The Best Transportation System in the World

by Rose, Mark H.; Seely, Bruce Edsall; Barrett, Paul F.

• ISBN13: 9780812221169
• ISBN10: 0812221168
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-10
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

The Best Transportation System in the Worldfocuses on the centrality of government in organizing the nation's transportation industries. As the authors show, over the course of the twentieth century transportation in the United States was as much a product of hard-fought politics, lobbying, and litigation as it was a naturally evolving system of engineering and available technology. For example, in the mid-1950s, President Eisenhower, concerned about a railroad industry in decline, asked Congress to grant railroad executives authority to modify prices and service even as he introduced the legislation that provided for the national highway system. And as early as the 1960s, presidents across the political spectrum, including Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter, sought broad deregulation of the transportation industry in order to prime the economic pump or, in the 1970s, reverse stagflation. At every turn, the authors contend, political considerations served to shape the businesses and infrastructure that Americans use to travel.

Author Biography

Mark H. Rose is Professor of History at Florida Atlantic University. Bruce E. Seely is Professor of History at Michigan Technological University. Paul F. Barrett was Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Humanities at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface and Acknowledgments	p. xi
Seeking a New Regulatory Regime in Transportation: Railroad Consolidation in the 1920s	p. 1
The New Transportation Problem: The Politics of Transportation Coordination, 1925-1940	p. 30
Constructing Commercial Aviation, 1944-1973	p. 76
Run-Up to Deregulation: Surface Transportation, 1949-1970	p. 97
Transportation in a ôPresidential Nationö	p. 134
Richard M. Nixon and Planning for Deregulation, 1970-1974	p. 151
Gerald R. Ford and Presidential Deregulation, 1974-1977	p. 166
Jimmy Carter and Deregulation of the ôBest Transportation System in the World,ö 1977-1980	p. 185
The American State and Transportation, 1980-1995	p. 212
Notes	p. 241
Index	p. 301
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