The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight

by Nicholas Dagen Bloom

A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit.
 
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 we wanted it this way.
 
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 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Urbanism, Urban Planning, Urban, Politics, Transport

368 pages, Hardcover

Published May 3, 2023

Reviews

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book on the history of the decline of transit in America. What I found most interesting is that the author argues that the main cause for America’s disinvestment in public transit (primarily the street car) and hyper-obsession with the automobile was in large part due to racism.

When millions would ride major city transits and street cars in the early twentieth century it was one of the only things still unsegregated. Cities like Atlanta and Baltimore, with white political leaders making the decisions and large black populations using public transit, were the first to begin eliminating or opposing mass transit and emphasizing convenient, segregated, private vehicle ridership. Cities like Boston and New York, with white politicians and large white populations using public transit, made a concerted effort to subsidize and invest in public transit because of white ridership.

Of course there were other factors at play into the slow dismantling of public transit in nearly every American city in the early twentieth century. However, emotions are strong determiners of decisions and the US highway system was the largest construction project in the history of mankind for more than one reason.

[Max South · Rating 3 out of 5]

Undoubtedly well researched, but clearly there’s an issue when even I can call it out as being too dense and I’m 100% the target audience.

The nitty gritty of each city went over my head if I wasn’t all that familiar with the city’s specifics in which case the depth is a little wasted. The sections about Boston were fantastic and deeply informative.

[Jacob Cavett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellently researched and fresh perspective on the often forgotten and oversimplified tragedy of the loss of American public transit. My only complaint is the absolute G A R B A G E audiobook “reading” done via AI.

[Andrew Lindstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good overview, if a bit repetitive, of a handful of approaches taken by American cities to transit funding from the 1920s onwards. If you’re like me and you eat up the esoteric minutiae of transit history, it’s a must read, and the takeaway of public subsidies as a key aspect of healthy transit ridership is just as key now as it’s ever been.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book after watching the documentary “Taken For a Ride”, which chronicles the systematic dismantling of streetcars in U.S. cities by the NCL with help from the burgeoning automobile industry.

Bloom’s book examines this narrative and explores in depth other factors that came into play, namely a lack of sufficient subsidization, a growing auto-centric society, and racism. To support this, he presents six case studies—Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco—comparing and contrasting how they ended up in different places, particularly as societal shifts took place between 1945 and 1980.

His scholarship is very good, and I’ve enjoyed listening to Bloom on podcasts talk about this subject. That said, this book is extremely dense and thorough, with nearly every sentence ending with an endnote superscript. While I found the depth of his research impressive, the composition at times seemed to topple under its own weight: Paragraphs at times are just collections of data points, and the storyline in each of the six case studies jumped forward and backward in time a little too much for my taste. I often found myself wanting a simple graph or table of ridership numbers or transit maps over time, but there is surprisingly little visualization. There are maps for each city using census data, but they are in greyscale and unfortunately rather hard to read. Lastly, there are spots where names are misspelled, suggesting the editor was overwhelmed with the task of reducing this tome to 125,000 words.

The thesis is sound and Bloom’s overall argument is easy to follow. I would welcome some international comparisons as part of a future book from him.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting perspective- it was pretty detailed about the financing of the transit systems, some of which went a bit over my head. The overall message was basically that the earlier a city committed to public ownership of the transit and deeply subsidizing it, the better. The “pay as you go” model essentially being unsustainable. They mentioned it towards the end but I wish they’d emphasized a bit more that public services don’t need “to make a profit” in a business sense- like we don’t expect schools to make a profit etc.

I liked the set up of the case studies. Wish they’d included New York bc I definitely got a bit more out of the cities I was more familiar with like SF and Boston, and felt a little lost with Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit bc I don’t know the neighborhoods or anything. Maybe could’ve done with one less case.

Another theme I thought was interesting was that people tend to overlook the benefits of busses in favor of rail - but some lower density areas are actually much more suited for busses and we just need infrastructure for them to go faster.

I thought the attitude towards labor was a little weird at times- kinda repeatedly blaming rising labor costs and unions for transit’s financial trouble. Kinda obvious but made me think about how any push for hiring wages needs to be accompanied by pushes for greater investment in/advocacy for the public services we provide as well.

[Matthew Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made a note in my reading journal within the last few years that I wanted to read something that explored more thoroughly how private streetcar/traction companies transitioned to public ownership amid the rise of auto-centric planning in the 20th century.

This book satisfied that urge in a deep way, while simultaneously undermining/complicating/debunking the "streetcar conspiracy" we all know and love from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Through several case studies, Bloom distills how racism, fiscal austerity, (or in some cases, well-timed subsidy) auto-centric planning and the timing/structure of public buyouts of streetcar companies contributed to the position we find public transit in today. It also added context for the particular and peculiar role transit has played as a public good in the life of cities.

This is a great book for any transportation planner to read, but also for anyone who wants to think a bit more critically about how we provision, support and implement critical public services and programs.

[Zach Forstot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, repetitive, and maybe geared toward academia and not a general audience. Yet it extensively details the decline of public transit and how it was not some grand GM conspiracy that brought it about.

[Jonathan Dunkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely dense but captivating book on the short-sighted decisions made in the mid-20th century that led to the demise of a lot of American public transportations, in particular the streetcar. What struck me the most - and that is saying something because there was a lot to digest in this book - were the self-destructive policies that so many transit authorities implemented. We're losing money on transit? Well, we'll just have to cut the number of routes we provide. Oh no! By cutting routes, fewer people are relying on public transit and we are still losing money. I guess we'll raise fares. Oh no! Higher fares are causing fewer people to use public transit and we are still losing money. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Add in "planning" choices, many of them with racial motivations, and it's almost a miracle we have any public transit in the United States.

Yet short-sightedness continues. The Big 3 American automobile manufacturers are no longer producing sedans meaning U.S.-produced vehicles will be SUVs or larger. Everything is getting more expensive and it is going to become more difficult and costly to get anywhere.

Bloom believes public transit can succeed, and perhaps thrive, through government subsidization but it is hard to be optimistic about government making choices that benefits the citizenry.

This was a very enjoyable and informative book and well-researched. It was difficult for me to read more than a few pages at a time and it took almost five weeks for me to get through it all. Despite that, I recommend it for anyone interested in the history of U.S. public transportation.

[Zak Yudhishthu · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Really a 4.5 star review)

Very detailed and balanced history of transit decline in the United States, mostly looking from the 40s-70s. Bloom shows how intentional our urban transit failures were, focusing on a public that was frequently unwilling to commit resources to transit while also investing extensive resources into planning very transit-unfriendly cities. Across the handful of cities studied, we get good local texture that touches on a variety of relevant issues. This also offers some opportunity to make useful comparisons between different paths cities took. At the same time, Bloom makes clear which structural forces were dominant in driving cities’ transit fates.

Although I liked how Bloom tried to draw comparisons between cities, I did at times wish for more precise thinking about counterfactuals. I understand that this type of thinking isn’t always the explicit toolkit of a historian, but there were a few too many times that Bloom suggested that making a different decision at one particular point could’ve made a meaningful difference, and I was left wondering more about that counterfactual. Certainly my own pro-economics biases are at play here, but I wish Bloom was in conversation with the causal economics literature on some of these topics (the impacts of freeways comes to mind).

Finally, the book risked getting a little bit repetitive and dry at times. Bloom is a solid writer, but at a few moments this book could become a bit of a grind to get through.

[Wisconsin Alumni]

Nicholas Bloom ’91
Author

From the author:
A potent re-examination of America’s history of public disinvestment in mass transit.

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.

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.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive look at factors that impacted why public transit succeeded or not over the course of the 20th century. As the subtitle indicates, Bloom identifies three main factors - austerity budgets, auto-centric urban planning, and white flight from urban centers, that contributed to disinvestment after WWII. He also finds that retaining density along lines, public subsidies, and white middle-class ridership resulted in public transit growing during the post-war years. In the end, Bloom concludes that transit is rarely the driver of its own success, as zoning regulations are the prime driver of density along and near lines, highway and downtown parking construction allowed cars to be faster and more convenient than transit, and local politics decided how much public support transit agencies would receive. The case studies are all interesting and demonstrate these themes, even if Bloom expects a level of familiarity with all of his 6 selected cities that I did not have; similarly, he's writing from an urban planning standpoint, so he anticipated familiarity with concepts that were new to me and largely unexplained directly in the text. That said, there's enough to understand the gist of it through context, and the themes and general shape of development are clear enough for a general readership.

[Devon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this way more than I actually did. First off, the text was tiny and made the actual reading difficult. Additionally, it could have benefitted from another round or two of editing. Numbers could have been rounded and made more easily digestible or more graphs could have been utilized instead to make the reading less tedious. The case studies are a lot to take in if you're not familiar with the geography of the area being discussed. I found the chronological bouncing around within each case study to be quite annoying. A glossary of terms for transport modes would have done wonders. (How is a streetcar different from a trolley coach? from an electric trolley? etc.) A certain base knowledge was assumed. I get this is more a scholarly work than intended for the popular audience, but I like to think that my interest in this subject runs pretty deep—yet I still found this book to be a real slog. In other words, I agree with the conclusions presented by the author (the final ~three pages), but the text itself could have been condensed down quite a bit with no loss of substance.

[Noah]

Exhaustively researched and convincing in its argument that American transit collapsed mid-century due to a combination of misguided austerity, car-centric policies, and racism. I certainly hope that its calls for carefully planning transit around dense housing and providing generous subsidies are taken to heart.

Unfortunately, it is a bit of a dry read, and the structure of the text—split into a series of case studies—drags the reader through dense histories of various cities. Perhaps organizing the entire book chronologically, or with sections on each of the contributing factors to the transit disaster, would have made a more unified, compelling read. In any case, it would have been nice to have inflation-adjusted numbers throughout. When sprinting through a century of history over and over again, it’s difficult to know whether a particular deficit or fare is significant.

[Simon Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very depressing, but important history lesson of how public transit became so bad across the United States. The author does a fantastic job of getting into the details and exposing all the elements of this slow-moving train crash, which is so much more than an auto industry conspiracy. At the end of the day, the message comes across clear: policies that failed to support public transit to anywhere near the same levels as private automobiles, plus the endless promotion of sprawling land use, led to "transit death spirals" all over the country. The author tries to point to more optimistic stories later on in the book (in Boston and San Francisco), but ultimately the efforts to come to an inspiring conclusion fall flat.

[Samwell Raleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, I wanted to love this book. It’s such an interesting concept.

However, it was too dense - both literally and figuratively. The font was microscopic and the margins were an inch wide. Who decided that? It was physically too hard to read.

[MaKai Magie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book isn’t for everyone, but it is very interesting. It shows how we over simplify an events. Yes, autos had a big part in the changes to our transportation, but it was much more than that.