Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines)

Imagining Transit: Race, Gender, and Transportation Politics in Los Angeles (Travel Writing Across the Disciplines) Review

Using an analysis of the history of Los Angeles's streetcar and highway systems, Sikivu Hutchinson argues that the cultural geography of transportation has had a compelling influence upon the construction of race, gender, and urban subjectivity in the postmodern city. She highlights the influence of American anti-urbanism upon visions of the city during the Great Migration and World War II eras. Proceeding from the premise that the creation of city spaces are informed by collective cultural memory, Hutchinson explores how the decline of public transportation and the rise of the automobile have shaped African American communities and cultures in Los Angeles. Read more...

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Estimating Capital and Operating Costs in Urban Transportation Planning: Review

Addressing the chronic underestimation of capital and operating costs in urban transportation projects, this book provides a detailed analysis of the cost estimating process using case studies from three U.S. cities and outlines a practical framework for this process. The work goes beyond a simple quantitative approach to explaining cost underestimation and looks at the planning process as a tool for both argumentation and structuring the argumentation. This approach highlights the difficulties in several components of the estimating process and suggests specific and practical actions to address these problems. The proposed framework will strengthen the estimating function and the link between analysis and decision in urban transportation planning.

This work will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in transportation planning, urban planning, and transportation engineering.

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The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America Review

America was made by the railroads. The opening of the Baltimore & Ohio line––the first American railroad––in the 1830s sparked a national revolution in the way that people lived thanks to the speed and convenience of train travel. Promoted by visionaries and built through heroic effort, the American railroad network was bigger in every sense than Europe’s, and facilitated everything from long-distance travel to commuting and transporting goods to waging war. It united far-flung parts of the country, boosted economic development, and was the catalyst for America’s rise to world-power status.

Every American town, great or small, aspired to be connected to a railroad and by the turn of the century, almost every American lived within easy access of a station. By the early 1900s, the United States was covered in a latticework of more than 200,000 miles of railroad track and a series of magisterial termini, all built and controlled by the biggest corporations in the land. The railroads dominated the American landscape for more than a hundred years but by the middle of the twentieth century, the automobile, the truck, and the airplane had eclipsed the railroads and the nation started to forget them.

In The Great Railroad Revolution, renowned railroad expert Christian Wolmar tells the extraordinary story of the rise and the fall of the greatest of all American endeavors, and argues that the time has come for America to reclaim and celebrate its often-overlooked rail heritage.

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Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City Review

More comprehensive than any other book on this topic, Los Angeles and the Automobile places the evolution of Los Angeles within the context of American political and urban history.

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Scow Schooners of San Francisco Bay (Local History Studies Vol 33) Review

Here is a fascinating and unique look at the history of the "scow schooners" of the San Francisco Bay. These were specially modified sail boats that provided a necessary lifeline in the Bay area from the last half of the nineteenth century into the opening decades of the twentieth. Olmsted combines an interesting text with a wealth of rare photographs. He acquaints his reader with their design, their commerce, the waters on which they sailed, and the lifestyle of the men who manned them. Olmsted's research included first-hand interviews with surviving members of the crews who sailed in these ships, creating an intriguing history of a time now gone. Read more...

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Archaeology at the Whitley Site: An Early Historic Farmstead on the Prairies of Eastern Illinois (Transportation Archaeological Research Reports) Review

The Whitley site, located near the headwaters of Sugar Creek in the upland "Grand Prairie" area of Edgar County near the east-central border of Illinois, represents the remains of a homestead established by one of the area's earliest European settlers. William Whitley purchased the 80-acre farm in 1829, although evidence suggests the family was living there as early as 1823. They sold the land in 1833, after which the homestead lay abandoned for about 20 years. From the recovered artifacts, the farm was later briefly reoccupied, probably in the 1850s by Silas Elliott and his family. Archaeological investigations at the Whitley site revealed the farmstead plan including remains of the house, two smokehouses, two wells, four cisterns, and other features enclosed by fences. Artifacts were abundant, and the recovered ceramic assemblage-consisting primarily of decorated pearlware and other early nineteenth century wares-is of particular interest.Reviewer Mary R. McCorvie (Illinois Archaeology 13:163, 2001) characterizes this study as "an excellent technical cultural resource management report in that it fully discussed the range of features and the material culture recovered.... Its major strength is that it more than adequately documents the spatial plan of this early nineteenth-century farmstead. It will be an extremely useful work for other researchers interested in farmstead archaeology." Read more...

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Report on the engineering and operating features of the Chicago transportation problem submitted to the Committee on Local Transportation of the Chicago City Council Review

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...of the transportation problem. The chief objections that can be made to it are: First--Its relative cost as compared with Plan No. 1. Second--The passengers in the low level subways would be about 40 feet below the surface of the street, thus necessitating the use of elevators between low level and high level subways at station points, a distance of about 20 feet. Third--The engineering difficulties and risks that would be encountered in its construction. Fourth--The fact that it would interfere, and to a large extent destroy, existing and contemplated low level improvements The importance of the first objection can be analyzed by comparing the estimated cost of this plan, as shown in Cost Estimate No. 3, Page 236, with the cost of Plan No. 1, as shown in Cost Estimate No. 2, Page 233. The second objection can only be answered by the individual opinion of those who might-ride upon the system. In my judgment it is Tmt serious. The third objection, or the engineering difficulties and business risks to be assumed during the construction of such a low level street car subway, is difficult, and would require the exercising of great skill and care during construction, but can be overcome and is in my judgment comparatively small when compared with the advantages to be gained by the adoption of such a system. The fourth objection is, in my judgment, difficult to overcome, as the changes that would necessarily have to be made in the existing and contemplated low level improvements of the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company to make room for the low level subway herein contemplated would probably involve heavy expenditure of money, and the relative importance of the advantages to be gained by the high and low level system of street car subways as compared with t... Read more...

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