Insights · March 1st, 2010
One of the amusing, and sad, things about discussions of the future of transit in the U.S. is that it is so often discussed in one of two ways, both intended to make it seem rather outlandish. First, it is discussed as something vaguely foreign – sure, they have widespread transit in Europe, but we are not like them. Or, second the concept of widely accessible transit is presented is simply not a possible idea, like it has never been tried in whatever city is in question (except New York and Washington DC). So, when commentators like Duncan Black simply point to historical maps of transit systems in city after city, I can only wish we could go back to the future with transit. Here is the map of Seattle’s old transit (street car) system from 1933. It went everywhere.
