Development of Mass Transportation in the United States
Before the development of cheap, reliable urban transportation in the United States(U.S.)，city size had been limited by the distance people could comfortably walk to work. In such “walking cities,”the radius rarely extended beyond a few miles, and people of all classes lived and worked close to one another By the end of the nineteenth century the walking city had metamorphose into the sprawling, segmented city. Economic function and income divided the city roughly into a concentric pattern. A central business district, or downtown core, where few lived, Was ringed by a manufacturing and wholesaling district, where immigrants and the working lower-income classes jammed into tenements and subdivided old houses. Beyond them was stretch of lower-middle-class to middle-class row houses or apartment buildings, where skilled, clerical, and some factory workers resided. Then came the fringes of the city, where professionals, managers, and businessmen retreated to their spacious homes, leading comfortable lives and tending their manicured lawns and shrubs away from the stench, noise, dirt, and push-and-shove of the city.
New means of transportation made possible the new urban geography of economic integration and social segregation. As early as the 1820s and 1830s such eastern cities as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had operated horse-dray public carriers called omnibuses. Omnibus systems Spread rapidly through the 1850s, but the slow, heavy vehicles accommodated few passengers and high fares limited ridership. By mid-century, steam-powered commuter railroads were pushing city boundaries outward for the affluent. The New York Harlem Railroad connected the sub urban village of Harlem with New York.and the Chicago& Milwaukee Railroad linked communities such as Evanston. Wilmette and Lake Forest with Chicago.
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