San Antonio College Library

"American cities' rapid expansion after the Civil War fueled the growth of organized transportation systems - omnibuses, horsecars, and later electric streetcars. Trolley Wars traces the social dynamics of these first mass-transportation systems as they developed in Rhode Island, the most urbanized state in Gilded Age America. Covering years of careening growth, Scott Molloy focuses on the laborers who operated the transit system, the changing ownership...

An analytical assessment of the Los Angeles rail program, with a focus on the Long Beach Blue Line light rail--the first of the new projects to go ahead. En route, it shows that ridership forecasting for this project was not only biased and statistically invalid, but in fact done to justify decisions made on other grounds. This unusual book develops a novel theory of myth to explain the construction of rail passenger transit in Los Angeles when it...