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"Transportation History."
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From here to there : the story of how we transport ourselves and everything else
\"A history of transportation from primitive technology to driverless cars.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
From a Nickel to a Token: The Journey from Board of Transportation to MTA
A must-read for transit buffs, From a Nickel to a Token chronicles twenty specific events in the history of New York City's mass transit systems between 1940 and 1968, including large numbers of rare photos. Streetcars \"are as dead as sailing ships,\" said Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in a radio speech, two days before Madison Avenue's streetcars yielded to buses. LaGuardia was determined to eliminate streetcars, demolish pre-1900 elevated lines, and unify the subway system, a goal that became reality in 1940 when the separate IRT, BMT, and IND became one giant system under full public control. In this fascinating micro-history of New York's transit system, Andrew Sparberg examines twenty specific events between 1940 and 1968, book ended by subway unification and the MTA's creation. From a Nickel to a Token depicts a potpourri of well-remembered, partially forgotten, and totally obscure happenings drawn from the historical tapestry of New York mass transit. Sparberg deftly captures five boroughs of grit, chaos, and emotion grappling with a massive and unwieldy transit system. During these decades, the system morphed into today's familiar network. The public sector absorbed most private surface lines operating within the five boroughs, and buses completely replaced streetcars. Elevated lines were demolished, replaced by subways or, along Manhattan's Third Avenue, not at all. Beyond the unification of the IND, IRT, and BMT, strategic track connections were built between lines to allow a more flexible and unified operation. The oldest subway routes received much needed rehabilitation. Thousands of new subway cars and buses were purchased. The sacred nickel fare barrier was broken, and by 1968 a ride cost twenty cents. From LaGuardia to Lindsay, mayors devoted much energy to solving transit problems, keeping fares low, and appeasing voters, fellow elected officials, transit management, and labor leaders. Simultaneously, American society was experiencing tumultuous times, manifested by labor disputes, economic pressures, and civil rights protests. Featuring many photos never before published, From a Nickel to a Token is a historical trip back in time to a multitude of important events.
eBook
Machines in motion : the amazing history of transportation
\"With intricately illustrated timelines, this book takes readers on a journey through the developmental history of various modes of transportation - from chariots to electric cars, dugout canoes to ocean liners, cable cars to bullet trains, and the many iterations in between. The fascinating stories behind each of these machines join together to reveal a comprehensive history of how new and inventive forms of transportation have built off one another to change our world.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Automotive Empire
In Automotive Empire
, Andrew Denning uncovers how roads and vehicles began to
transform colonial societies across Africa but rarely in the manner
Europeans expected. Like seafaring ships and railroads,
automobiles and roads were more than a mode of transport-they
organized colonial spaces and structured the political, economic,
and social relations of empire, both within African colonies and
between colonies and the European metropole.
European officials in French, Italian, British, German, Belgian,
and Portuguese territories in Africa shared a common challenge-the
transport problem. While they imagined that roads would radiate
commerce and political hegemony by collapsing space, the pressures
of constructing and maintaining roads rendered colonial
administration thin, ineffective, and capricious. Automotive empire
emerged as the European solution to the transport problem, but
revealed weakness as much as it extended power.
As Automotive Empire reveals, motor vehicles and roads
seemed the ideal solution to the colonial transport problem. They
were cheaper and quicker to construct than railroads, overcame the
environmental limitations of rivers, and did not depend on the
recruitment and supervision of African porters. At this pivotal
moment of African colonialism, when European powers transitioned
from claiming territories to administering and exploiting them,
automotive empire defined colonial states and societies, along with
the brutal and capricious nature of European colonialism
itself.
eBook
Car Country
For most people in the United States, going almost anywhere begins with reaching for the car keys. This is true, Christopher Wells argues, because the United States is Car Country a nation dominated by landscapes that are difficult, inconvenient, and often unsafe to navigate by those who are not sitting behind the wheel of a car.
The prevalence of car-dependent landscapes seems perfectly natural to us today, but it is, in fact, a relatively new historical development. In Car Country, Wells rejects the idea that the nation's automotive status quo can be explained as a simple byproduct of an ardent love affair with the automobile. Instead, he takes readers on a tour of the evolving American landscape, charting the ways that transportation policies and land-use practices have combined to reshape nearly every element of the built environment around the easy movement of automobiles. Wells untangles the complicated relationships between automobiles and the environment, allowing readers to see the everyday world in a completely new way. The result is a history that is essential for understanding American transportation and land-use issues today.
Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48LTKOxxrXQ
eBook
Transportation : the impact of science and technology
Looks at how advances in science and technology have affected transportation, providing information as well as pro and cons about a variety of related topics, such as fossil fuels, safety, and supersonic submarines.
Book
The Iron Way
Beginning with Frederick Douglass's escape from slavery in 1838 on the railroad, and ending with the driving of the golden spike to link the transcontinental railroad in 1869, this book charts a critical period of American expansion and national formation, one largely dominated by the dynamic growth of railroads and telegraphs. William G. Thomas brings new evidence to bear on railroads, the Confederate South, slavery, and the Civil War era, based on groundbreaking research in digitized sources never available before.The Iron Wayrevises our ideas about the emergence of modern America and the role of the railroads in shaping the sectional conflict.
Both the North and the South invested in railroads to serve their larger purposes, Thomas contends. Though railroads are often cited as a major factor in the Union's victory, he shows that they were also essential to the formation of \"the South\" as a unified region. He discusses the many-and sometimes unexpected-effects of railroad expansion and proposes that America's great railroads became an important symbolic touchstone for the nation's vision of itself.
Please visit the Railroads and the Making of Modern America website at http://railroads.unl.edu.
eBook