Transit Regulation and the Shift from Public to Private Transportation Modes

How Does Transit Regulation Influence the Shift from Public to Private Transportation Modes?

Transit regulation quickly ensued (Jensen, 1956; Cheape, 1980; cited in Yago, 1983). Regulation depoliticized transportation, removing it from the public sphere of urban politics to the forums of appointed, business-oriented state regulatory commissions. This organizationally insulated transportation decisions from the public by the de facto disenfranchisement of the urban population.

Urban historians have often attempted to account for public transit's decline by citing some single cause - corruption (Smerk, 1968), poor business practices (Hilton & Due, 1968), overcrowded service (Holt, 1972), the lack of technological innovation (Solomon, 1971), regulation (Barrett, 1975), or the rise of the automobile (Rae, 1965; cited in Yago, 1983). Although all of these factors played a role, they require explanatory linkages to account for the broader social structural shift surrounding the shift from public to private transportation modes. This change heralded not merely the technological shift from rail to rubber-wheeled vehicles; it also affected basic relations between labor and capital in the production of transportation equipment, consumer costs of job-related travel, and the political organization and administration of transportation policy. The shift to private transportation modes allowed the socialization of transportation-infrastructural expenditure through federal and state road building and publicly financed transit, depoliticized transit issues in electoral politics, and released investment capital from public infrastructural requirements (Yago, 1983).

The patterns of economic organizational change within the transportation equipment (bus manufacturers) and transit operating industries parallel political changes in transportation policy and planning. We have already cited historical studies of growing regulation in transit during the period of urban reform and its impact upon centralizing transportation policy in extra-local governmental units. Case studies of inter- and intra-organizational transportation planning conflicts suggest a more recent tendency toward organizational centralization (Yago, 1983).