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Title: Streetcars Across America: An Analysis of the Growth and Decline of Electric Urban Railways in the United States from Directory Data
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2021
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Abstract: The streetcar represents one of the most influential modes of mass transit in American history, yet also one of the least documented. In the span of a few decades, it rose to become the dominant form of transportation, then fell into decline and obscurity. It was the first mode of transport to introduce the potential for commutes, was a contributing factor to the spread of suburbs around the United States, and even contributed to an early form of zoning; it was also the first notable mode of everyday transport to decline from government action on behalf of its competitor, the automobile, and government inaction on behalf of itself. This thesis report describes the extraction of records from the McGraw Electric Railway Manuals to rectify the lack of documentation around streetcar systems through technological means, and discusses the appropriateness of using technology to analyze century-old directories. The extracted records are analyzed on a metropolitan, state and national level, and fitted to logarithmic S-curve models to describe their growth and decline. It was found that a significant number of metropolitan areas experienced continual growth or remained in maturity during the studied period, while the majority of states reached maturity and entered decline by the end of the 1926. Nationally, system length in the contiguous United States peaked in 1918, with 50,089.28 miles of track recorded that year. While a strong correlation was found between the population and the size of the system at its maximum extent, no correlation was found between population growth and system growth rates, or population density and system growth. In the decline phase, larger populations did not contribute to greater system declines.
Url: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/27119
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Authors: Li, Haoang
Institution: University of Sydney
Department: School of Civil Engineering
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Publisher Location: Sydney
Pages: 1-159
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography
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