Book Notes: The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been by Jake Berman

The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been by Jake Berman

Places Discussed

Posted 2023-12-31

Book Notes by John December

In The Lost Subways of North America, cartographer Jake Berman finds patterns in not just his diagrams of transit systems from the past, imagined, proposed, and built, but also in the forces at play in North American transit history. His book surveys 23 transit systems in the US and Canada, and, in his maps and summaries of each, he touches on unique aspects of geography, political will, development, and the themes of transit system losses and lessons learned.

Berman's book arises from his simple question (p. 1): "Why doesn't LA have good public transit?" He finds his answer in a common-sense approach through his cartographic work and by examining each transit system's past, possibilities, and present state. He admits his book's limitations (p. 2): he will look at critical factors of each system, but he admits that there may be many more factors.

The colorful maps shine in this book (and are available for sale at www.lostsubways.com). Although each transit system's text coverage consists of just a few pages, these summaries provide useful overviews of each transit system's development that could serve any citizen, transit user, decision-maker, or transportation professional with some insight. In particular, many young people today may never have realized that alternatives to automobile transit flourished a century ago with extensive urban rail systems at all scales covering large, medium, and some small cities all over the country in spiderwebs of frequently operating and well-used rail transit lines. Perhaps by seeing these maps showing early streetcar and urban rail systems, present-day people may realize that alternatives to car-dominance of transportation have operated, flourished, and are possible now.

A concise primer on these transit modes starts the book. Berman states a concise overview of good transit: "Good mass transit should be fast, frequent, and reliable, and it should go where people want to go. This does not require a specific technology, but it does require choosing the right tool for the job." (p. 3). This concise description of transit goals corresponds to widely accepted principles of transit (Rodrigue et al., 2020; Woldeamanuel, 2016; Spieler, 2018; )

Berman also concisely presents a helpful glossary of transit modes, including:

electric rail that runs on separate tracks (subway, elevated, metro);
light rail that operates on dedicated lanes;
interurban rail, which is the historical predecessor of light rail and which might operate on streets without dedicated lanes
streetcars and trolleys, which are rail transit that runs locally (with closer station spacing than light rail) and possibly run in mixed traffic; these have historic predecessor modes of horsecars or cable cars
regional rail and commuter rail that operates between cities and within metro areas
niche systems such as monorails and people movers
and, finally, busways and freeways for rubber-wheeled, non-tracked transit that is part of many metropolitan transit systems.

Berman's title phrase, "Lost Subways," is an excellent attention-getting simplification and marketing term for his maps for sale. However, his coverage is more accurately the multimodal story of 23 metropolitan transit systems and their historical development, including how different types of transit modes, vehicles, and systems grew and interacted in different urban geographies.

Berman's book tells of losses and lessons, and these insights can help reveal patterns that could inform the planning, operation, and future of transit. Here are just some highlights of these losses and lessons:

Losses

Atlanta lost its Georgia Power streetcar that covered what is now Atlanta's urban core (pp. 8-9).
The 1935 Wheeler-Rayburn Act made it illegal for electric utilities to operate transit (in the form of electric streetcars) (p. 8). This act passed just after the rise of motordom (see: Norton, 2008, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City) and reduced the possibility to fund streetcars successfully.
Boston's Big Dig has haunted the Boston area's confidence in creating responsive transportation infrastructure on time and budget, and the Green Line extension "became mired in political infighting and cost inflation" (p. 23).
The Cincinnati subway was approved in 1916 and was never completed; due to stagnation in its construction, it closed in 1929 (p. 45).
Los Angeles lost the "largest electric railway system in the world" (p. 89)--its beloved streetcar system, popularly known as the Red Cars. This loss was not through a conspiracy (fictionalized in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit") but a confluence of spatial competition with automobiles and emerging suburban influence. Although the Red Cars were widespread and provided crucial mass transit during World War II, officials refused to authorize adequate funding to modernize them after the war, when deferred maintenance and well-worn infrastructure placed the system in dire need. Suburban politicians and developers, wary of how downtown LA might benefit from a system of modernized Red Car lines, rejected the rail system entirely, arguing that its failure resulted from "free market" forces (p. 93) and using the faulty reasoning that highway costs were $0 in comparison to the money needed to modernize the Red Cars (p. 91). Norton describes how automotive and oil industries bent public policy to their will through the 20th century and how this process was not a result of the "free market" (Norton, 2018).
Minneapolis lost its "relatively healthy streetcar system" to a conspiracy that included a financier, a crooked lawyer, and organized crime. These parties conspired to buy up and strip the rail system; this conspiracy and its aftermath blocked rail transit in the Twin Cities until the 21st century (p. 115).
Richmond, Virginia, lost the most historically and technologically significant streetcar system ever deployed. Based on inventions by Frank J. Sprague, this system, which opened in 1888, was revolutionary in solving problems with earlier forms of urban rail. Berman states, "Every operating light rail and streetcar system in the world today is a lineal descendant of Sprague's work" (p. 177) and "Within a year [of the 1888 opening], 110 companies were building or planning to build electric railways based on Sprague's technology." (p. 179). Richmond's streetcar system faced spatial competition with automobiles, and buses replaced streetcars in 1949. (p. 179). Richmond remains today (2023) without an urban rail transit (it does have Amtrak service).
Rochester, NY's rail system is the singular "Lost Subway" of the book because it was the only subway in the book to open (in 1927), operate, and then close (in 1956).

Lessons

The Atlanta vote on MARTA in 1971 was ostensibly about transit, but the voting reflected racial issues and the desire for segregation. The limitations on MARTA development have reduced the resiliency of the metro area for transit to this day, and the state of Georgia did not fund MARTA at all until 2021. Now, Atlanta has "... some of the continent's worst traffic congestion and smog" (p. 14).
Chicago's split personality as a city of prosperity and disinvestment illustrates how transit suffers when ignoring the basic principles of connecting people and places with transit, and the lines of political influence undermine transit (p. 38).
Distractions can destroy transit: The Cincinnati football stadium destroyed proximate transit opportunities (p. 45).
Distractions can destroy transit: The Cleveland football stadium destroyed proximate transit opportunities (p. 57).
Dallas demonstrates how "not to do" transit through zoning favoring automobile storage (pp. 63-64). Dallas's history reveals how the past rail systems succeeded (p. 59).
The extreme enmity of suburban areas for their core city results in segregated, dysfunctional, piecemeal, and ineffective transit, as Detroit's history over the mid-20th to early 21st centuries indicates (pp. 68-75). Today, Detroit's suburban-urban efforts at cooperation represent a detente, as each party realizes the strengths of working together and the self-destructive folly of fighting each other (p. 75). Detroit's Q-Line modern streetcar operates downtown, and as of 2013, Detroit has a Regional Transit Authority that is working to connect the city and suburbs (pp. 76-77).
Houston's land use policy shows both the drawbacks of sprawl, which encourages a "horizontal city," and density benefits with reduced parking requirements and smaller lot sizes around light rail stations (p. 80; p. 85).
The power of a singular vision of appropriate technology, quickly constructed and competently operated, for Montreal's Expo '67 led to a successful metro-wide transit system (p. 128; p. 131) that today stands as "one of the great success stories in North American mass transit" (p. 123).
Philadelphia's transit system, despite its enormous advantages and extensive infrastructure, shows "how not to run a railroad" (p. 157) as a result, in part, of its strangulation by suburban rule and bureaucracy (p. 166).
Seattle's monorail sparked the imagination for monorail transit, but, unfortunately, this inspired well-meaning enthusiasts to support an ill-conceived monorail extension plan (p. 204) that never had a solid basis in practical design and which delayed the deployment of the mix of competent transit modes that are working today to meet the needs of the region, albeit slowed by the "Seattle Process" of delay (p. 207).
San Francisco's lack of attention to how BART could be part of an overall transit system, along with the paralysis of NIMBYism and the legacy of freeway opposition conflicts, continue to mire the Bay area in its efforts toward metropolitan mass transit (pp. 193-196). Notably, the Bay Area dramatically demonstrates that "putting people near transit, or transit near people, is hard." (p. 196).
Toronto's squabbling over its tubes shows how the largest city in the country can suffer from its successes when politicians exploit those successes for political gamesmanship (p. 219).
Vancouver's elevated SkyTrain rail works well in its local conditions, demonstrating that technology tailored to local conditions can thrive (p. 229).
Washington DC's metro shows its power as an anchor for further transit and land use improvements and the political drama over the system's control within the district and regionally (p. 239).
Berman's concluding remarks answer his original question about why LA (and other cities in North America) do not have good transit. Berman states that it is "... the result of a uniquely North American combination of dysfunctional politics, the desire to reshape the metropolis for the automobile, racial strife, and the law of unintended consequences..." (p. 241).
Berman's final paragraph summarizes the main lesson of the book: "North America's mass transit and land use problems can be tackled, but it will entail emulating international best practices and learning from past mistakes." (p. 242).

Each transit system Berman examined revealed a unique story of many forces. The transition of North American mobility from pre-automotive modes to the rapid adoption of early rail technologies marked a time of the rise of vibrant urban areas where walking and transit mode fabrics became etched into urban cores. The age of multimodal urban mobility ended with the introduction and exclusive promotion of the automobile as the apex of transportation. The lessons learned revolve around understanding the strength of land use to support transit and the clarity of vision, leadership, and ambition required to build and manage metropolitan-scale infrastructure projects.

In the end, Berman's book's strengths include his maps of historic, imagined, proposed, and operating transit systems but also the insight he briefly explains in the text: the wisdom of placing transit near people, the power of unleashing productive land use near transit, and the wisdom of providing multimodal transit options with the simple principles of speed, frequency, and reliability. Combining competence for day-to-day management and vision for long-term and big-picture planning with a keen political will to succeed may be the critical ingredients for a metropolitan transit system's success.

The Lost Subways of North America: A Cartographic Guide to the Past, Present, and What Might Have Been by Jake Berman

Places Discussed

Book Notes by John December

Losses

Lessons

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