Our featured writer today is Jake Berman. Let’s give him a warm welcome!
If you would like your talent featured in the Authors in Our Midst series or Artists in Our Midst series, send me an email message. Don’t be shy! I have no more Artists or Authors posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.
The Lost Subways of North America
by Jake Berman
Thanks to WaterGirl for giving me the space. I’ve been a Balloon Juice reader and lurker since Cole was a Republican. I’m glad to be able to give back to the jackals.
This book exists to explain, through maps that I’ve illustrated, just why public transit is so bad in North America. If you go to Europe or East Asia, the buses and the trains are fast, frequent and functional. That’s not the case in North America. The Kyiv Metro – in the middle of a full-on war – runs more frequent service than the BART subway in San Francisco. It wasn’t always like this. Even big cities now known for their sprawl used to have comprehensive rail transit networks. LA used to have an electric railway network four times the size of the modern London Underground, and Dallas’s old electric railway system used to extend all the way to Waco, 95 miles away.
I became aware of this history, naturally, because of a traffic jam. A decade and change ago, I had moved from NYC to Los Angeles for work. This was my introduction to traffic hell. On one particularly a hot summer day, I was trapped for half an hour on the 101 Freeway behind a guy in a Jeep with too many bumper stickers. (My commute at the time was less than five miles.) My mind started wandering. Irritated, I said to the empty car, “why doesn’t LA have good public transit?” I couldn’t come up with an answer while in bumper-to-bumper traffic, so I went to the LA Public Library a bit later to do some digging. There, I found an old map of the massive Pacific Electric Railway (also known as the Red Cars), the self-proclaimed “Largest Electric Railway System in the World.” It was news to me that LA used to have the world’s largest electric railway system. I started creating maps of the old Pacific Electric system, using modern design language and typography to illustrate what had been lost.
My LA friends were shocked when they saw the maps. Their usual next question was, “why’d we get rid of it?” The answer, notably, isn’t an automaker conspiracy. The old transit companies were widely reviled for their monopoly power in the early 20th century. Often, the transport monopoly would be combined with an electricity monopoly, as in Atlanta, or a massive real estate developer, as in Los Angeles. But the decline of transit played out differently in every city. The Lost Subways of North America recounts some of those stories, covering 23 metropolitan areas in the US and Canada.
The official book description:
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.
The Lost Subways of North America is on Amazon, Bookshop.org and most other booksellers.
Its official release date is November 3, but if you buy a pre-order copy from me I’ll ship it out a little before the official release date.
The Israel-Hamas War of October 2023 Update
WaterGirl
Hi Jake, welcome, and let us know when you get here!
Jake Berman
I’m here! Happy to take questions about the book.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Obligatory Who Framed Roger Rabbit
WaterGirl
This sounds like an interesting view into the past. Is there any hope for better, going forward? Or maybe that’s for someone else to figure out?
Jake Berman
@Mr. Bemused Senior: GM and other motor vehicle companies did attempt to replace trains with buses, but it’s a better analogy to call them vultures picking the bones, rather than eagles swooping in on healthy prey.
Chip Daniels
In architecture school in the early 80s I did a term paper on the Red Cars and its like you say, that they weren’t actually beloved because they competed with the new sexy automobiles.
I did have the good fortune to be able to venture down into the few remaining tunnels under the Subway Terminal Building (now refurbished as Metro 417, an apartment building).
It was amazing- the offices and bathrooms looked like they had just been vacated a day before except with a thick coating of dust.
Ironically, the last Red Car line was ripped out in 1962 or so while the first planning sessions for what would become the current LA subway system was in 1969 or so.
Chip Daniels
@Jake Berman:
Also too, one of the reasons the Red Cars couldn’t expand was because they were private- they lacked the power of eminent domain to just acquire right of way.
Steve in the ATL
Ordered. Looks like a fascinating read and I love the maps!
Jake Berman
@WaterGirl: Well, it’s kind of a chicken and egg problem. Half of it is the lack of physical transit infrastructure, and half of it is bad land use laws.
I get into this in depth in my chapter on Dallas, but it’s illegal to build the charming small towns of the past in most places in North America. Like, Belfast, Maine has:
You’d have to make major changes to zoning laws to re-legalized this type of old-fashioned neighborhood development.
The way to fix these laws is through the usual mechanisms of politics. These land use laws weren’t handed down on Mt Sinai.
Jake Berman
@Chip Daniels: Even earlier. LA put a subway modeled after the SF Bay Area’s BART to a referendum in ’68. LA’s powers that be felt that they had to keep up with the Joneses.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I just bought my copy.
Baud
I want this so much now.
Ixnay
Looks awesome. Hope you include a shout out to Roger Rabbit!
Ixnay
Looks awesome, hope you included a shout out to Roger Rabbit!
Villago Delenda Est
@Ixnay: You beat me to the Roger Rabbit reference! /shakefist
Jake Berman
@Baud: This is the map of the plan. I cover the story in my book, but if you want to really dig deep, there’s a really great book called Fifty Years of Rapid Transit, now in the public domain, which covers the political backstory and the downfall of the steam-powered subway under 5th Ave.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steve in the ATL: I love about anything with maps. But then again, I was one of those Army guys who relied on maps to get me to where I wanted to go, at 1:50,000 scale!
Villago Delenda Est
@Jake Berman: Interesting that this was killed by the horse pulled streetcar outfits, who, like all incumbents, hate competition.
Gin & Tonic
This sounds awesome – I love this sort of stuff, but spent my youth in a city that has an outstanding, currently-functioning subway system.
Incidentally, since you mention the Kyiv Metro, which I’ve ridden on many occasions, it is known for the world’s deepest metro station. The escalator down can be hair-raising your first time.
NutmegAgain
Factoid: In the ’30s my mom used to be able to take an inter-urban trolley from Cambridge to the beach — North shore or South shore. She said it was $.15, and you would get transfers for free. (She might have misremembered or changed some details, but I clearly remember the conversation we had, late ’70s.) I was astounded, since I had to hitchhike from where we lived to the end of the bus line in Arlington in order to get to Harvard Sq. Thankfully nothing bad happened!
BellyCat
Brilliant, Jake! Can’t wait to read this.
twbrandt
This sounds fascinating! I remember my father telling me you could ride all the way from Detroit to Ann Arbor, 35 miles away, on the interurban. Now it’s stop-and-go on I-94.
Ohio Mom
Is Cincinnati one of the 23? We almost had subway, we built a tunnel in the old canal bed in the early 1900s and then ran out of money. The tunnel is still there, though probably crumbling.
More recently, we voted down funding for a light rail system.
There is one possible bright spot in local public transportation. The bus system is piloting a last-mile van that works something like a cross between a jitney service and a ride share.
There are currently only two neighborhoods with MetroNow service and they aren’t mine so I only know what I’ve read.
Apparently, the van has a route (which you could walk to) but if you want it to come to your door, you can use an app and the van will come to you. Or, on the way home, deliver you to your door. You might have to wait a bit for it though.
All for the low price of $2! If and when my neighborhood is added, I can imagine using the van, for one instance, to the mall to get the express bus downtown. I hate driving and have plenty of time for a slow bus ride.
RaflW
I visited a lost subway station in Madrid. It was really cool. Also toured a generation plant for the electric rail that is disused and beautifully preserved.
Jake Berman
@twbrandt: Not just Ann Arbor. You could take it all the way to Flint, Lake Orion, St Clair and Port Huron.
BUT: The lines were all owned by the old Detroit United Railway, which was an evil monopoly, detested by progressive reformers of the early 20th century. After all, if you didn’t want to patronize the DUR, your options were to walk or ride a horse. (Remember, the automobile was just hitting its stride at the time.)
Ivan X
What a great topic! I can’t wait to read this.
raven
The city of Athens, Georgia boasted a street railway service for forty-five uninterrupted
years, from 1885 to 1930. For all but the first six years, when the small original streetcars were
pulled by mules, the system operated electric-powered streetcars, also known as trolleys.
Jake Berman
@Ohio Mom: It is. Both the old interurban network – which went all the way to Dayton and Lawrenceburg – and the unfinished Central Parkway subway made the book, as well as a discussion of why the 2002 light rail proposal (MetroMoves) fell short.
CarolPW
@Gin & Tonic:
Are you allowed to sit down?
Ivan X
Just ordered my copy.
CaseyL
Welcome, Jake! The book looks like a fascinating read. I wonder how much population growth, and the need to build housing, intersected with abandoning the railways – i think it’s easier to plan roads around neighborhoods than railways, not to mention the attendant civil infrastructure needs. Is that a factor discussed in the book?
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Nothing more dangerous that a Butter Bar with a compass!
kalakal
Welcome Jake! This is so much my sort of thing. Ordered and can’t wait to read.
Moving to the US from Europe was a real shock vis-a-vis public transport, it’s a completely different mind set
Jake Berman
@CaseyL: Ironically, it’s the other way round. Many of the old railway companies made their real money developing real estate, something that the Hong Kong MTR and Japan Rail still do today.
One big reason they don’t build old-fashioned towns around train stations in the 21st century is that it’s usually banned by local law – something I cover in great detail in my chapter on Dallas.
If you want to build an old-fashioned town center like this one in Pleasantville, NY, you have to dramatically change most local land use laws. To list a few things that are banned in most places:
All these things are fixable, but it’s going to take a lot of good, old-fashioned state and local politics to fix.
frosty
This post is timed perfectly! First, I need to read this book since I’ve been a railfan and interurban fan for half my life. It sounds really interesting.
The timing? In the 1980s, I researched and wrote a history of the Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis Electric Railraod, which ran from 1907 to 1935. About the time I completed it, a definitive history* was published by an author who was the acknowledged expert, and who had ridden it in the 1930s. I even met and talked to him!
I set the whole idea of publishing aside for over 30 years but I’ve recently thought I should try to get it published so all my work doesn’t just disappear. Can any of the Balloon-Juice authors give me some advice on how to proceed? I need an editor or agent or someone to help me decide if it’s worth more effort. I could also use some advice on how I should format it and send it out.
Thanks!
* Every Hour On The Hour by John E. Merrikan
Delk
Nice! I remember the Block Club Chicago article. The one major consideration when we were looking for our new place was a Brown Line stop within walking distance.
sab
Just preordered it as an e-book, and yay! it will be available on non-Amazon platforms.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Many of the current(and proposed) light rail lines here in LA follow the old Red Car and maybe Yellow Car lines since the right-of-ways still exist.
Mai Naem mobile
Ordered a copy. I find this stuff fascinating and I have a couple of friends who are big transportation nerds who will also enjoy this read. In my next life I want to be a city planner or transportation engineer.
dc
Sounds wonderful! Just ordered a copy from my local bookstore.
Maxim
Hey Jake, thanks for sharing your book with us. I just ordered a copy.
Jake Berman
@frosty: I’d try putting a proposal together and to send a proposal and a couple sample chapters to academic publishers. There’s also a few railway specialty publishers like Motorbooks. If you email me (jake at 53studio.com) I’m happy to forward you a copy of the proposal I used.
(edited your email address so the bots won’t get it and turn your email into spam city. WG)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jake Berman: As a kid in Detroit, I barely remember the old street cars, running on tracks, with these poles that connected to the wires overhead. By the time, I remember clearly, the tracks had been ripped out buses had taken over.
Now I live within walking distance of a Metra stop in Chicago. It’s amazing.
JaySinWA
@twbrandt: There was an “Interurban” from Seattle north to Everett WA. Much of the right of way is currently the Interurban Trail.
https://snohomishcountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/9684/Interurban-History
Along with a number of others in the state.
https://www.american-rails.com/washinterhstry.html
Lyrebird
@Jake Berman: Thanks very much for writing this book!
I am not sure I should read it, bc there is too much else depressing going on, but rock on!
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I read that Metra is planning service from Chicago to Rockford. The new service would continue on from Elgin, I think.
Jake Berman
@WaterGirl: It requires politics. And specifically, it requires organized pushes in state and local politics. This is happening in California, due to its housing crisis and underused transit systems, but it’s a slow, painful process.
First, you need to reform the bureaucracy that makes it hard to build new transit. In San Francisco, it’s taken 34 years and counting to finish painting bus lanes on Geary Boulevard, SF’s main east-west thoroughfare. It’s been delayed by state and local laws which empower every crank to claim that they have a grassroots coalition – even when the people have explicitly voted for this new transit.
Second, government agencies have to build internal capacity to design and build these construction projects themselves. Nowadays, most of this stuff is outsourced to consultants, and so there’s no institutional knowledge and no incentive to keep costs low. The Boston MBTA learned this the hard way with its recent extension of the Green Line light rail. If you cheap out on your administration, you get ripped off by your consultants.
Third, you have to change land use laws, which are almost always local. Most of the charming, walkable, interesting neighborhoods in the US and Canada were built before 1945 – and since then land use laws have banned that style of construction. Want to build apartments over a store? Nope. Want to build a building that’s not 50% parking by square footage? Nope. Want to put a 3600 square foot building on a 2400 square foot lot? Sorry, no dice.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: Yes, I read that too. I’m on the line that ends up in Ogilvie station rather than in the center of downtown. I’m one stop away from where the Bears are supposed to build their new stadium.
TheOtherHank
I lived in Minneapolis/Saint Paul in the 90s. I was aware that there had been fairly extensive street car system back in the 50s. The story was that the powers that be believed that buses were more flexible and they could re-route bus lines to follow the population more easily than they could build new tracks. Fine, maybe that’s true. But while I was there, there were several instances where roads had to be torn up (all the way down to the dirt) and rebuilt. This caused bus routes to be temporarily rerouted around the road construction. The funny thing was when they’d get down through the asphalt layers and tear out the buried brick roads and street car rails. The bus lines in the 90s still followed the old street car routes from more than 40 years before.
I would assert that population follows transit. An apartment that is walking distance from a subway/streetcar/bus stop is more attractive than an apartment that isn’t.
JAFD
Salutations !
Would like to get autographed copy, Christmas present for friend (can be sent to him direct, perhaps?). Please let me know how. Thanks very much!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Jake Berman: There’s also politics. (Looks at the monorail proposal over the Sepulveda Pass that won’t die.)
Jake Berman
@TheOtherHank: The Cities are a special case. There, a finance bro, a crooked lawyer, and the godfather of the Minneapolis mob carried out a hostile takeover of the old Twin City Rapid Transit network and sold it for scrap. Yes, it really was a conspiracy.
(The finance bro was forced out by his co-conspirators and got away clean; the crooked lawyer was disbarred and jailed; and the Mob godfather beat the charges – only to be jailed for transporting a prostitute against state lines.)
Jake Berman
@JAFD: If you order it from me it will be signed.
Jake Berman
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: The 405 monorail is so, so stupid. Metro needs to do a better job cutting down on its construction costs, though, and actually build institutional knowledge.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl:
@Jake Berman:
Here’s a rough history of Sound Transit’s Light Rail here in three counties in Washington state. While the current project started in 1996, but several proposals were made and failed at the ballot box from 1968 on. The next link should come on line next year, extending from the current north Seattle station to Lynnwood
ETA missing link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Link_light_rail
Dorothy A. Winsor
Jake, did you know that Amazon has you listed as #1 new release in transportation engineering? Go take a screen shot!
Fake Irishman
@Jake Berman:
well done!
This book is going to look good on my shelf next to Christof Spieler’s breakdown of the transit systems of the 50 biggest US cities and Janette Sadie-Kahn’s “Street-Fight”. I live in Houston and am semi active in some transit and planning groups. Despite our rep, we’ve made a lot of quiet progress in transit here over the last 25 years (eg our bus system makes sense and the headways are good by non-NY standards) and our main light rail line was very well planned. But we a long way to go before we can touch Calgary, let alone Madrid or Tokyo.
So happy you are part of this community.
Jake Berman
@Fake Irishman: To Houston’s credit, they built transit where the people were – inside the loop – and their loose land use laws mean that it’s legal to put apartments and businesses near train stations. Midtown, in particular, is an excellent example of what you should be doing.
Alison Rose
This sounds super interesting! And great timing – in the bookish world, November is Nonfiction November, so it’s a perfect time to read this! Gonna see if my library can get the ebook available by or soon after release date.
MisterDancer
Congrats, Jake! As someone working (slowly) on research for a based-on-reality fictional work, I’m coming to understand a bit of how scary it it to take what you “know” and put it out there for the world to read…and give feedback on. :)
No notes here, just thanks!
frosty
@Jake Berman: Thanks! I ordered the book and sent you an email.
Timill
Electric Interurbans and the American People by H Roger Grant seems good so far for other reading.
Is there a good history of the Red Cars? I’ve looked but haven’t seen anything.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Well that’s one Christmas present out of the way. That is, if I can hold off reading it before I give it to my husband! It sounds fascinating! I know he’ll like it. He’d just better let me read it too.
S Cerevisiae
Fascinating stuff! If I remember it correctly one of the good things Jesse did as governor is get the light rail going in the Cities. In retrospect he was better than the odious Pawlenty who followed.
Fake Irishman
@Jake Berman:
Amen!
opiejeanne
My DH’s great grandfather and brother, 1912. Plans of the New York subway hanging on the wall behind them.
https://flic.kr/p/6BjcP
Joy in FL
Unfortunately I am in a hurry this evening, but I have to comment to say that your book looks fascinating!
I just pre-ordered a copy from you, and I signed up for your mailing list.
I’ll come back later tonight and read the post and all the comments. I just had to comment now because this book looks amazing!
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Timill: Not in depth, but lots of pictures, Pacific Electric Red Cars,
there is also one for the Yellow Cars(Los Angeles Railroad).
opiejeanne
@Jake Berman: I wish my dad was still on this earth, because he’d enjoy your book. Or get sad and mad about the loss of the red cars and the other line… blue cars? He grew up in and around Los Angeles in the 20s and 30s. The red car line stopped at the end of his block in Southgate. He talked about riding the red car to the beach and various adventures that he and his brother went on. Of course, he would have had a heart attack if we’d tried doing even one of the things he described, like riding his bike in the river bottoms, all the way from Baldwin Park up to Sierra Madre. I did ride my bike from Temple City to Lacey Park in San Marino and Altadena in the 60s, and the Huntington Library before they put new rules in place so I couldn’t wander around.
opiejeanne
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Yellow Cars! I guess that’s what I was trying to remember.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Jake, I’m a Louisville guy, and have lamented the demise of our system for a lifetime, even though my paternal grandfather’s mother got run over and killed by an electric trolley in 1934, as she was saving one of my great uncles.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think some of the money for Metra’s train service to Rockford will come from the Infrastructure bill passed almost 2 years ago. There is $60 billion for Amtrak and more for local rail capital improvements to ebable orojects lik Metra’s. New York City’s MTA alone is getting $10 billion for its subway and bus system.
divF
I’m looking forward to your book! The history of transit has a lot of personal resonances for me.
I went to high school 1965-1969 in DC (Gonzaga HS), and commuted in from the Virginia suburbs by bus, and occasionally, old-style commuter rail if I could time it right (Union Station is only a couple of blocks away from Gonzaga).
I came to the East Bay to go to college in 1969, with the opening of BART just around the corner, which seemed really futuristic. I didn’t have a car in college, so I used AC Transit a lot.
Starting in the mid-1970s, my dad was an inspector working for Bechtel, who was the prime contractor for the construction of the DC Metro system. He had *lots* of stories.
The traces of the old systems in DC and the East Bay can still be seen. The numbering of some of the various bus lines derive from the predecessor rail systems. I arrived in Berkeley on the AC Transit F bus, which ran along the F Key Route rail line. I was once talking to one of my professors about taking the DC Transit #80 bus from downtown to Gonzaga, and he smiled and said that, in the 1950s when he was in graduate school, he used to take the #80 streetcar along the same route to Catholic University.
Jake Berman
@divF: I bet there are a lot of stories about it. BART and the DC Metro really were experiments, and while some things work well, there were many design decisions (broad gauge track, aluminum trains, primitive automation) that should never had been made.
Jake Berman
@opiejeanne (and @BillinGlendaleCA): I did make a map of the Yellow Car system as well, but it didn’t make the book.
Ruckus
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
I use the Metro system quite often and it is well worth it. The 2 major lines that I use go from the northeast end of the San Gabriel valley to Long Beach and East LA to Santa Monica. Now that the downtown underground stations are open it’s ride to downtown, get off, wait on platform for 5-10 minutes, get on next train and I’m in WLA or Santa Monica, for 35 cents (senior pricing) or 85 cents during rush hour. That’s about 50 miles of travel each way and if there is any traffic (I crack myself up some days) and takes about the same time to drive or ride. Driving would cost me about $18 dollars (or possibly a bit more) at current gas prices.
Geminid
@Jake Berman: I moved away from Northern Virginia some years before the DC Metro was built. Looking back, I think there was a huge lost opportunity; it should have been built in the 1960s. Most of the “Great Society” money went into highways, and the Vietnam War took the rest.
Ruckus
I am old enough (never mind!) that I remember the transit systems in downtown LA in the wayback. But then a lot of the ground that now has homes and freeways and shopping malls on it had citrus trees growing on it. A major highway was 2 lanes and considered major if it needed signal lights at the intersections. One of my aunt/uncles moved twice from freeways being put in. I think the second time my uncle (an engineer) figured out that if he bought a house to replace his first one in the way of a future freeway he could make a nice profit. So he did exactly that.
cain
@Jake Berman: What a wonderful observation. We essentially have laws that allow folks to impede anything that would compete with the status quo.
cain
@Jake Berman: I never understood the broad gauge bit.
In India, mass transport gives literally millions of people every day (per city) the ability to move around. There is no way in hell that it would scale to cars.
Phaedrusonbass
Hello Jake!
Added to my Kindle wish list for purchase later (damn iPad limitation).
I’m addicted to watching train cab videos from all over the world on YouTube. It’s a music writing aid, believe it or don’t – I stole the idea from Devin Townsend. Always looking for good train material.
Good luck on your release!
SiubhanDuinne
This looks wonderful! I look forward to reading it.
Love maps, especially those focused on transportation routes (i.e., more so than physical or political maps — though those are also fascinating, of course).
Jake Berman
@cain: Neither do I. I have no idea why they designed it for broad gauge. None of the contemporary sources give a satisfactory explanation.
Jake Berman
@Geminid: The Metro was a Great Society project, even though it was Nixon who finally put it over the line. The canonical book on the history of the Metro is called “The Great Society Subway.”
JaySinWA
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
@Timill:
Here’s an online history of the Pacific Electric Railway that has a number of reference sources that might help.
https://www.american-rails.com/pacific.html
Sure Lurkalot
I rode the St. Louis streetcar with my grandmother circa 1959-1961. She would take me shopping and for lunch at Woolworth’s.
I served on a steering committee for a suburban neighborhood plan and we discussed reintroducing a street car/trolley line down one of the commercial corridors (we cracked ourselves up sometimes).
We have a decent light (and some heavy) rail system in Denver which is unfortunately limited at this time to the metro area. Like many of these systems, the first mile is problematic for many; the stations can accommodate just so many cars and surrounding neighborhoods are not happy with commuters’ parked cars in front of their houses.
The good news is that they ran free for July and August this summer and starting September 1, they are free for anyone 19 or younger. Getting youth accustomed to public transportation is a great idea, IMHO.
Barry
@TheOtherHank: “I would assert that population follows transit. An apartment that is walking distance from a subway/streetcar/bus stop is more attractive than an apartment that isn’t.”
i saw this in LA in 2008. My hosts had an apartment near a Red Line subway stop. New apartments and condos were displacing the junkyards with great speed.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Coincidentally watched a video on the Cincinnati underground, The Largest Abandoned Subway in the World only a week ago.
Ruckus
@Jake Berman:
Sounds like an interesting book, seeing as how I was born in Los Angeles in the first half of the last century and have worked and owned a business on the edge of what we call downtown LA and lived here in LA country most of my life. (Other adventures and misdeeds not withstanding)
The current Metro system does provide a rather useful amount of public transportation both rail and bus, although it does seem like a lot of people can not be talked out of their cars in any way shape or form. More room for me on the train.
dexwood
Late to the thread and can’t hang around. Old enough to have ridden the Baltimore electric trolleys as a child. I loved them – the power lines overhead, the rails underneath. My grandfather was a trolley driver. The family story is that one day he stopped the trolly near his home, turned to his passengers, said I quit and walked off. He became a Baltimore Sun newspaper printer for the next 40 years.
ColoradoGuy
I found it enraging the BART system was non standard gauge. What, San Francisco is right and the rest of the world is wrong? How does that make any sense?
And an equally idiotic decision to send signaling data through the tracks. So Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Silicon Valley don’t have any electrical engineers? They couldn’t be bothered to pick up a phone and ask a few questions about sending data transmissions through corroded rails? Had they heard about this new-fangled thing called radio?
P.S. Just pre-ordered the Kindle-format book. Look forward to it!
Gin & Tonic
@CarolPW: Sorry, stepped away for quite some time.
I don’t think sitting is forbidden, but nobody does and I wouldn’t recommend it. The escalator goes down 105 meters – it moves quickly.
Here’s a decent image. The article is about construction work on the escalators in the fall of 2020.
prostratedragon
@Jake Berman: Wow, talk about locked-in thinking. Chicago used to have a North Shore line that would go from the city to as far as Racine, so together with the South Shore (still somewhat extant) there was a mass transit route from Indiana to within 30 miles or so from Milwaukee.
This book is like early birthday for me, I’m pre-ordering!
Ruckus
@Jake Berman:
I have traveled quite a bit in Europe and the US and while there are some decent if not up to the times transit systems in the US that I’ve used I’d agree with you that transit systems in many other parts of the world are just a tad ahead of us. (and yes, sometimes that’s a rather big tad) But in my lifetime the automobile was sold as a viable alternative to rapid transit, with no last mile or two involved. Of course with a much smaller population it wasn’t all that bad. But now? We need rapid transit, although the rapid part does not always compute as many think it should. I call it mass transit, a car with a lot of seats. I use the LA Metro train system rather often and it is not bad and I’ve used a lot of those European systems so I have some familiarity with the concept of decent mass transit. I’ve also used mass transit in a number of large US cities and they have often left a lot to be desired, but that was a while back so my take on other US mass transit is possibly/likely out of date.
Dan B
@Gin & Tonic: Definitely acrophobia inducing.
NotMax
Topically related: Harry Beck, the mostly unsung hero of subway maps.
Jake Berman
@ColoradoGuy: Agreed. But BART was a creature of its time, when incompatibility with other transit systems was a feature, not a bug. Thank God they didn’t build a monorail.
WaterGirl
Jake, thanks for doing this today!
I always like to mention to our artists and authors that folks often come back to these thread later in the evening and even the next day.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: Another reason why we can’t have nice things anymore:
There is a lack of public infrastructure in support of public transit. Restrooms in particular.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/where-to-go-when-nature-calls-seattle-has-a-public-restroom-problem/
In our area the lack of public funds for restrooms goes way back to the 70’s at least and private provisions have been cut back since COVID. Restrooms were eliminated as cost centers that were “not the primary function of transit”.
Maintenance and security has become more expensive as vandalism directed at all public transit facilities has risen dramatically here. Ridership went down and vandalism and security incidents went up during COVID.
Brachiator
Coming in briefly to note that I am sorry I missed the discussion and am looking forward to reading the book.
Some of the recent expansions of the Metro rail system here in Southern California have been good, but the changes in ridership and bus scheduling post pandemic are not good.
Martin
Ordered.
As a general non-driver in Orange County, and non-driving advocate in my city, I have opinions on the topic of transit infrastructure. Looking forward to the read. Thank you for writing it.
Timill
@JaySinWA:
Thanks for that – bookmarked for future reading.
stinger
I’ve pre-ordered. I don’t live anywhere near a city with a subway, but this book looks really interesting.
weasel
Shared the story on Mastodon this morning and it might be my most boosted post ever. Has been shared at least twenty times! Definitely a lot of interest in the book from everyone I’ve mentioned it to. Looking forward to reading it myself.
twbrandt
@Jake Berman: Thanks Jake. I just pre-ordered a copy through your website.
Cliosfanboy
Hi. Which systems did you cover?
Thor Heyerdahl
Definitely ordering one for myself, along with a few more as gifts.
Thor Heyerdahl
Double post
prostratedragon
Tonight’s TCM import: Dodes’ka-Den of Kurosawa, featuring a young man who keeps himself somewhat together by running an imaginary trolley line around his neighborhood. The title is the sound he makes for his trolley.
Jake Berman
@Cliosfanboy: There’s a LOT. I have a full list on my website. https://www.lostsubways.com/map-index
Telkom University
Why doesn’t public transit in North America seem to be as efficient as in Europe or East Asia, as explained in this article?