Mass Transit, Regional Governance, and the Politics of Knowledge in 1960s-1970s American Transportation Planning

Douwe Schipper

In postwar America, transportation planning and policy increasingly took shape within regional governmental organizations such as regional transit agencies, metropolitan councils, and Metropolitan Planning Agencies (MPOs) or Councils of Government. Through the lens of mass transit planning initiatives in cities such as Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago, this project explores how such regional organizations operated as sites of knowledge production and knowledge contestation during the envisioned ‘transit renaissance’ of the 1960s and 1970s. Mirroring the optimistic outlook of the Great Society era and bolstered by the promise of federal funding, this period saw many cities exploring the possibility of constructing new mass transit systems following decades of car-centric planning. Simultaneously, states across the country were creating new public or quasi-public transit administrations for metropolitan areas to absorb defunct private transit companies. In the realm of intercity passenger transportation, Amtrak was founded to take over what remained of privately-run passenger railroad services in 1971. Consequently, between roughly 1965 and 1975, public officials, planners and engineers, and urban residents engaged in heated debates about the future of mobility and the potential revival of transit as a major mode of personal transportation. My project explores how, in this context, regional governments and agencies functioned not only as administrative and executive agencies but also as focal points in which debates about environmental science and transportation engineering converged with broader questions about scientific and expert authority and citizen participation rights.