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@LeeHinAlexandria:
Actually, the Urban Mass Transit Act had nothing to do with the inability of transit operators to discontinue routes. For the most part, Public Service Commissions in each state regulated the abandonment of services.
In fact, the decline of transit can be traced more easily to other policy changes, including the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which lowered the cost of driving (in time), policies by the Federal Housing Administration which kept monies out of inner-city neighborhoods, and other policies which encouraged decentralization and auto-dependency, including, as Bianchi points out, many zoning ordinances.

Streetcars stopped plying the rails in the District of Columbia on January 28, 1962. Over two years prior to the Urban Mass Transit Act. In many other cities, trolleys had already disappeared.

by Matt Johnson on Jan 29, 2010 4:35 pm
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Actually, World War II provided a last hurrah for privately operated transit in the United States. In 1942, American automobile manufacturers suspended the production of private automobiles in favor of war material, while the federal government imposed gasoline rationing to limit Americans' use of the cars they already owned. Left without an alternative, Americans turned to mass transit in record numbers.

So what happened?

Following the war, transit ridership quickly collapsed. Not only were cars again available and affordable, but so were suburban houses, built so far from central employment areas and scattered so sparsely that mass transit was simply impractical. Moreover, the construction of new roads, including federally-financed expressways, encouraged automobile commuting, whether by driving alone or in a carpool. As a result, transit ridership dropped from 17.2 billion passengers in 1950 to 11.5 billion in 1955. By 1960, only 8.2 percent of American workers took a bus or streetcar to work, with another 3.9 percent commuting by rapid transit.

Ridership had gotten so low that many transit agencies had closed routes (see your examples above).

So what happened?

Government, due to the ongoing mass suburban sprawl (I remember when Tysons Corner was still farm land.) got involved, reopened many of the closed routes with various forms of transit. This has led to the failed socialized transit model.

by LeeHinAlexandria on Jan 29, 2010 5:19 pm • link • report