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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

URBAN RAIL TRANSIT

This book attempts to fill some of the gap that has existed in the literature on rail transit transportation since F.W. Doolittle wrote his Studies in the Cost of Urban Transportation in 1916. Doolittle's book was written during a time when almost all urban rail transit facilities were privately owned. It was, in fact, essentially a handbook for prospective investors in urban rail transportation companies. Public action then was largely restricted to ensuring that these privately owned companies not take undue advantage of their monopoly positions. Since Doolittle's time, however, the role of urban rail transit has changed significantly. Today, the profit-making possibilities of rail transit systems are remote from the minds of those concerned with urban transportation. Public intervention which was once regulatory or restraining has become largely a sustaining action, and public authorities have taken over practically all rail transit operations in our major cities. Local governments have generally taken this action when it become apparent that transit operations could no longer be sustained by private entrepreneurial effort alone. The administration and financing of existing (and future) rail transit systems has thus raised major problems in many cities.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This book was published for the Joint Center for Urban Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press

    55 Haywood Street
    Cambridge, MA  United States  02142-1493
  • Authors:
    • Lang, A S
    • Soberman, R D
  • Publication Date: 1964

Media Info

  • Pagination: 139 p.

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 00044839
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: Book
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jul 16 1973 12:00AM