1. Introduction
For all its poor reputation in past decades, it's undeniable that public transit is on its way back in America. From the Seattle Metro Subway to the Miami El, recent years have seen a number of large-scale transit projects, and several smaller cities have seen their streetcar networks, most of which were gutted in the 1950s to make way for the car, make a triumphant comeback. It seems that we've resolved as a nation to forget those years of single-minded focus on the car, and moreover, to ensure that we build more permanently now than we evidently did at the turn of the last century. So how have attitudes to public transportation developed to cause these flip-flops in public policy, and how have our urban transit networks developed as a result?
2. Method
To answer the questions posed above, we're going to make case studies of four major American cities – two larger ones that built rapid transit in some form, and two smaller ones that never moved past the streetcar as the main mode of rail transit. We begin in Los Angeles, historically one of the fastest-growing cities in America, whose transit development was generally much slower than its growth. Over the course of the 20th century, LA gradually developed a large-scale rapid transit network, designed according to the shifting preferences of the times, and largely abolished its existing streetcar network. Secondly, we look at Pittsburgh, the usual “odd man out” of American transit systems, which retained its streetcar network throughout the period of closures seen elsewhere and gradually expanded it into a German-style premetro network. Thirdly, we look at New Orleans, which also kept the core parts of its first-generation streetcar network and has worked to expand it, and finally we turn to Detroit, a city that removed its streetcars completely, but which is now working to restore service to large parts of its metro area.