How US social mobility went from racial integration to postwar segregation

Since the 1940s, there has been a broad shift in public transportation across the US, and service has declined in many cities, including New York, Boston, Denver, Orlando, and St. A look back at the last evolution of public transportation helps explain the challenges facing modern transportation companies.

Beginning in the 19th century, transportation companies worked closely with real estate developers to develop “street car parks” to accommodate the growing population. Companies kept fares low, thanks to corporate consolidation, government regulations, and lean management.

During World War II, the nation’s top priority was to produce weapons and supplies for soldiers fighting overseas. Fuel, tires, and cars were limited, so most commuters had few ways to get to work other than public transportation.

For example, in Baltimore, people could ride a streetcar anywhere in the city in 1943 for ten cents. With wartime production booming, the city’s Baltimore Transit Company packed customers into every streetcar and bus it could find.

Here and in other racially diverse northern and border cities, public transportation was an integral part of social mobility. Tens of thousands of Black workers, part of the Great Migration from southern states to northern states, enjoyed access to the city’s best networks of trolleys, buses, and electric trolleybuses.

After the war, consumer demand and public policy changed in another direction. Many white commuters took advantage of the GI Bill, subsidized credit, the expanding highway network, and cheap automobiles to escape mass transit—and the places where it worked.

Black Americans, in contrast, were largely shut out from accessing these benefits. Many remain stuck in decaying urban areas.

In the 1960s, many white commuters lived in urban areas and politically opposed the expansion of transportation and public ownership of transportation networks. In response, politicians have prioritized improving roads and highways through measures including removing streetcar tracks and trams to speed up traffic.

For example, Maryland didn’t take over the financing of the privately owned Baltimore Transit Company until the 1970s—ignoring the transportation needs of the poor and Blacks.

In 1968, a bus ride cost 30 cents with very poor quality service. Streetcars were gone, buses were old or fast becoming old, and they ran constantly, with little easy connection to urban activities.

Even after Maryland took over the transportation system, the state did not provide enough money to make up for decades of underinvestment. In 2020, the study estimated that Baltimore city commuters had to spend an hour or more on a bus or train to reach 91.5% of the county’s services.

This downward cycle has also occurred in other cities such as Chicago and Atlanta, further reducing ridership. In 2019, only 5% of US commuters regularly use public transportation. The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced this share to 3.1% in 2022.

Transit agencies in other cities, including Washington and Los Angeles, are working to reverse the trend, aided by deep regional funding, horrendous traffic, and the construction of apartment buildings near stops. As the harmful effects of car dependency on public health and the environment become increasingly clear, affordable and reliable public transport can still lure commuters back to buses and trains.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom is a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College.

This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.