Historian; author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, and of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.
Peter Norton
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Andy Newman's history of car parking in New York:
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Who are the traffic control agents who make the streets of New York work?
In 1984 Nicholas Pileggi told their story for New York magazine.
These excerpts quote “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz, the city’s Traffic Commissioner.
In 1939, Indianapolis Railways operated 90 streetcars along 53 miles of track. It ran 157 trolleybuses drawing power from 210 miles of overhead lines. It owned 81 motor buses.
www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4...
Marcia Lowe: “Measured by its benefits both to society and the individual, the bicycle is truly a vehicle for a small planet.”
Still the safest passenger car.
www.cyclingcities.info/your-city-ne...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8szn...
Peter Bird, in conversation with JohnSimmerman on Active Towns (@activetowns.bsky.social):
“There’s this nationwide movement in the US for what ‘wheelmen’ – cyclists – called ’sidepaths.’ This map from 1899 shows all of these cycling routes in the Twin Cities. There were 200 miles of sidepaths.”
“The thousand miles of track served by 3,750 cars reach every section of Chicago.”
www.jstor.org
From court cases to political scandal to murder, the city has long been racked with conflict over what to do with cars when they’re not being driven.
Help US Publish the Minneapolis book! U.S. cities today are known more for cars and highways than for bicycles. But that wasn’t always the case. The cold northern city of Minneapolis was a top America...
