Capitalism for transit and socialism for cars is the American way. It is as old as transit. The history text that best explains the origins of this story is Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930. I need to read this again, but there is this book review that summarizes the book perfectly:
"The book demonstrates this powerfully by showing that there never was that head-to-head battle: rather than a struggle among different approaches to something that could be called urban transportation policy, we encounter two parallel and perhaps tragically separated histories: the regulated streetcar system collapsing of the weight of its own contradictions, while in the very different arena of street and traffic policy the groundwork was being laid for the accommodation of the automobile and all that it implied."
We could appropriate this characterization and apply it to the Surface Transportation Program.
Capitalism for transit and socialism for cars is the American way. It is as old as transit. The history text that best explains the origins of this story is Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930. I need to read this again, but there is this book review that summarizes the book perfectly:
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/uhr/1984-v13-n2-uhr0791/1018130ar.pdf
"The book demonstrates this powerfully by showing that there never was that head-to-head battle: rather than a struggle among different approaches to something that could be called urban transportation policy, we encounter two parallel and perhaps tragically separated histories: the regulated streetcar system collapsing of the weight of its own contradictions, while in the very different arena of street and traffic policy the groundwork was being laid for the accommodation of the automobile and all that it implied."
We could appropriate this characterization and apply it to the Surface Transportation Program.