Decades of underinvestment in streetcar, bus and train service coupled with an increase in public funding and planning priorities to make roads fast, smooth and far-reaching, help explain today’s transit situation.

• Nicholas Dagen Bloom’s new book explores the policies of austerity, auto-centrism and racial segregation that attended the gradual decline of public transit in the U.S.
• Political leaders and voters chose not to invest in transit at several key crisis points in the 20th century.
• Transit is facing another crisis now.