this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
62 points (100.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

10348 readers
1549 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It's well-known that the US used to have a highly functional public transportation network that was dismantled for the car, but I'm really curious on the details of how that happened. Obviously there was National City Lines who dismantled streetcars and replaced them with buses, as well as interstate highway construction gutting cities, but I feel like there's a lot more detail and nuance that's missing.

Does anyone know of any books or other reading material that goes into the details of the decline? I'm hoping for something in-depth, think comparisons of big events vs ridership numbers vs average public transit speed, public opinion, ideally a case study on some actual cities. When the streetcars were ripped out, did the buses still provide adequate service, or was there a large decrease in frequency/quality? Were there frequency cuts later on? What happened when the private bus company inevitably went bankrupt? Did people without cars protest as service was cut, or were they left behind as people and jobs moved to suburbs, where service didn't exist to begin with? What did people in small towns without cars do?

top 3 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] lgsp@feddit.it 2 points 1 week ago

I don't know about containrd data, but this book here is very, very famous

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities

[–] lemming934@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago

The electric interurban railways in America talks about the history of electric passenger trains that connected American cities particularly in the Midwest. Lots of fun maps of the networks and they describe how all the companies failed.

Thought it was written with a 1960s carbrain perspective, the information is interesting

[–] Rooskie91 1 points 1 week ago

If you have the time, The Power Broker by Robert Caro is an incredibly detailed biography of Robert Moses, the man that reshaped New York City's infrastructure around the automobile. He basically laid out the blue print for other cities to follow. With over 1100 pages and 100 more of notes, it's quite the time though.