exorbitant amount of time on the construction (or lack thereof) of the city’s Second Avenue Subway. While I wholeheartedly appreciated the reality check on even the city with the best mass transit system in the U.S., it would have still been nice to learn about what New York has actually done so well to build such an extensive mass transit system in the first place; 2) I would have liked a bit more of a discussion on urban development and zoning in more chapters. Although this is clearly not meant to be the focus of the book, mass transit and urban development go so hand-in-hand that it still would have been a nice mention in many chapters, especially for those cities that DO have density, DO have decent mass transit, and still see high costs of living and congestion; 3) This final criticism feels a bit nitpicky on what is undoubtedly an exhaustive account, but I would have loved to see a few extra chapters on some more cities. There were several major cities that felt “missing” from the work, like Baltimore, Denver, Buffalo, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and a few others.
All in all, a fantastic and fascinating read that piqued my interest in learning more about mass transit and urban development around the United States. I highly recommend.
April 21, 2024
A well thought, well designed, well researched guide to what could have been in America and Canada’s subway systems. Great attention to detail and record digging to put together the intricate and beautiful maps of proposed, former, and current transit systems. My biggest issue was the author using cities too much as examples of a certain issue or issues, and glossing over other aspects of individual transit networks. However, I understand why this was done for narrative purposes. Nevertheless, a very informative overview of North America’s biggest transit networks. I learned a lot and it’s a great jumping off point for more intensive study! The biggest takeaways are learning from our shared histories and using the successes and failures of other networks to better understand your own and where (many) improvements can still be made.
August 17, 2024
Awesome, would recommend to anyone!
April 16, 2024
Super interesting and actually kind of hopeful for more transit. 🤞
October 5, 2024
This book has tons of information on the history of mass transit in North America, and the system maps are great. Even as a transit geek, I learned a lot. My only criticisms are that Berman's writing can be a bit stiff, and I would have appreciated some historical photographs to go along with the maps.
January 22, 2025
Beautiful transit maps, good overviews of the history and situation of the cities during their time of rapid growth
September 22, 2025
Extremely interesting read. Tons and tons of details on each city discussed, though it it's still pretty entertaining and very easy to follow along. Very approachable read if you're interested in North American public transit at all
xx-dnf-skim-reference
May 4, 2025Seemed interesting to read about NYC's new subway map/diagram, and this seems potentially interesting too. Even more interesting is that all three of my larger library systems have at least one copy, even though none of them are based in or near cities that have subway systems.
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A coffee-table book with fine print. The intro. doesn't entice, nor did the bits I skimmed just to be sure. My old eyes and spirit just cannot, without much more motivation anyway. May 2025
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A coffee-table book with fine print. The intro. doesn't entice, nor did the bits I skimmed just to be sure. My old eyes and spirit just cannot, without much more motivation anyway. May 2025
July 21, 2024
Loved the maps, history and urban planning information.
June 30, 2025
I'm reading Lost Subways Of North America: A Cartographic Guide To The Past, Present And What Might Have Been, by Jake Berman. I thought it would be about abandoned subways, like the part of the Tremont Street subway south of Boylston in Boston (Green Line), disused since the surface lines that connected to it closed. Instead, it's much more challenging, a thorough and thoughtful study of transit in twenty three North American cities. Berman presents case studies for each that demonstrate that transit technology chosen is of little importance in predicting the success of a system. Economic, political, and land use issues matter, and racism and regionalism count for a lot, as he explains. His book inspired me to much thinking and research in the topic.
General - Each of the twenty-three chapters focuses on a North American city, and begin with a map of that area. These maps are my first concern with the book. The service areas for the various eras of transit for the city are identified with dotted rectangles. The map for Boston (which I’m most familiar with) exemplifies my issue with these maps. The modern period can be broken into two major eras, MTA and MBTA. The MTA (1947-1964) served 14 cities and towns, the MBTA serves 78, and neither service area is square, they’re more round. Worse yet, the MBTA area extends beyond the limits of the map in the book. The map doesn’t capture the expansion of scope between the MTA and the MBTA.
The bibliography doesn’t include Downtown - Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, by Robert Fogelson. He tells us that Downtown is a uniquely American place everyone travels to for employment, fine retail stores, entertainment venues, and sporting arenas. He argues that Downtown is part of the past, that those attractions are moving to other places in urban areas. I’ve seen this myself Decades ago I was interviewing for a job in Northern Virginia. I was taken to lunch at the Evans Farm Inn, formerly a suburban restaurant. My host remarked that we were having to travel toward Washington to get there. More telling, in my native Boston Route 128, the circumferential highway, was begun in the 1950s. Beyond providing a way around the city for long distance travelers, it also became the location for all the things we used to look for Downtown.
Reviewing the system maps in Berman’s book, I note that virtually all the systems appear designed to take riders Downtown. “X marks the spot,” in most systems Downtown is easily identified as the major crossing of transit lines, the only exceptions being Los Angeles, Montreal, and New York City. Generals are often accused of planning for the last war, are transit planners building for an urban environment that isn’t relevant? While most cities in America have circumferential highways, the only circumferential transit line I’m aware of is the Washington area Purple line that Maryland is striving to build, paralleling part of the Beltway. Fogelson and Berman document long struggles to get transit systems built, while some of that is natural due to the huge cost and impact of such projects, could dissonance between their designs and the actual need also be an issue? When the Washington Metro opened in 1976, there was consensus for an extension to Dulles Airport. Sure enough, in 2022 the Silver line reached there -- progress can be slow.
Boston - Berman also doesn’t focus on the switch from the MTA to the MBTA. Memory tells me that a horrific auto accident and subsequent gridlock inspired the transition, but it may have been that the Federal Government changed funding rules so that more money was available for regional transit agencies.
Chicago - In the discussions of Chicago’s downtown elevated Loop, the author fails to mention that it replaced a surface level, San Francisco style cable car loop in the same location. More important, the book teaches me that today the Loop is a bottleneck to the system that’s probably not fixable. This revelation put a recent Chicago project in perspective. A four-track elevated main line runs from the Loop north to Howard Street at the city limits. But in between, the Ravenswood (Brown) line branches off. Formerly, it branched off at grade meaning that northbound Ravenswood trains would block the two southbound tracks while they crossed onto their branch. Recently Chicago opened the Red-Purple Bypass, a 2.1 billion dollar flyover that gets those trains out of the way of southbound traffic. Apparently the thinking here was that if you can’t solve the capacity problems of the Loop, maybe you can improve capacity elsewhere.
Los Angeles - The book lays to rest an urban legend often promoted by railfans: automotive interests killed the Pacific Electric. Apparently the real problem was that the railroad was funded by real estate development, and when that stopped, there was no money for the railroad.
San Francisco - Despite an otherwise extensive bibliography, the book doesn’t mention Great Planning Disasters (Volume 1) by Peter Geoffrey Hall. Hall argues that San Francisco’s BART system is a planning disaster. As against this, Vukan Vuchic (TR News 156, September-October 1991, pp.15-16) makes the point that the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 closed the San Francisco-Oakland bridge, leaving BART as the only way for many people to go to work. Had BART not been available, the productivity cost would have exceeded the cost of building BART.
Seattle - The story of Seattle’s monorail fiasco gives me a very dim view of citizen initiatives. They appear to allow two undesirable results. First, “wouldn’t it be nice if” initiatives. Specifically, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have monorails like the one downtown all over the area? The measure received voter support despite that absence of any existing transit system in North America using technology anything like that. The few implementations then were at amusement parks. Vancouver’s flyer into untested technology succeeded, Seattle wasn’t as fortunate. Second, immaculate conception. When the monorail didn’t work out, no public official was in trouble. The tragedy is that a lot of public money went for nothing and between 1997 and 2005 struggles with the monorail meant nothing useful was done on public transit.
Toronto - The book gave me perspective on what I consider the odd layout of the Toronto rapid transit map. Two lines, Sheppard and Scarborough, terminate at subway stations but require a seat change for the rider to proceed on to the city. Apparently, disputes between Toronto center city and the suburbs make extensions offering a single seat ride difficult.
My thanks to Professor Zachary Schrag of George Mason University, author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, for his thoughts on this article. Mistakes, however, are all mine.
General - Each of the twenty-three chapters focuses on a North American city, and begin with a map of that area. These maps are my first concern with the book. The service areas for the various eras of transit for the city are identified with dotted rectangles. The map for Boston (which I’m most familiar with) exemplifies my issue with these maps. The modern period can be broken into two major eras, MTA and MBTA. The MTA (1947-1964) served 14 cities and towns, the MBTA serves 78, and neither service area is square, they’re more round. Worse yet, the MBTA area extends beyond the limits of the map in the book. The map doesn’t capture the expansion of scope between the MTA and the MBTA.
The bibliography doesn’t include Downtown - Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, by Robert Fogelson. He tells us that Downtown is a uniquely American place everyone travels to for employment, fine retail stores, entertainment venues, and sporting arenas. He argues that Downtown is part of the past, that those attractions are moving to other places in urban areas. I’ve seen this myself Decades ago I was interviewing for a job in Northern Virginia. I was taken to lunch at the Evans Farm Inn, formerly a suburban restaurant. My host remarked that we were having to travel toward Washington to get there. More telling, in my native Boston Route 128, the circumferential highway, was begun in the 1950s. Beyond providing a way around the city for long distance travelers, it also became the location for all the things we used to look for Downtown.
Reviewing the system maps in Berman’s book, I note that virtually all the systems appear designed to take riders Downtown. “X marks the spot,” in most systems Downtown is easily identified as the major crossing of transit lines, the only exceptions being Los Angeles, Montreal, and New York City. Generals are often accused of planning for the last war, are transit planners building for an urban environment that isn’t relevant? While most cities in America have circumferential highways, the only circumferential transit line I’m aware of is the Washington area Purple line that Maryland is striving to build, paralleling part of the Beltway. Fogelson and Berman document long struggles to get transit systems built, while some of that is natural due to the huge cost and impact of such projects, could dissonance between their designs and the actual need also be an issue? When the Washington Metro opened in 1976, there was consensus for an extension to Dulles Airport. Sure enough, in 2022 the Silver line reached there -- progress can be slow.
Boston - Berman also doesn’t focus on the switch from the MTA to the MBTA. Memory tells me that a horrific auto accident and subsequent gridlock inspired the transition, but it may have been that the Federal Government changed funding rules so that more money was available for regional transit agencies.
Chicago - In the discussions of Chicago’s downtown elevated Loop, the author fails to mention that it replaced a surface level, San Francisco style cable car loop in the same location. More important, the book teaches me that today the Loop is a bottleneck to the system that’s probably not fixable. This revelation put a recent Chicago project in perspective. A four-track elevated main line runs from the Loop north to Howard Street at the city limits. But in between, the Ravenswood (Brown) line branches off. Formerly, it branched off at grade meaning that northbound Ravenswood trains would block the two southbound tracks while they crossed onto their branch. Recently Chicago opened the Red-Purple Bypass, a 2.1 billion dollar flyover that gets those trains out of the way of southbound traffic. Apparently the thinking here was that if you can’t solve the capacity problems of the Loop, maybe you can improve capacity elsewhere.
Los Angeles - The book lays to rest an urban legend often promoted by railfans: automotive interests killed the Pacific Electric. Apparently the real problem was that the railroad was funded by real estate development, and when that stopped, there was no money for the railroad.
San Francisco - Despite an otherwise extensive bibliography, the book doesn’t mention Great Planning Disasters (Volume 1) by Peter Geoffrey Hall. Hall argues that San Francisco’s BART system is a planning disaster. As against this, Vukan Vuchic (TR News 156, September-October 1991, pp.15-16) makes the point that the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 closed the San Francisco-Oakland bridge, leaving BART as the only way for many people to go to work. Had BART not been available, the productivity cost would have exceeded the cost of building BART.
Seattle - The story of Seattle’s monorail fiasco gives me a very dim view of citizen initiatives. They appear to allow two undesirable results. First, “wouldn’t it be nice if” initiatives. Specifically, wouldn’t it be nice if we could have monorails like the one downtown all over the area? The measure received voter support despite that absence of any existing transit system in North America using technology anything like that. The few implementations then were at amusement parks. Vancouver’s flyer into untested technology succeeded, Seattle wasn’t as fortunate. Second, immaculate conception. When the monorail didn’t work out, no public official was in trouble. The tragedy is that a lot of public money went for nothing and between 1997 and 2005 struggles with the monorail meant nothing useful was done on public transit.
Toronto - The book gave me perspective on what I consider the odd layout of the Toronto rapid transit map. Two lines, Sheppard and Scarborough, terminate at subway stations but require a seat change for the rider to proceed on to the city. Apparently, disputes between Toronto center city and the suburbs make extensions offering a single seat ride difficult.
My thanks to Professor Zachary Schrag of George Mason University, author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro, for his thoughts on this article. Mistakes, however, are all mine.
October 12, 2024
Returning from a trip to Europe (or even NYC), I often find myself comparing different aspects of my life. While this book doesn’t speak to things like respective attitudes towards work, friendship, and familial relations, it addresses the obvious differences in transport systems.
To be clear, it’s no easy task boiling down the unique developmental patterns of transport for every major North American city. And while the author does a decent job providing a high level overview, a lot of it feels repetitive (because it likely is) and overly simplified (he’s got to keep us interested without exhaustive details after all). I guess the repetitive nature makes you realize that there are obvious common themes: mismanagement, racial motives, political headbutting, the dominance of automobiles, and general corruption. That said, I think it’s important to remember that the author presents very one-sided arguments that I would be wary of accepting as gospel.
To be clear, it’s no easy task boiling down the unique developmental patterns of transport for every major North American city. And while the author does a decent job providing a high level overview, a lot of it feels repetitive (because it likely is) and overly simplified (he’s got to keep us interested without exhaustive details after all). I guess the repetitive nature makes you realize that there are obvious common themes: mismanagement, racial motives, political headbutting, the dominance of automobiles, and general corruption. That said, I think it’s important to remember that the author presents very one-sided arguments that I would be wary of accepting as gospel.
January 14, 2024
Very disappointing. The book consists of a list of 23 US and Canadian* cities with brief histories of their mass transit systems. Very little content in each mostly consisting of "and then politics". You'll be better off reading their respective Wikipedia pages.
*Despite the "North America" in the tile Mexico is left out "because Mexico’s urban history is so unlike that of the United States and Canada". That would seem to be more reason to include it.
*Despite the "North America" in the tile Mexico is left out "because Mexico’s urban history is so unlike that of the United States and Canada". That would seem to be more reason to include it.
November 30, 2024
4.5 stars, rounded up. A fantastic read that was very different from what I've been reading recently. I found out about this book via a wonderfully informative reddit comment left by the author on /r/askhistorians. Ended up purchasing the book right after.
Overall, this was a very informative explanation for all the various ways we've seemed to largely end up with awful rapid, public transportation within the US. The writing covers a lot of ground while simultaneously providing cheeky humour and anecdotes, from the reference point of the author's grandmother vs. NYC to the subheaders for each city. The maps are beautiful to look at as well and outside of just transit history, I found myself being repeatedly surprised by just how recent our cities are. As a California resident, I found Berman's conclusion and hopeful tone for the future a bit funny given how much I'd just read about LA and SF's doomed transit.
Some of the comments have mentioned repetitiveness. I honestly came out with the opposite feeling. Though there are similarities across many of these cities with how their transit systems were mismanaged, what stood out to me was how difficult it is to prescribe the same fix to each and every one of them. Almost all of our cities might have ended up car-dominated, but how they've ended up like that and what opportunities there are to fix that are certainly not equivalent across the board.
I'd be very curious in multiple sequels to this book, perhaps with one volume looking at the "lost freeways" of Europe. Were there comparable plans to introduce freeways through city centres that were halted, as it seems like there were in neighbouring Canada? I'm curious if some of the preservation across the pond might have to do with the extravagant costs which post-war America could shoulder, but other nations might not be able to. I'd also be interested in hearing about the transit development in other parts of the world, particularly in East Asia (and for me specifically, in China). Berman mentions how in places like Paris, Madrid, and London, the expressways are rings around the city and do not run through the city. This is true as well in Shanghai where concentric circles surround the city core but we also have the South-North elevated road which runs through the core, in addition to a metro that did not exist just 32 years ago but is now the longest metro system in the world.
Lastly, I would've ideally liked this book to be longer if anything. Some of the chapters felt a bit phoned in comparatively (e.g. Richmond). I'd also be interested in seeing more prescriptivism from the author. While there were times when Berman pointed out solutions (notably, I think it was most clear during the chapter on Philly/SEPTA where there are very clear prescriptions), mostly it felt like he was content with leaving things more open-ended. A nit would be for the chapter images (and some others), I find the maps often confusing. It's hard to tell what has been prioritised and they often are stripped of too much detail. Looking at the Dallas one, I'm only able to follow along with the map because I used to live there and am familiar with it. I'm also a bit confused with the logic of what was called out on the map vs. not (Waxahachie with pop. 40k gets a dot, while areas like Flower Mound (pop. 80k) don't). Meanwhile, Dallas itself is rendered with its city limits but no sign of areas of dense population and it's really hard to get a sense of what the map is trying to say. (Also, was surprised by the decision to focus solely on Dallas vs. DFW).
But overall, a really good book and highly recommended for those who are unfamiliar with American transit history (like me).
Overall, this was a very informative explanation for all the various ways we've seemed to largely end up with awful rapid, public transportation within the US. The writing covers a lot of ground while simultaneously providing cheeky humour and anecdotes, from the reference point of the author's grandmother vs. NYC to the subheaders for each city. The maps are beautiful to look at as well and outside of just transit history, I found myself being repeatedly surprised by just how recent our cities are. As a California resident, I found Berman's conclusion and hopeful tone for the future a bit funny given how much I'd just read about LA and SF's doomed transit.
Some of the comments have mentioned repetitiveness. I honestly came out with the opposite feeling. Though there are similarities across many of these cities with how their transit systems were mismanaged, what stood out to me was how difficult it is to prescribe the same fix to each and every one of them. Almost all of our cities might have ended up car-dominated, but how they've ended up like that and what opportunities there are to fix that are certainly not equivalent across the board.
I'd be very curious in multiple sequels to this book, perhaps with one volume looking at the "lost freeways" of Europe. Were there comparable plans to introduce freeways through city centres that were halted, as it seems like there were in neighbouring Canada? I'm curious if some of the preservation across the pond might have to do with the extravagant costs which post-war America could shoulder, but other nations might not be able to. I'd also be interested in hearing about the transit development in other parts of the world, particularly in East Asia (and for me specifically, in China). Berman mentions how in places like Paris, Madrid, and London, the expressways are rings around the city and do not run through the city. This is true as well in Shanghai where concentric circles surround the city core but we also have the South-North elevated road which runs through the core, in addition to a metro that did not exist just 32 years ago but is now the longest metro system in the world.
Lastly, I would've ideally liked this book to be longer if anything. Some of the chapters felt a bit phoned in comparatively (e.g. Richmond). I'd also be interested in seeing more prescriptivism from the author. While there were times when Berman pointed out solutions (notably, I think it was most clear during the chapter on Philly/SEPTA where there are very clear prescriptions), mostly it felt like he was content with leaving things more open-ended. A nit would be for the chapter images (and some others), I find the maps often confusing. It's hard to tell what has been prioritised and they often are stripped of too much detail. Looking at the Dallas one, I'm only able to follow along with the map because I used to live there and am familiar with it. I'm also a bit confused with the logic of what was called out on the map vs. not (Waxahachie with pop. 40k gets a dot, while areas like Flower Mound (pop. 80k) don't). Meanwhile, Dallas itself is rendered with its city limits but no sign of areas of dense population and it's really hard to get a sense of what the map is trying to say. (Also, was surprised by the decision to focus solely on Dallas vs. DFW).
But overall, a really good book and highly recommended for those who are unfamiliar with American transit history (like me).
January 29, 2024
Based on the title, I thought this would be another recounting of the lachyrmose story of American transit: cities have streetcars (and plan for subways), then run out of money, then plow money into freeways when they have money. And there are a few chapters in this book that are like this (most notably those on Rust Belt cities like Detroit, Rochester and Cincinnati that once planned for subways but are currently stuck with buses and the occasional streetcar).
But Berman goes beyond the sad stories to discuss the problems of more successful systems. Boston and New York are able to (mostly) maintain extensive systems, but cannot seem to afford additions to their systems. For example, he writes that Boston's transit agency "lacks the administrative expertise and institutional knowledge to get things done cheaply and quickly" because it relies too heavily on outside consultants with no vested interest in keeping costs down. New York's construction costs are insane for similar reasons, but also because agency work rules make construction artificially expensive. Philadelphia has a system that looks great on paper, but its commuter trains often run only once an hour. Why? Berman explains that a variety of cost controls and technical improvements could allow more extensive service, but these reforms never get enacted because a) responsibility over the transit agency is so dispersed that neither the state of Pennsylvania nor the city really has control and b) transit unions are so politically powerful that the agency retains ancient work rules that raise labor costs. While transit has become a left/right issue in some cities, Toronto has a very different problem: politicians on both the Left and the Right want more subway service (good) but disagree as to where the service is provided (bad) and so as mayors and provincial leaders get replaced, the city has not been able to reach a stable decision on where the subway should expand.
On the other hand, Berman praises Houston's new light rail system, because the city upzoned to allow more housing in the older parts of town, including those served by light rail stops. Even though Houston's overall transit ridership is not impressive by national standards, Berman points out that "Per mile of track, Houston's light rail has twice as many riders as Dallas's." Berman also praises Pittsburgh for investing in busways: while many cities claim to have bus rapid transit, Pittsburgh's busways really are "rapid" in the sense of being time-competitive with cars. Why? Because they don't share road space with cars.
But Berman goes beyond the sad stories to discuss the problems of more successful systems. Boston and New York are able to (mostly) maintain extensive systems, but cannot seem to afford additions to their systems. For example, he writes that Boston's transit agency "lacks the administrative expertise and institutional knowledge to get things done cheaply and quickly" because it relies too heavily on outside consultants with no vested interest in keeping costs down. New York's construction costs are insane for similar reasons, but also because agency work rules make construction artificially expensive. Philadelphia has a system that looks great on paper, but its commuter trains often run only once an hour. Why? Berman explains that a variety of cost controls and technical improvements could allow more extensive service, but these reforms never get enacted because a) responsibility over the transit agency is so dispersed that neither the state of Pennsylvania nor the city really has control and b) transit unions are so politically powerful that the agency retains ancient work rules that raise labor costs. While transit has become a left/right issue in some cities, Toronto has a very different problem: politicians on both the Left and the Right want more subway service (good) but disagree as to where the service is provided (bad) and so as mayors and provincial leaders get replaced, the city has not been able to reach a stable decision on where the subway should expand.
On the other hand, Berman praises Houston's new light rail system, because the city upzoned to allow more housing in the older parts of town, including those served by light rail stops. Even though Houston's overall transit ridership is not impressive by national standards, Berman points out that "Per mile of track, Houston's light rail has twice as many riders as Dallas's." Berman also praises Pittsburgh for investing in busways: while many cities claim to have bus rapid transit, Pittsburgh's busways really are "rapid" in the sense of being time-competitive with cars. Why? Because they don't share road space with cars.
July 3, 2024
“Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.” That’s the wonderful epigraph of this book from Eddie Valiant in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ Sadly, Eddie was dead wrong, as Jake Berman tells us in his Introduction when he says “I had assumed that cars in Los Angeles where just a fact of life, like beaches, palm trees, and tacos. But that wasn’t case at all. Gridlock was a choice that the people of Los Angeles had made.” A fascinating and fascinatingly obsessive book about the dream of mass transit to clear traffic and move people around futuristic metropolises and how that dream was chucked in the waste bin after World War II so we could all sit in cars in traffic jams instead. Jake zooms in on 23 North American cities and tells us stories like “a short history of a never used subway” (Cincinnati), “the mob takeover of twin city rapid transit” (Minneapolis-St. Paul), “the only city to open a subway and then close it” (Rochester), and “the subway as political football” (my hometown of Toronto). There are no winners here! Every city gets their own 10ish page red-faced history of the highs and (mostly) lows of their subway system—racist votes, illegal campaigns and all—complete with endless colorful pages of beautiful subway maps and old posters. Ultimately about what might have been, the book does an incredible job of filling in a history too few people know about.
February 25, 2025
Good coffee table book to really educate the masses on our failed urban policies. Loved the maps 🔎 🗺️
Cheat sheet:
Late 1800s- cable cars
1910-1920s- lack of support for subway funding
1930-1945- Great Depression and ww2 sideline everything
1945-1955 - rise of suburbia / federal funding for White Flight with the GI Bill,
1956 - federal high way funding covering 90% of costs, state and local cover 10% to help demolish and segregate their communities and downtowns, just for the automobile and the suburbs to visit the city
1960-today- NIMBYism, single family zoning, environmental reviews, consultation fees, increased labor cost for the same work by requirement, community panels and review, and public vs private property.
“Why can’t we build anything anymore”
Every city is the same except the outliers like DC and some in Canada, even NYC has fallen victim to NIMBYism culture and the selfishness of boomers- and the zoning laws they created surrounding our stations. Keep in mind, majority of neighborhoods in cities are high in real estate value because of a subway station next to them, alongside a housing shortage
Cheat sheet:
Late 1800s- cable cars
1910-1920s- lack of support for subway funding
1930-1945- Great Depression and ww2 sideline everything
1945-1955 - rise of suburbia / federal funding for White Flight with the GI Bill,
1956 - federal high way funding covering 90% of costs, state and local cover 10% to help demolish and segregate their communities and downtowns, just for the automobile and the suburbs to visit the city
1960-today- NIMBYism, single family zoning, environmental reviews, consultation fees, increased labor cost for the same work by requirement, community panels and review, and public vs private property.
“Why can’t we build anything anymore”
Every city is the same except the outliers like DC and some in Canada, even NYC has fallen victim to NIMBYism culture and the selfishness of boomers- and the zoning laws they created surrounding our stations. Keep in mind, majority of neighborhoods in cities are high in real estate value because of a subway station next to them, alongside a housing shortage
September 16, 2024
This book sparked some real big feelings of frustration about the various avoidable reasons North America does not have the subway infrastructure we could have. I found myself most interested in the cities that I had never visited or which I never thought would have wanted/fought for a subway system. Turns out, nearly everywhere needs better public transportation, and it's unfortunate that we can't make that happen because of our reliance on cars and highways.
Be warned, because the subway map images are printed quite large this is not a book you'll want to travel with (it's 8.5" x 11"). The content places it somewhere between a coffee table book, short chapters quick read, many different cities for people to connect to, but it also does a very good job of digging into the historical, political, and human reasons these systems failed. You'll probably come away wishing we could get rid of our cars and at the very least bring back the streetcars and trolleys.
Be warned, because the subway map images are printed quite large this is not a book you'll want to travel with (it's 8.5" x 11"). The content places it somewhere between a coffee table book, short chapters quick read, many different cities for people to connect to, but it also does a very good job of digging into the historical, political, and human reasons these systems failed. You'll probably come away wishing we could get rid of our cars and at the very least bring back the streetcars and trolleys.
January 4, 2025
Journalism level book. Most of the observations are surface level and of the typical 75% correct average local newspaper journalism level. The sections about New York and Boston are "off" just enough to irritate natives and people familiar with the cities. Some cities receive significantly more in-depth coverage that seems to be based on the ease of research or the age of the documents to read. The coverage of parking minimums describes them in at least three differnt way making compassion from city to city difficult. The author presents a painfully American perceptive. Cities of 500,000 people in the 1960s are large, and 7000 people per square mile are urban to the author. The most glaringly American perspective is the failure to discuss the existence of bicycles in the era of the horse drawn cart and in the area discussing modern history distances to train stations are described solely in walk time or minibus shuttle availability.
August 12, 2024
Berman takes us on a tour of North American cities' rail transit over time, from 1800's streetcars to the present, with lovingly-drawn historical maps of both actual railways and proposals. As a railfan, I poured over the maps; this is exactly what I would have loved as a kid and still enjoy now.
The text accompanying these maps tells the buildout and destruction of urban public transit railways, and various proposals and construction. Berman avoids blaming nefarious schemes of the auto lobby, but tells common tails of alternating overoptimism and governmental dysfunction. He doesn't look beyond that, but that would be another book. He does dig a bit into urban design, though, to blame bad zoning overregulation.
The text accompanying these maps tells the buildout and destruction of urban public transit railways, and various proposals and construction. Berman avoids blaming nefarious schemes of the auto lobby, but tells common tails of alternating overoptimism and governmental dysfunction. He doesn't look beyond that, but that would be another book. He does dig a bit into urban design, though, to blame bad zoning overregulation.
September 30, 2024
A fascinating expose on the transit history of 20 or so North American cities. Political incompetence, racial strife, and freeways basically destroyed most of the transit systems in the US and it's a damn shame.
It did a pretty good job of setting up various recurring themes (white flight with Detroit) and then referencing those issues later. The book also did a good job of making each city's story feel fairly unique, despite many being plagued by the same issues.
That being said, it got a little repetitive to me by the last 75% and I struggled to finish it.
The maps in it are incredible and really well done. I plan on buying a print of one of them.
It did a pretty good job of setting up various recurring themes (white flight with Detroit) and then referencing those issues later. The book also did a good job of making each city's story feel fairly unique, despite many being plagued by the same issues.
That being said, it got a little repetitive to me by the last 75% and I struggled to finish it.
The maps in it are incredible and really well done. I plan on buying a print of one of them.
January 22, 2024
I enjoyed the idea: How did mass transit get built in so many metropolitan areas? The real question: What can get in the way? Money, politics, land rights, current neighborhoods, hills (!), needs.
And: Will people at the far end of one proposed route actually use it to go the to other end of the line.
Communities prosper and die based on when - and if - these routes actually get built.
Jake Berman did wonderful work w/ the cartography in this book.
#library #harborsights #arlingtonlibrary
https://www.harborsights.com
And: Will people at the far end of one proposed route actually use it to go the to other end of the line.
Communities prosper and die based on when - and if - these routes actually get built.
Jake Berman did wonderful work w/ the cartography in this book.
#library #harborsights #arlingtonlibrary
https://www.harborsights.com
June 19, 2024
Good for what it is, if not somewhat niche. Excellent visuals that accompany a brief overview of each city's history of failed transportation expansions. Though, even with the detailed maps, it is challenging to visualize without being overly familiar with the cities or placing yourself physically in the neighborhood. I routinely glazed over descriptions, even though I could trust that it was beneficial to the city.
MS: The smallest subway in the U.S. opens and closes within a matter of decades in Rochester, NY. A sad, but fortunately infrequent occurrence.
MS: The smallest subway in the U.S. opens and closes within a matter of decades in Rochester, NY. A sad, but fortunately infrequent occurrence.
December 17, 2024
If neither racism nor greed explains why a city’s mass transit is lacking, then it’s probably a combination of them both. I learned a lot from this book, most of which was fairly infuriating. The sections on Atlanta (where I’m from and already knew some of this history including the racist joke that MARTA stands for moving Africans rapidly through Atlanta), the CA cities of LA and San Francisco, and Washington DC were some of my favorites. I liked the emphasis on land use policy and how it’s created problems with both the feasibility of subways and the skyrocketing price of housing.
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