Transit funding is political. Stop Requested. This is Stop Requested. by ETA. I’m Christian.
And I’m Levi. These are real conversations with the innovators, operators, and advocates driving improvements in public transportation. Today we’re joined by Professor Nicholas
Dagen Bloom, Chair of the Department of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, and author of The Great American Transit Disaster. Nick’s work looks at why transit declined so differently across American cities, and how decisions around zoning, funding, public ownership, land use, and the rise of the automobile shaped the systems we’ inherited today.
We talk about the collapse of private transit companies, the limits of public ownership without adequate funding, the streetcar conspiracy myth, and what cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, and San Francisco reveal about why some systems survive better than others. Here’s our conversation with Nicholas
Dagen Bloom. Welcome back to Stop Requested. Today we have a very special episode. We’re joined by Professor Nicholas Dagen Bloom, who’s from the Department of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, of the City University of New York. Dr.
Bloom, how are you? I’m good. How are you, Levi? I’m doing very well. I’m just really excited to get into this conversation. Uh, yeah, I came across your book, uh, not too long ago and reached out to you. Lo and behold, here we are. Uh, you, you accepted the invitation to be on the podcast and really grateful for that. Anyone who wants to talk about transit, you know, it’s… I’m excited.
Well, well, you, you met two people who really want to talk about transit today. That’s right. We, we call ourselves transit nerds, and w- you know, always trying to broaden our perspective on, on the industry. Uh, but for those who may not know you, um, they– maybe they don’t have their, your book, and I’m, I’m hoping that they go out and, and buy it immediately after they hear this podcast.
Uh, could you give an intro to yourself? Yeah, sure. So, um, as you mentioned in the intro, I’m a professor here at, uh, Hunter College, and, um, I’m also the chair of the department. Uh, and so, you know, I teach a lot of students in our, particularly in our urban planning program, uh, and many of them go on to work in, uh, mass transit, for instance, the MTA being, um, a, a major place. So, um, and I’ve been teaching for some years a course on transportation policy and advocacy to our students.
So that’s definitely, you know, sort of one of the sources of my interest in doing this work, um, was to learn more. Um, work that I had done before, I had did, I did some transportation research before. I did a book on JFK Airport and its relationship to New York
City. Interesting, kind of like version of that. And also, um, uh, uh, in a book on Nelson Rockefeller, a famous governor here in the nineteen sixties, um, I had a chapter on the MTA and its formation and why it’s, you know, why the state government got involved in
New York in transport, um, in that era. So, um, you know, between the teaching and transportation and, and so forth, and also, uh, some initial research, you know, I had always… I had this kind of interest, growing interest in the transportation field.
Uh, where did that start? What, what was the impetus? Well, I think for me personally, which I’m sure you’re, maybe you and Christian are the same, I mean, I’ve been using transit my whole life. Actually, it started pretty young. I used to, I grew up in Baltimore, and, um, they used to, I went to a school that was pretty far from my house, so they would send out a city bus actually to pick us up. I think it was the number forty-four.
It was like one of those old GM, you know, like, uh, bubble glass look, you know. Like, that’s how old I am. It was like the eighties. But Baltimore was still running like one of those old buses back then. It was lo– and I loved that bus.
By the way, can I just say, a great bus ’cause you felt very, like, it was sort of like a fishbowl kind of thing, and so it was actually a nice bus to ride. So I started, you know, riding transit pretty young and in Baltimore, which was, you know, not that, it wasn’t like overwhelming numbers of people riding transit. So
I think that was kind of my interest. And even, even earlier, actually as a kid, one thing that was interesting about the neighborhood I grew up in, which was it was kind of a streetcar suburb, but the s- the streetcars had been ripped out decades before. But I remember seeing a little bit of the old track was kind of like embedded
’cause it was like one of those double sort of boulevards that the train used to run down the middle. So it’s sort of like the absence, you know, of like, okay, this was a big part of what Baltimore was.
And I think I always had in my mind, like I’d go back and try to understand like why Baltimore had been such an amazing streetcar city, right, and yet had lost all of it, right, uh, in this sort of period.
So, um, I think those are the, the kind of personal things. And then I’ve just ridden transit like my life, so whether it was in Madison, Wisconsin, or Boston. I remember actually one of the fun things was, um, you know, I hadn’t really been in Boston until I went to graduate school, and I, I went to Brandeis, which is outside of Boston.
Um, but, um, I remember seeing the Green Line there, and I was like, “What?” Like, it was such a shock to me to see old streetcars like still run, like running in American cities. And I think a lot of people have that when they go to Boston. They’re like, “Oh, this is kind of what like the alternative American urban future could have been,” right? Uh, and so, um, that definitely was a, an impact there. Um, and then I lived in New Orleans. I actually rode the St., the St.
Charles Streetcar for a few years as a commute when I taught at, uh, Tulane. I actually rode that. So I’ve had a lot. And then, of course, New York, you know, it’s, you know, I do, uh, both the subway and Metro-North.
Uh, so I’ve definitely had a lot of interaction with transit in my life, you know, the ups and downs. So You know, I, I think that really good projects and research projects are sort of generated out of some kind of personal interest and story and broader experience.
And also, I’ve been to Europe too, and of course there you see, like, a very different model of transit, and so f- and Mexico as well. So I’ve always made sure to do a lot of transit riding and reading about transit and so forth. So when I’d kind of put aside, you know, I’ve done a lot of different books on different topics, a lot on housing and, uh, so forth, um, governance, all kinds of things like that, um, I was like, okay, well, I would like to do one just on transit, because I felt like a lot of the, the work out there, while good, right, uh, hadn’t kind of gotten into the nitty-gritty of kind of comparing how transit was so different. I think that’s also, you know, having lived in different cities, like I’m not a really… I mean, I’m a New Yorker now. I’ve lived here since 2003, but when you go, you’re like, “Why is transit so bad here or good here and not another place?” And
I think people have tried to use, you know, a lot of national or federal explanations for that. But what the book actually really gets into, in great detail as people have told me, maybe too much, but anyway, that local conditions, you know, are so important. You know, like, what is the pol- the local politics of transit was so important. So, um, and h- how planning relates to that too.
So that was the, that’s a kind of long-winded answer, I suppose, but you know, it’s like personal experience, sort of questions that have come up in my experience. Like, why is one city better or worse than the other?
And then a sense that a lot of the literature that existed, while very good in its own right, kind of missed, like, why that w- it didn’t really account, in my mind, for those really interesting differences.
And, and you know, uh, I’m glad that you mentioned that, uh, Nick, that your experiences and upbringing and, like, how you experienced different transit systems and, like, you started noticing the history behind it, right? Yeah. Like the missing transit, the lingering, uh, tracks. It’s like, wait- Yeah … wait a minute. Why is this in our city and then there’s nothing operate on this tracks? Like, this looks like there was some transit, and then it wasn’t. So- And look, Christian.
Christian, look where we’re headed, uh, away today. Like, there will, there’s street, we’re, already we’re creating new archeology of transit in American cities, right? Like, they’re removing streetcar line in DC.
They, we, we already have like a, an, uh, a kind of accelerated cycle of creation and abandonment, right? You know, where these, like, new streetcar systems were created, and how many of those are gonna survive,
I don’t know. So I’m sorry. I, you know. No, 100%, and, and, and we’ll, we, we will know. I mean, we’ll, we’ll see it as, as it progresses throughout the years and, and, and a lot had to do with policies, with trends.
Yeah. You know, talking about that, I mean, uh, we l- uh, there was a big push for, uh, fleet electrification, EVs. Oh, yeah. And then, and then now there’s agencies- … that are completely stopping that transition because- Yeah … there’s new policies. They have all their electric vehicles parked in the yard, and like- … they, maybe they’re not completing or even taking down some of the infrastructure they were putting in place for charging.
So like there, there’s, th- we see that, and that’s kind of like constantly happening. Of course, there’s different factors. Um, I want to connect now to your book, The Great American- Yeah … Transit Disaster, um, and also why some of those learnings were within that book and, and, and are resources, um, particularly for transit planners to think about and consider when, you know, that the public transit space is an ever-changing space. Especially when you’re operating, uh, public transit, you’re operating in an environment with a lot of factors outside of your control, right? That, that i- is impacting the way you operate transit, therefore you, you have to be reinventing yourself.
Um, but what did you think was missing from the usual explanation of the American transit decline? Could, could you tell us a little bit of- Yeah, sure … you know, what, what is that, uh, what is there for people to think about? Well, there’s a, I mean, there, there’s a number of things I, I think we’re missing.
I mean, on a, on a broad scale, I think that we didn’t think enough about the relationship of planning, uh, and not just transportation. Like transportation planning is often in this sort of like, uh, it’s changing a bit, but it’s often in this sort of silo, right?
But you know, the emergence of zoning, for instance, in the 1920s, I mean, that had an enormous impact on t- transit because the transit operators were like, “Oh,” you know, like, all these areas we build streetcars out to, you know, historically the streetcar suburbs would densify over time based on ridership, right? And when you put zoning, in place, that ends, right? Because now you’re kind of frozen as a single family home community or maybe a two-flat community. So you didn’t have that kind of evolution of neigh- neighborhoods, which transit fundamentally needs, right?
You, you need that densification to drive ridership growth, and if you don’t have that, then it’s kind of flat. And you know, so the other thing zoning did was really important, was that it created a lot of parking in neighborhoods, like off-street parking requirements and things like that.
So you know, if you combine… And also then the other third thing zoning created were restrictions on industrial retail and other, you know, manufacturing, right? So you know, if you put those three things together, residential zoning like in the 1920s,
I mean, whew, when that comes in, that’s a game changer for American transit companies. They, they basically, that’s, that’s a profound shift in the political economy of transit, right? Now a transit operator i- is really limited in how many people can live in a home, like a single family home. They’re not gonna get as many riders. So that’s really important.
Um, yeah. So, so before then, the, there was no zoning- No zoning … across the United States. And, and you said, what was the year again? 1920s is when- 1920s … zoning emerges as a national movement in cities, yeah. And, and- And that’s the last great, that’s the last great decade of transit.
Oh, wow. And, and you see, I can see that correlation a- and that you just said, it just, it ignited my mind and, and it, it, um, explained a lot, right? Because, you know, I shared with you, I’m originally from Colombia, from South America. Yeah. And there’s no zoning.
Yeah. Meaning you find everything and anything, like residential and commercial- Right … and industrial, and you have this shop and this thing, which creates this, uh, multi-use, uh, kinda like community, uh, where there’s a lot of origin and destination, and there’s employment, there’s education, there’s all this activity that I think also propel transit to be what it is like in a lot of those other countries.
So, you know, uh, uh- Great point … I wanna pass it back to you as you continue explaining that. But so, so what happened after that point? And, and you were already getting into that. So, so how did, um, make some of these transit, uh, companies,
I don’t know, start changing the way they operate? It bankrupt- it fundamentally contributes to their bankrupting. I mean, they- Wow … they, they had their own problems, you know, and so forth.
But there were a number of them… Okay, so then, so one is the zoning. Two is, until the 19, you know, 60s and ’70s in the United
States, w- the US was gifted basically a comprehensive transit network through private investment, right? Uh, that basically there were no subsidies, right? Uh, so few cities, New York, you know, uh, Boston, a couple that provided subsidies. But almost all the transit existed because it was a business, right? And it was a business based on real estate development around stations.
Uh, it was a business based on fare collection, right? Uh, it was a business based on, um, uh, monopoly control ultimately at time.
Like, they basically, you know, these kind of monopolists, uh, put, put these different systems all together. So, um… And it was kind of exploitative, honestly, as an industry, right? I mean, they, they really had no labor protections for their workers. Safety protections, not a lot.
You know, like, uh, also, they ran equipment into the ground. You know? It’s like they didn’t care, you know. So it was an industry, you know, that made money, and people bought shares, you know, in these transit companies, and things like that. Now, over time, because of the public’s frustration with public transit, uh, the quality, for instance, over time, and things like that, um, it became a highly regulated, almost like a regulated utility, right? ‘Cause there was a natural tendency towards monopoly in these systems. And, um, what happens is that the era of regulation, uh, which is the early 20th century, where it really becomes much… It’s earlier than that, but it becomes much more, uh, profound in, in, in shaping the trajectory of transit companies. But it aligns also with the rise of zoning. So you get basically these kind of, like, highly regulated monopolies, um, in a, a business atmosphere that has totally shifted, right? Because the regulations were created for private companies, when they were really powerful and fairly, you know, prosperous.
But as the sh- as the automobile becomes the dominant form of mobility in the country, the regulations stuck around, but they were like, the transit companies were, like, losing massively, losing ridership.
They were not allowed to raise their fares at any reasonable amount in most cities, right?
They were required to maintain certain kinds of service. They were required to pay for road maintenance around their tracks. They were taxed in very high ways, like even for parks development and things like that.
So you kinda had this mismatch, right? It’s like you had this, these private companies which had kind of risen up in an era of laissez-faire, no regulation of them or of, um, land, right? They were creatures of laissez-faire, right? And they’ve s- they’ve kind of prospered in that. And then you have them kind of going into a new era, right, where they are highly regulated by comparison, and, you know, they’re, they’re facing the automobile onslaught on the roads. And so almost all of them went into some kind of form of kind of ro- I would call it like a rolling bankruptcy, receivership, something like that, over the next decades. Um, and, you know, there were opportunities for… You know, clearly when you have these kind of companies that are going down the tubes, right, the government can step in and buy these things at low cost, right? Um, and that happened in certain cities, essentially Chicago, New York,
Boston, very transit-dense, transit-oriented kind of places where the real estate interests had, like particularly downtown real estate interests, realized that the collapse of the express systems they had would demolish their real estate values, right? And so they did step in. And there are also kind of like a socialist kind of element of it, you know, in these big cities, or sort of, you know, I would say more, left kind of thing. Uh, but in most American cities, the city governments, you know, either were too broke, didn’t wanna do it. Most people, even in cities themselves, were becoming car owners. They watched these private transit companies collapse, right?
They 100%, you know, every… It’s in the news all the time. You know, it’s like they’re, you know. So what do they do? Well, if a private transit company’s collapsing, like a private company is collapsing, it, takes a certain kind of strategy, right? You know, what’s the strategy when private company collapses? Like, don’t invest in your capital.
You know? And don’t, um, you know, cut, cut service, right? Service quality, frequency, you know, uh, routes, right? And so what you see over many decades were these private companies which had created these incredible systems, they’re, they’re basically just, like, shedding assets, right? For decades.
City governments and city populations are like, “Eh, you know, we’re all gonna buy cars eventually,” or something like that. We want the streetcars off the streets. They’re slowing down traffic. You know, all these cities were, like, doing one-way streets and speeding up cars and highways. Like, that was sort of yesterday.
Right? And so they basically didn’t step in, and when they finally stepped in, it was only because the federal government finally was willing to put up capital funding, you know. This is, like, s- late
’60s and the ’70s, like, to basically, oh, it was, like, a source of new money for cities, right? So then you finally got basically public ownership. By then, though, very little transit left in most American cities, right? By then it was so late.
So, you know, I think that, that’s not, like, well understood, and we can kinda get into the myth part, which is that I think in the, you know, transit industry, and also trans- transportation history, and all the rest, there’s this over-reliance on the famous streetcar myth, right? Which is that the corporations, through the devious means of the National City Lines in the 1940s and the ’50s, you know, they buy out these transit companies with the express goal of, you know, ripping out the streetcars, and it’s, that’s the reason why, you know, we don’t have any streetcars in the
US. And there’s partial truth to that. There was this National City Lines. They, it was a, kind of a holding company that bought up these failing transit companies, and they were, they were into ripping out streetcars.
But if you go into the record a little bit, it’s way more complex. City governments like Baltimore, which had a National City Line franchise, they wanted those streetcars gone. They encouraged the removal of the streetcars.
They wanted buses because that would speed up cars, right? Then you could rip those out, turn those streets into one-way, fast, multi-lane streets, right? Then you see this, Chicago, for instance, not a National City Line corporation. This enormous streetcar system, I mean, you, uh, incredible. I mean, it was run down by the
’40s and ’50s. It gets public ownership in the mid-’40s, and what does the public owner do? Not National City Lines. They ripped out the entire streetcar network in a decade.
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Yeah, so you, know, what’s going on there is that, you know, they didn’t basically, even when city governments took over public transit, they didn’t have the funding or didn’t provide the funding to basically preserve, like, higher quality systems. And so they too were like, “Okay, we’ll go to a bus system. It’ll be a good bus…” Sometimes it was a good bus system at first, but that wasn’t even maintained over time. And usually the, the entrance of the bus system was the beginning of, like, less frequent service and that sort of thing.
So you know, I? think that understanding, like, what happens, like, locally is really important to the transit company, like its financial story, which is a lot of the book, is a lot about fares, the transit companies, what’s happening to them, what the public is saying about the transit companies, what the politicians are. saying, and that’s why also it helps explain why there are differences between city. Why, for instance, when I went to Boston I’m like, oh, there’s streetcars here. And I grew up in Baltimore, and the streetcars were gone.
Well, it’s. because in the early 20th century, you, basically get this, the city and state governments of Boston, or
Massachusetts and Boston, got involved in transit financing. They saved it. After World War I, they basically saved their public transit systems. They began subsidizing them in the ’20s and ’30s, and as a result, they maintained streetcar lines.
I mean, you still have PCC streetcars running in Mattapan, like, out. Like, that’s insane, you know? And that’s only because there’s these kinds of subsidies. Baltimore, it’s like 1970 when you finally get… Can you think about that? I mean, it’s like you get half a century between, uh, Boston going for public subsidies and
Boston, or b- like, Boston going for public subsidies and Baltimore going for public subsidies. And in that’ half a century, Baltimore basically lost its entire streetcar network and most of its bus network too. Y– you know, uh, Dr.
Bloom, you, I mean, you said a lot of things that I wanna talk about because- Yeah, let’s dive in … all those, uh, scenarios and those situations and that history i- is so, important and, you know, we, we’re able to see it across different systems and, and, and, and, and, how long it, took for all those, uh, local governments to react and take- Right … action, um, on, on preserving public transit and advancing pu- public transportation and understanding its role when, when it comes to the entire, uh, transportation network, uh, in their given community. And you know, I just wanted to make a comment, like, you know, I work for Palm Tran in Palm Beach County, and, and I researched the history when we came to be. Um, you know, for the most part it was a private operation, like you said.
Yeah. This operator kept going in front of the county commissioner saying, “We’re losing money left and right.” “We cannot run. This is- Right. “… this is not gonna work.” And then they’re like, “Oh, okay. Okay,” you know, like not really taking action, and then finally they came back and said, “This is done. We’re closed.
We’re done.” Right. For 30 days, for about a month, the, the community had no public transportation. That’s right. Gone. That’s right. So, all the people coming to the commissioner meetings saying, “We need public transportation,” like all these people voicing. Right. And then finally, the county purchased this private company that’ was pretty much out of business, already run down, most likely most of their assets, like you said. They have to liquidate them, and they barely have these units of buses, and then- Right … they started this company as, now, as a, as, as the public system. But also they waited. They were just waiting, and they, they, they were saying,
“Listen, we, we’re not, uh, you know, we’re not, uh, financially, uh, viable anymore. This is no longer a, a business … it’s going away, and in some ways we’re kind of like ignoring it or waiting it, and then they have to take action. And then, and, and I imagine as you were mentioning, this is the same reality of different, uh, transit systems across America. It is, 100%. Not coming from a place. So
I want to ask you, you chose- Yeah … in your book, Baltimore, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco, as core cases that have some of that history that people can find in your book. Why did, you choose those, uh, communities? Was it because they were dense enough, or they had a robust transit system that. went through, you know, that, that decline?
Like, what was the reasoning behind that? So, the book actually is, it’s, like three pairs, if you want to pair them up. Each of them reflect a certain way of handling a lot, really transit financing to a great extent.
So, um, Baltimore and, um, Atlanta are selected, uh, because they both had, um, private transit operation for a very long time, right? And that private transit operation basically was run into the ground and only picked up like, you know, late ’60s, early
’70s. Um, and so, they’re basically this sort of case study of kind of like almost like the worst case scenarios for transit.
It’s just like, let’s just run a whole experiment in laissez-faire, you know, private transit and see if you can deliver private transit to modern cities in a automobile-dominated society. And the answer is, you can’t. You can’t provide any quality service.
And so that’s the Baltimore and Atlanta story. Um, and you know, there you have kind of the, the pickup. By the time they pick up really, you know, public ownership in the 1970s, there’s, you know, they’re just very auto-dominated cities, both the inside of cities and the suburbs themselves.
So the unsubsidized private transit companies were basically the way to lose like everything, right?
But then the next pair, right, is, um, Chicago and Detroit, right? So there you had basically public takeovers relatively early, I think Detroit’s 1920s and Chicago’s
1940s. And you think, okay, well, public ownership, that’ll take care of the problem, right? They still had, you know, uh, streetcar lines and, you know, they had robot- relatively compared to today, robust ridership.
So you think, great, you know, ’cause we all think, oh, public ownership, that’s the solution. Except that those companies were, the public companies were created with the idea that they would receive no external public subsidies or pay as you go, and that did not work. Now, they did get some tax relief and things like that, but what you found out pretty quickly, certainly in Detroit to an extreme, uh, level, but Chicago, ’cause it had more robust ridership, that, um, you know, you, you can’t do it. It doesn’t work. Public transit ownership is an insufficient condition for, um, uh, for good quality transit because every year, you know, you’ve got your capital costs, you have your operating costs, right?
Um, maybe you have pressure for new line extensions or things like that. You can’t do that out of fares. And even when they… you’re able to raise, and if you start raising fares, which a city like Chicago did, and Detroit did to a certain extent, but Chicago did, to try to cover their losses, you know, you start alienating your riders, right?
And so what happened in those cities, in Detroit and Chicago at different times and so forth, is they cut service.
You know, so you, you… like Chicago is a classic example of this. You know, mid-’40s, they, it’s a public takeover, um, and even though they did everything they could, they got rid of their expensive streetcar system, right? They actually did modernize the El, which is a really neat system, right? To kind of save downtown the Loop.
Um, those modernization projects, um, were not sufficient to drive the ridership growth they needed, and they, ’cause they ripped out the entire streetcar network, and they went to buses. Those were still expensive to maintain.
Labor costs were enormous after the war. The city residents went for cars big time in Chicago, and so year after year after year, you have slashing of, um, you know, routes over… like, you know, so what’ll happen, right? The classic thing that happened in city.
And by the way, this is very similar to today. I just want to be clear. Now, we have insufficient subsidies. Let’s just be honest, right? ‘Cause I don’t think there’s an enormous difference between an unfunded public transit system and a poorly funded transit system, ’cause they’re gonna make similar choices, right? So what do they do? You know, they started cutting overnight routes. You’re like, well, not so many people ride that. But you know, why? They did actually when it was a good system, the owl routes, you’ know, the late-night routes.
When you start cutting that, someone starts saying, “Well, you know, I work at night. I gotta buy a car. You know, it’s not gonna work for me,” right? Or weekends, right? Oh, you know, we’re gonna s- focus on commute, right? The commute times, right? ‘Cause we can really pack our buses. We get our numbers, right? Well, you know, if you’re somebody who wants to, live without a car and, suddenly there’s no weekend s- or very limited weekend service, not great, right? So what these public poorly f- or unfunded in this period, basically unfund- or unsubsidized public systems did was they cut service, right?
Um, they raised fares, and they drove off a lot of their ridership, of remaining ridership, uh, over the decades. So that’s that pair. And then the last pair, I try to, be a little more optimistic. You know, uh, this is, um, Boston, San
Francisco, in this era of like kind of, you know, transit ridership collapse. And believe me, Boston, San Francisco had massive ridership losses. But the difference was that they got cash from city or state government, or both, right? Or they’re where they served. And so you had-
That was the funding. What’s that? That was the funding piece. Or- Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so you think, oh, well m- and money really matters because what they were able to do and, you know, i- in a city like San Francisco is, you know, they did rip out a bunch of streetcar lines, but they maintained a bunch. Same in Boston, right?
They, um, they, uh, did service improvements through things like a, um, electrified buses. The trolley buses were maintained, which were really good for San Francisco’s hills and things like that. Um-
Boston also was able to expand its system with public subsidies in the post-war years, one of the few systems that did that. And here’s another interesting thing, which I think we are literally living through right now.
They ran a lot of empty buses and trams for a long time. And people would come there and they’d be like, you know, transportation experts, they would go and they’d say,
“Oh, you know, kinda empty off-peak.” You know, this kind of thing. Like, you should really, you know, cut back this service, right? But what they understood fundamentally is that if you’re talking about transit riders and what they want, it’s like you start making people wait an hour or half an hour for…
Forget it. You know, like that’s the kind of thing, it’s just, it, it doesn’t w- you know, then, then a car is really fast, even with the parking and all the other stuff you have to pay.
It’s like that’s people’s money out of their pocket is their time, right? And so what they were able to do was kind of like provide that bridge capital funding until, and operating funding in many cases, until the federal government came in in the late ’60s and has provided the lion’s share of the capital funding, at least till today, right? You know, um, has provided the capital funding to basically reinvest in their systems.
So it’s not like some, like people love transit more in Boston or things like that. They got in early. They s- definitely started early in subsidizing transit, um, and as a result, they kind of were able to sustain these large systems, uh, much better systems over time. Some of it’s just luck, right?
And when transit came back around, like in the gas crunch in the ’70s, right? Or the kind of back to the city movement where people wanted to live downtowns again or, or near downtowns. They were able to serve that marketplace, and they didn’t have to build entire new systems to meet that demand, which is a big, you know, it just allows you to be more reactive.
So I think that, that kinda cushion. And we can look today, right, again, just to come back around, it’s like, you know, the cities that have kind of done the bailouts, finally Chicago got a bailout after cutting a lot of its service, which is great.
That’s terrific to see. But, you know, the cities that have gotten bailouts, like New York, Boston to a certain extent, San Francisco, we’ll see, you know. But they’ve gotten enough to maintain their service through the pandemic declines.
So you got a shot. If you just pull that s- if you pull that service out, you know, people have to make, they have to get to those jobs. They have to work or their families, right?
You’re basically s- telling them they have to drive. You know, out of a- all the, the cases there, uh, from those different communities, I, I think the, the two that are the most interesting are Detroit and Chicago, um, because I could almost see…
I, I can see or understand the, the extremes of, uh, y- you know, we’re, we’re just going to let this private network operate, and we don’t care. We’re, we’re going to just shrug our. shoulders at’ it, like, you know, Christian was explaining with, with Palm Tran, and I’m, I’m sure many communities across the country. And then. I, I can see the, the other extreme with, uh, San Francisco and with Boston, but it’s that group, tho- those two in the middle where they say, “We know this is important, but not important to n- to fund it.”
It w- is there, is there something deeper there for- Yeah, I mean, I think- … our, our listeners? Part of the difference is, I mean, you know, Detroit is the Motor City, so like, you know. I mean, it was the… You didn’t need a plot or something, you know. Like, it was also- Fair … you know, it was a, a very, spread out city. It, you compare it to Chicago in terms of the density of neighborhoods. I mean, you get back to planning, right? Um, a lot m- you know, think about Chicago’s growth, so much of it was before zoning, whereas Detroit had a lot more, zoned, low…
You know, it, the, the kind of, um, the density gradient falls out really fast in, in Detroit.
So I think you had much more, uh, like you had higher percentages of multifamily housing near transit. in Chicago because so much of it developed earlier, right, in the 19th century around those, those stations. Detroit really, if you kinda think about Detroit, it’s, it’s really the quintessential 20th century city, right? Um, and then it’s so related to the automobile and so forth.
But I will say this, I mean, you know, there’s a lot of individual factors. Um, the, definitely, which I mentioned before, the real estate community was really important in the Loop. That concentration of, um, you know, of financial, uh, companies and so forth, and corporate headquarters, and the owners of those buildings, that’s a big factor, by the way. I just wanna be very clear. In every city where transit is maintained, whether it’s New York or
Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, you had this enormous, um, kind of service industry, uh, corporate headquarters and things like that. And so they become a big lobbying group, along with citizens who like transit, uh, to basically preserve, um, the, the transit networks.
Whereas in a Detroit, I mean, you definitely had, you know, um, department stores and some corporations, but, you know, you can look, GM moves out.
You know, like they, they move their corporate headquarters out. I think it’s Woodward. You know, they, they move out of the, the central city pretty early. Uh, and so I think that’s, those are some of the differences, uh, there. Um, but yeah,
I, I don’t know if that explains everything you’re looking for there. I, I definitely think that… I,
I think also, I would say geographical elements are really important here, like large Midwestern cities where there weren’t, like Detroit, where there weren’t physical barriers, uh, to automobile ownership.
Decentralized extraordinarily rapidly. But you talk about, like, the Loop and the Chicago River and the lake and so forth, right? Like, those Midwestern cities have, like, much more kind of like sprawling room.
Whereas, you know, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, a lot of these cities, um, they have geographical constraints for moving 100,000 cars into the central city, right? And they have geographical constraints on setting up new business centers outside of the downtown.
Right? Because either land’s developed or something like that. You can’t just set up a new uptown area very easily, whereas Kansas City, totally happened, right? You can just kind of decentralize in this way.
So I think that’s another factor there. Were there any other cities that you considered to be a part of the book, they just didn’t make the cut? Or, uh, you know, I know you landed on these six, and they have their, their groupings for a reason. I,
I’m curious if there’s, uh- They’re, they’re nicely representative. I mean, they had good archival materials. I mean, you, you know, not every city collects materials, or you can get materials for the transit companies, right? Um, so Chicago has a very deep, you know, historical material as you know.
Um, Boston, Baltimore, you know, and so forth, so they, they have materials that were widely available. But, but I’ll be honest, I, I think, you know, having looked at other cities too,
I think it, the pattern holds. Uh, like Christian was mentioning, you know, about Florida and so forth. I mean, once you’ve seen one, eh, they all kinda, they all kinda look the same. Any cities, you know, the… I would say, you know, most American cities, the vast majority of American cities waited to, for the private transit collapse to happen, to go in and buy the distressed asset, and then try to reconstruct a tran- which we’ve been trying to do since the ’60s, right? Try to reconstruct transit neighborhoods, and, you know, transit ridership, right? Since this era, we’ve been trying for decades. Uh, even, though we kind of unwi- they let, those cities let it all unwind, right? Um, for decades.
Um, and then, you know, you have the few cities that, you know, basically, um, uh, basically, um, you know, had this public ownership or deeply subsidized public ownership model. I mean, there are interesting, like, exceptions, like
Portland, Oregon, which basically, you know, was kind of a late, uh, late bloomer. And I’d say San Diego too. You have cities that are kind of like l- you know, let the private companies, you know, devolve, but then through regional taxation systems, whatever it is, right?
Where, and also good, good, I think, transit line design, like put the line, you know, in existing corridors where there’s actually people and things like that. They’ve actually had suc- you know, some pretty good success. Seattle, I think, has had some success in this too. It’s not a… I would say the private transit decline, or, or, or the poorly subsidized transit decline, or unsub- I should say unsubsidized transit decline, it’s not a death sentence forever, right? If you can find the, you know, the, the funding. And I,
I guess that’s, you know, probably a lot of people pick up this book, they’re sort of like, they wanna see more maps of transit lines or, or old pictures- … of transit.
And like, it’s really just like a study, I mean, to a great extent, it’s a study in transit finance because form, and there’s a great, uh, historian named Carol Willis who, who writes about skyscrapers, but she says, “Form follows finance for skyscrapers.”
And form follows finance for transit too. And, you know, what the fare was, what the su- underlying subsidy, how much the subsidy was, to a great extent, you know, when it, when overlaid with the zoning, you know, kind of, and the macro kind of economics of a city, right? When you kind of put those things together, which is what the book really does, it looks at, you know, the, the underlying kind of institutional and subsidy structure. It looks at the zoning and planning initiatives, right?
Um, and it also does consider things like, are you a lucky city like New York, which is like absorbing, you know, global capital, right? But, you know, the, without any of those things, it’s very hard to have a successful transit system, right?
You can’t, you know, i- if you don’t have the underlying subsidies, it’s, it’s not really… There, there’s this dream, this constant, you know, just like a constant dream that, you know, the transit, high quality transit can really pay for itself. And, you know, I guess in certain parts of the world, you know, definitely tran- you, there are examples of transit systems which collect, you know, a significant amount of their operating ca- and capital needs through fares. But it’s pretty rare, and it’s usually in places that are not, like, low-density metropolises like ours, right? So in cities that, in city regions that, you know, have significant car ownership, for sure, you need a lot of sort of capital, uh, from external sources. ‘Cause, you know, what are you gonna collect?
You know, how much are you gonna, like, you know, how… It’s like, you know, we’re up to thr- almost $3 in New York per ride. I mean, that’s, you know, if you’re buying on an individual basis, you’re talking $6 a day.
You know, we’re, we’re probably pretty close to the max of what it can do. Now we have, like, fare fares. But, you know, like fare fares, this idea, like, it’s not that the money’s going away. It’s not we’re saying, “Oh, you can ride for half.”
It’s, you can ride for half because the New York City government has decided to cover that half that you’re not paying. If you say, “You can ride for half, and we’ll just, like, take the hit,” well, something’s gotta give, you know?
In that whole thing. Yeah. A- a- and, you know, to, to your point, it’s, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s difficult because transit agencies, when there is, uh, economically challenged times, then it’s like, don’t raise the fares because, you know- Right … people need more subsidy. Transit is- Right
… essential, and, you know, they’re already very constrained with, you know, all the inflation, everything else going up. But then, uh, they also come back and say, “Hey, transit agency, hey, today’s reality-
Right … be more efficient.” Right. “Provide more efficiency, uh- Serve more areas … bring the cost downs.” Yeah. Yeah. A- a- a- a- and it’s like that those two things that don’t kinda go together. You know, sometimes when it comes to, you know, transit planning and where routes go, and the type of service that is put, put out there, um, you know, sometimes the, the political space comes in and it’s like, make a network that is more coverage with every commissioner districts gets a little bit of a bus. But then- Right … the bus is every two hours, and it’s like- Right … yeah, but at least they have something. But that’s not something that actually, you know, is useful or helps people, you know, truly have access to what the community has to offer. But then, then it’s like, well, show me your ridership ride, uh, numbers.
N- or nobody’s riding your system, maybe we should kill your system. Yeah, but we’re, we’re not building a system for ridership where really people wanna go to. Sometimes- For coverage … it’s a lot for coverage. So it’s like you’re not measuring us, um, uh, correctly. So a lot of those decisions that are taking place that, you know, again, the agencies operate in an environment with factors that are outside of their control. So it’s like- Yeah … somebody’s always pulling the rug under their feet and saying like,
“Hey, you know, figure it out.” It, it, it’s just very difficult, uh, to do, uh, transit like that. But I, I wanna ask you- Yeah … about race and, like, this white f- um, uh, flight in regional politics, uh, uh, affected who supports transit. It, uh, because, you know, we still have even today, you have people pro-transit and understanding why it is important, and people against it, and they’re like, “No, no, no, just kill everything. Let’s build more highways and, and let people figure it out.” Could you, could you- One more lane … speak a little bit more about that? Yeah, one more lane. Like, could you add one more lane?
Or increase travel speed- Yeah … let people go 100 miles per hour now. Yeah, I mean, the, uh, you know, again, this is sort of where, where sort of history and transit sort of intersect in interesting ways.
I mean, i- you know, it’s weird to think about transit this way but, you know, before the 1920s, transit was a tool of social mobility, honestly, higher class status to a great extent in American cities. Like, if you had the money to ride transit, that means you could ride a little further out to these streetcar suburbs, and, like, that was the middle class dream, right, in that era.
And so m- almost all urban people were transit users or pedestrians, right? I mean, there are a few people with carriages or things like that, or hobbyists with cars.
Oh, sure. High status, mostly white, you know, um, that was transit, or working class white neighborhoods, things like that. Um, you then what happens in the US, right, is you have the great migration northward, beginning a little bit before World War
I, but certainly World War I and onward, where you have the great migration of African American families, uh, to the North. Plus you have the Puerto Rican migration in the 1940s and ’50s as well, uh, to New York, a few other cities, uh, Chicago, and so forth. Um, and during… So what, what really happens is that the, the white majority in, like, the 1920s, uh, which has the higher, you know, social mobility, access to better jobs, right, and neighborhoods and so forth, they go hard on cars, right? They’re the first to really get access cars. I mean, you know, definitely African Americans were able to buy cars. There was a Black middle class.
But at scale, we’re talking about, um, the massive sort of, you know, movement towards automobiles among the white majority, uh, of the United States, and also the movement out beyond the streetcar lines, right? So the car enabled people to move beyond where the streetcar had run.
And as soon as basically… And, you know, the, the numbers, the crashing numbers in transit ridership mask the fact that, you know, there were new riders to transit in the ’20s and ’30s, African American riders, right?
And they’re using transit at relatively, you know, similar rates as working class people had always used it. But what’s happening is the, the, the cars are emptying out, right? Um, and, you know, there was this white flight from not just neighborhoods that were transit rich, but also from transit itself.
Uh, people didn’t want to be in mixed company on transit. There’s that for sure. The South, of course, imposed Jim Crow to separate people within cars.
But, you know, it was definitely an uncom- it was well known to, there were a lot of white people who didn’t want to ride because now you had mixed re- it was probably one of the most mixed places in American society, were streetcars in the North, right?
Uh, for a, for a brief era. But increasingly, you know, people, uh, uh, uh, white people basically, uh, abandoned mass transit. And so when you end up, and it doesn’t take long. You know, we’re talking about ’20s. It’s, it’s not a majority in cities who are riding, who have their own cars yet, but ’30s and ’40s, it’s a majority of people. Even within cities and also cities and suburbs together, they don’t have, they don’t use transit anymore, and they have cars.
And so politically, when you go to voters and you say, you know, “Let’s create a transit agency,” or the people who are elected, they’re like, “We don’t care about that. You know what we want? We want expressways.” Or I’m doing a book on one-way streets. We want one-way streets that will speed cars through cities.
That’s the priority. Get the streetcars off the street, right? So I can motor my way through, you know, put progressive signals, right? You know, there’s a great quote I recent- ran across recently.
Like, you know, when they did the one-way streets and the lights in Baltimore, it was like you could cross the entire downtown and a nor- major northern neighborhood in, like, eight minutes. It was like without stopping. You know, they basically, yeah, it’s fascinating stuff. So, you know, that was became the political priority. So you say, well, why didn’t
Detroit, you know, get transit, uh, subsidized transit? They had public ownership, but because they’re like, we don’t, the drivers didn’t want to pay for it because it would come out of general taxation, right? Or some kind of taxation.
So once the majority doesn’t want, doesn’t use transit, you know, you can’t be like, well, it’s like schools. You’re like, well, my kid, goes to public school, so I’ll support that, right? Or it’s not like water. Everyone uses water. We want to see it as a public utility. But I don’t think the public, when they became majority, you know, drivers, I don’t think they saw it that way anymore.
They’re like, this is something for poor people, increasingly non-white people, and I’m not going to support it. And as it went away, right, they’re like, well, they didn’t really have to do anything. It was like Willy
Wonka. You know, it was like, don’t, no, the river. Oh, you know, like, don’t, you know, and they’re like falling in. It’s like, isn’t that a shame?
Oh, transit’s terrible. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, you don’t, you don’t fund it. It’s terrible. And so, you know, you could just kind of like, you really just sort of didn’t have to take action. You just didn’t have to, you know, you could vote against. I mean, there are a lot of votes that took place in American cities from the 20s to the 60s on like, should we take over the system? Should we create a rapid transit system?
And in almost all those cases, they fail, right? And so, you know, could we create a system that would compete with a car? And in almost every instance, they’re like, no, we’re not going to do it. Either they vote against it or they elect politicians whose priority is urban expressways, one-way streets, you know, those kinds of things to basically speed up automobile traffic, not transit.
So, you know, and that’s kind of the world we live in, right? It’s like, you know, we’re kind of watching in not slow motion, right? We’re watching transit companies, which are now public, facing the exact same issue, which is the public, it doesn’t, it’s very hard to get the public very motivated. And the few cities where you can get the public motivated, like a Chicago,
San Francisco to a certain extent, or New York, that’s because a lot of the sections of those cities developed before. the automobile era. They were, had public ownership early, and you have a higher ridership base than is typical.
I mean, again, think about it this way. You know, if 5% of people are using transit, it’s not a, it’s pretty hard to get that political support. And that’s generous in a lot of places, right?
Because that’s what creates the money. The money, because it’s fundamentally transportation, you know, transit funding is political, right?
That’s the issue. Right. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And you got to think about the 5% who are using it in cities now might not be the most financially able to, you know, just go and take time off and go to a county meeting and voice their opinion or- Oh, 100%. Their voices are not heard. The turnout, right, tends to be not great.
And, you know, you don’t need, I guess my feeling is like one of the big myths, I think, one of your questions here is like, you don’t need a plot by the, you know, like you don’t need this plot by GM to do this whole thing. I mean, yeah, there’s like automobile clubs and they definitely push the interstates and all this sort of stuff. But to let the public off the hook is, I think, just, it’s scandalous, right?
Because the truth is this, it’s sort of like people also say like, oh, the UN is terrible. It never does anything. It’s like, do you know how the UN’s structured, right?
There’s a security council where major parties like us can veto anything we don’t like, right? So nothing happens of significance because it’s designed to fail, right? And, you know, that’s what, the UN is weak because we wanted something weak. We didn’t want to give up our sovereignty.
And if transit companies are weak, it’s because city voters, regional voters, state voters, they don’t care about transit and they don’t want it to be coming to their neighborhoods particularly. I mean, that’s another factor. They just don’t want to, they don’t want to be taxed over it. And they don’t see themselves using it. And by the way, even I think a fair number of transit riders are aspirational. You know, like they’re like, as soon as I get my money, like, you know,
I’ll like buy a car, you know? So, you know, I think that all those combined factors lead to very poorly funded transit companies and now public transit companies.
And certainly if you look nationally, you know, where transit sits in terms of like federal funding, I mean, you know, it’s, by the way, let’s just say this, kind of a miracle we have as much as we do. You know, you can say that the, you know, that big cities like New York and Chicago and others in the late 60s and 70s, that we were able to get any transit funding. Wow, like super duper and significant amounts.
And I think one of the great, the new, if there’s a new transit disaster or sad story today, right? It’s that we rebuilt a lot of really actually, you know, world-class in a lot of ways, like a lot of the new streetcar lines or light rail lines or BRT that have been created. I was out in Indianapolis. What an amazing system, right? That they’re building there, right? Or Minneapolis and so forth.
I mean, you know, we’re building these really actually really good systems, right? But their future is cloudy because the operating costs aren’t there. The federal government paid, you know, the lion’s share to build these things. But if there isn’t the long-term operating sources to sustain them, you know, they’ll be cut, cut, cut. I do think I want to mention a positive or sort of interesting example.
I think the streetcar line in Kansas City, which has basically a taxing, a tax associated with it that supports their, it’s a free fare model, but it’s one where they basically set up a vehicle like a taxing vehicle to support that line and expansion. That’s a great model.
Almost never. There’s few examples of that anywhere. But I do think, you know, there, there, you know, the operating part of it, you know, if you’re gonna either keep fares low or zero, you have to figure out, or just keep a system going, you’ve got to figure out what the financial model is, uh, to support it long term.
We’ve had this kind of like, put the grant in, build the thing, you know, build the system. Sometimes they’re great systems, and then we’re sitting there like, eh. Now, they’re not always great systems, but a lot of times they are. And h- if they had the operating funding to offer frequent, fast service, they would do much better.
Right. I- yeah, you’re, you’re gonna need the, the long-term funding source to be able to make it successful. That’s, that’s absolutely true. Uh, it, you mentioned Kansas City. We just recently had Frank White III, the former CEO from
KCATA, on the podcast, and, you know, he described their, y- you know, their financial situation. It w- was and, and probably still is, it, you know, pretty precarious. Even, even though they had, um, you know, some funding for the streetcar, they, they didn’t necessarily have- Right, the rest of the system … yeah, the r- the rest of the system had to be figured out because they went fare-free for- Yeah … you, uh, for a considerable amount of time.
And now I, I think there are some questions about what are we going to do, right? It, it might not be, uh, enough to be able to cover, you know, getting that fare recovery.
Uh, however, it’s, it is some money, right? Well, you know, it was a weird time for free fares to come along. I mean, you know- Mm-hmm … but you don’t, you don’t pick your politics, right? Right.
But, like, I mean, here you had one of the worst, like, you had the worst transit decline, ri- ridership decline since, like, I don’t know, the ’40s, right? Mm-hmm. And then the politics were suddenly like, “And it should be free.” And you’re like,
“Wow.” You know, like, you know, 10 years ago, that would be a different conversation. But it was like, you know, you, you, you combine, like, massive ridership loss with free fares, and it’s like, well, s- where are you gonna get the money? Like, where are you, you know? And so I think to the extent, like for instance in New York, it’s the city government is gonna come up with that cash.
Okay. I mean, long term, you don’t know, right? We saw with DC and maybe si- Kansas City, it’s like, you know, that’s depending on a city government right now for annual operating support, not a great bet. Right. Not a great, especially in time of work from home.
You know, every downtown pretty much, including New York, you know, v- high vacancy rates, so much of the, the funding for just city government has come traditionally, or, you know, a very high percentage compared to land area, has come from the central business district. But boy, I was out in the Midwest, woof. Like, when all that stuff is reassessed, you know, the downtown office cores of Cincinnati, you know, Louisville, if it hasn’t already, or, you know, even Indianapolis and places like that, wow.
You know, that’s gonna blow such, if it hasn’t already, blow holes. And Boston’s already facing this, right? You know, where they’re basically gonna have to turn to local homeowners in a bi- much bigger way for their tax results. So if you’re gonna depend on city government, not a great idea. State government, maybe. If the, but the, but again, you’re not gonna get states to endorse this by and large, because they are highly reliant on rural and suburban voters, and those people don’t tr- don’t use transit by and large. I’m not saying, I mean, obviously, there’s Access-A-Ride, there’s all kinds of services. There are, are transit agencies in rural areas.
But- Right … the idea that you’re gonna get state governments to make up that missing funds, I don’t, I just don’t think the politics is there yet. Could change. It could change.
So yeah, we have to be realistic at some level. I think the fare fares model is a pretty good one. You know, it’s like if you really can’t afford it, you know, you necess- shouldn’t necessarily be criminalized for that. And you find like a city government, we’re not doing fare, free fares, but we’re doing fare fares. And so, you know, $3 is a lot each way. It’s a lot. $1.50 is like global standard, I feel like, for a transit ride.
Like in Europe, I feel like that’s more on par than $3. So then you find a pool of money to kind of make that work. But in most cities, you just don’t have the money, you don’t have the ridership, and um, yeah, it’s a, it’s a tough one to sustain. Absolutely.
Um, uh, so Nick, w- we’re coming to the end of our podcast here. Yeah. And we have a couple recurring segments that we like to go through with our guests. One of them is rapid fire, and, and you, uh, already hinted at that earlier. But
I’m going to just shoot a couple questions your way, and you give me the first thing that comes to your mind. All right. Uh- Ready? Do you wanna shoot… Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I’m ready. I’m ready. All right. Favorite transit system? Well, I mean, outside New York, uh- Outside New York … outside New York, I definitely love the L. I think it’s an absolutely fascinating, uh, piece of infrastructure. I’m certainly glad. Also, the Boston system too, the old streetcars,
I do love those. Excellent. Yeah, great choices. What’s the most misunderstood moment in American transit history? What do people get wrong? I think back to the great streetcar conspiracy myth. They have this idea that it’s like a one-shot kind of like, you know, my- you know, the, the, this, these com- the, these auto-oriented companies come in and blow out all of American transit. And I think if you read the book, you’ll find out that it’s a much more slow-moving disaster, right? And it happens outside of where those, those automobile-oriented companies are, are operating. It’s part of a shift in American politics and culture and planning. It’s much more complex, uh, than some kind of conspiracy.
All right. What is one city, uh, it, it could be, uh, you know, one of the, the six that you, you talk about in the book or, or another one, but w- what’s one city that has a good transit history more people should know?
Oh, that’s interesting. You know, Boston’s a kind of fascinating one. I mean, I think one reason I love it is it’s like a muse- a rolling museum of, like, American transit.
Right? It just shows you that like there’s probably… You know, often we’re like, “Oh, this system doesn’t work anymore. The old…” But, but… Or, and then we gotta get rid of it. Actually, what you can see, why
I think Boston’s so interesting, is you’re like, each era of the transit they developed, it’s still around and actually functional. Like I mentioned, like Mattapan, you have like old PCC streetcars running. And you know what? There’s people who really like that system, and they still use it and so forth. Or you have like old, kind of more traditional streetcar or more, or
I should say modernized streetcars. They’re still running. But you also have heavy rail, you know, express trains, and you have buses. And until recently, you had trolley buses. I mean, it’s just like everything you could imagine, and I think the everything…
A- a- why I love Boston is it’s sort of the everything bagel of transit, right? You know, it’s like everything you could ever imagine. You know, like, if you wanna just understand the development of American cities, you know, the development of zoning, of streetcar suburbs, right, the downtowns of transit, different transit modes, and so forth, so. Excellent.
I love that. And finally, bus or rail, what do you prefer? I’m agnostic. Um, as most transit riders, I prefer the thing that comes quickly.
Okay. Okay. I, I, I mean, I’ve done- What if we- I’ve ridden- What if we tried to force you to answer? I, I think there are… You know, Toronto has a great bus system. You know, a lot of cities have very g- I’ve always been really impressed with Canadian bus systems in terms of- Hmm … frequency, uh, cleanliness, uh, routes, you know, has a grid system.
Um, but I think the greatest transit systems are the one that are frequent and fast. That’s it. And if you can get a bus system to do that, great. And you can get a train line to do that, but, you know, uh, trains are cute, but if they’re not frequent and fast, it’s not a good system.
And same with buses, right? If they’re not frequent and fast, not a good system. So I would say that the one that is coming right now, that’s the one I love. And I don’t really, personally, I do not care that much…
Is I’ll get on some… I, I’m sure you have when you travel, like I’ll get on something old. Like this idea, for instance, there’s this often this kind of like fetishization of like the new.
Oh, it’s gotta be like sparkl- Mm-hmm. Well, that’s, I think, happened with the EVs, right? The EV buses and things like that. It’s like, it’s gotta be new and high tech, and all this other stuff. I’m like, diesel bus, whatever. You know? Like it’s still more efficient than like 50 cars on the road. You know, like I’d rather see like, you know, 20, you know, diesel buses on a route than five EVs that can barely support the thing, and I think most riders feel that.
They’re like, “Yeah, they’re not great, whatever.” But I think that, you know, that’s the, the, the crux of good transit service there. Yeah. Right. So indifferent on the technology, just- Indifferent … be frequent and get me there.
Yeah. I love it. And, and fast. And fast. Yeah. It’s gotta be like within the, the realm of like, you know, car speed. Right. You can’t ask people to wait like twice as long, three, or, or, you know, to spend three times as long on a transit option. That’s just mean.
Right. Yes. Uh, it is a completely unfair balance there towards- … the automobile. So Nick, a- another, uh, segment that, that we have along with the rapid fire is our, uh, key takeaways that, um, you know, we take, uh, we extract from our conversation.
Sure. And I’m gonna go over some, uh, that we wrote down here, and then at the end you let me know if we kinda like, uh, you know, hit the mark or if you wanna add or change any of those. Uh, so our first kato- uh, key takeaway is, um, zoning, pro-single family homes, parking, and restrictions on manufacturing.
Mm-hmm. So the, the other one is until 1960s, uh, cities in America were gifted a transit network that was privately built- Mm-hmm … until that point. Um, another key takeaway is highly regulated, um, you know, um, automobiles caused downfall of American streetcar companies. So all these, uh, cars, you know, being, uh, a little more affordable, more people going into, into cars, that’s what, you know, uh, caused, uh, some of the decline with the streetcar and some of the transit systems.
Oh, big time. Yeah. Uh, 19, 1960s and the ’70s, the federal government steps in to provide funding, um, but by then it was kinda like too late because there’s a lot of the, uh, transit, public transportation operations that start collapsing in many places with the introduction of the car. Yeah. Which of course is connected to the decline.
Uh, and then the last one, uh, that we wrote down is the streetcar myth has some, uh, truth to it, but it’s more complex than just the conspiracy lets on. So cities wanted buses to speed up traffic. Uh, that’s not the entire, uh, just picture there with that myth. I- is there anything else you want to add to some of those key takeaways from our conversation? No. I mean, I think that, I think you, you captured it for sure. Awesome. And, and as we’re wrapping up, what is one lesson from transit history- Mm-hmm … that agency leaders should keep in mind today?
Start with the riders and the neighborhoods in which they live. I think that’s the most important thing because 100 years ago, streetcars that served neighborhoods that had people in them, lots of people and mixture of uses, they did pretty well. Even today, when you look at the successful bus rapid transit, like in Richmond, some other cities like that, um, they, they have this, it’s the same thing. They run frequent good service where people live. And I think as long as your transit is, is, or, or your, your upgrades are improved by where they live now, not where they’re going to, you think they’re gonna live.
Like, like I think, you know, you look in Minneapolis and other cities where they’re doing these BRTs to, you know… And even Indianapolis, some of their new lines kind of go out like really far into like sort of suburban areas.
The politics are good for that, but your ability to collect people is the, one of the most important, is the most important factor. So I would say focus all your resources, your limited resources, uh, where pe- People live and, wherever possible, do all your transit planning around where your riders are, not where you think your riders will be.
Because there’s been decades of transit consultancy work predicting ridership in certain areas, but when you’re looking at such a car-driven society, you know, achieving that is not, has, has often not happened. So
I think that’s, that’s what you learn is follow the people, follow the money. Yeah. It, it, that’s a great point. Um, a- and, you know, my advice is for a lot of transit leaders to definitely look into this, um, history so they can have that, uh, whole understanding of w- how we came where we are today, right? Oh, yeah. And it, and it helps understand of, you know, what would be some of those decisions that is gonna help transit be in a better place- Well, no one’s- … uh, leader tomorrow … his- history is unavoidable in this field. It does. 100%.
And it repeats its… Just because it happened once, the collapse, it’s happening again. Like, you have these sort of cycles, so definitely plan ahead. A- and the last thing is, is, uh, uh, Dr., uh, Nick, where can people find The Great American Transit
Disaster, uh, book, a- and, and follow your work? Yeah, so, uh, you can definitely, uh, find it on Amazon. That’s easy. Or the University of Chicago Press site.
And also, um, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so Nicholas Dagen Bloom, uh, Hunter College, so, um, and I repost a lot of transit-related stuff and things like that, so, you know. Um, but, uh, yeah. There you go.
Excellent. Well, thank you again for, uh, being with us- My pleasure … on Stop Requested. This has, uh, been a, a great episode, and thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us and, and our audience.
Um, so yeah, thank you for the conversation. It’s always fun to talk about transit, always interesting. Of course. Well, thanks a lot. Thank you. And for our listeners, we’ll, uh, hope to have you again, uh, next
Monday during a, a new episode of Stop Requested.