Mass transit

Since the 1940s, there has been a broad shift away from public transit across the U.S., and service has declined in many cities, including New York, Boston, Denver, Orlando and St. Louis. A look back at the last national mass transit boom helps explain the challenges that confront modern transit agencies. Starting in the 19th century, transit companies worked closely with real estate developers to develop “streetcar suburbs” for a growing population. The companies kept fares low, thanks to corporate consolidation, government regulation and thrifty management. During World War II, producing weapons and supplies for troops fighting abroad became the nation’s top priority. Gasoline, tires and autos were strictly rationed, so most commuters had few ways to get to work other than public transit. In Baltimore, for example, people could ride a streetcar anywhere in the city in 1943 for 10 cents. With wartime production booming, the city’s Baltimore Transit C...

The Northeast corridor is America’s busiest rail line. Each day, its trains deliver 800,000 passengers to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and points in between. The Northeast corridor is also a name for the place those trains serve: the coastal plain stretching from Virginia to Massachusetts, where over 17% of the country’s population lives on less than 2% of its land. Northeasterners ride the corridor and live there too. Like “Rust Belt,” “Deep South,” “Silicon Valley” and “Appalachia,” “Corridor” has become shorthand for what many people think of as the Northeast’s defining features: its brisk pace of life, high median incomes and liberal politics. In 1961, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona wished someone had “sawed off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea.” In 2016, conservative F.H. Buckley disparaged “lawyers, academics, trust-fund babies and high...