Dissertation Research: America's Subway: The Washington Metro as Vision and Vehicle

本论文研究项目聚焦于半个多世纪以来华盛顿特区地铁系统的演变，旨在更好地理解城市轨道系统在战后时代的作用。这项研究借鉴了两种学术文献。首先是自上世纪70年代以来，围绕投资新建城市轨道交通系统是否明智的长期争论。许多规划者称赞这些系统是对抗汽车主导的城市扩张弊病的最佳希望，以及随之而来的污染、能源浪费和社会隔离问题。但许多经济学家嘲笑铁路是一个闪亮的玩具，它消耗了公共资金，这些资金本应该用于公共汽车运输。这场辩论的双方都没有详细、定性地考察铁路系统的历史。这个研究项目希望表明，在现实世界中，决策和目标设定比经济模型考虑的因素要复杂得多。第二个学术领域是对技术史的研究，尤其是马克思及其追随者的神话与符号方法，以及对技术的社会建构的研究。将这些方法应用于战后的轨道交通，可以解释一项高度公共化的技术是如何随着发展而积累功能的。

This dissertation research project focuses the evolution over half a century of the Washington, DC metro system with the intent to better understand the role of urban rail systems in the postwar age.The study draws on two bodies of scholarly literature. The first is a long-running debate over the wisdom of investments in new urban rail systems since the 1970s. Many planners applaud these systems as the best hope for combating the ills of automobile dominated sprawl, with its attendant problems of pollution, energy wastefulness, and social isolation. But many economists deride rail as a shiny toy that consumes public funds better used for bus transit. Neither side of this debate has examined the detailed, qualitative history of a rail system. This research project hopes to show that in the real world, decisionmaking and the settings of goals are more complicated than the factors considered by economic models. The second body of scholarship is the study of the history of technology, especially the myth-and-symbol approach of Leo Marx and his followers and the study of the social construction of technology. Applying these approaches to postwar rail transit can explain how one intensely public technology accumulates functions as it evolves.