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

本论文的研究项目集中在华盛顿地铁系统的演变超过半个世纪的意图，以更好地了解城市轨道系统在战后时代的作用。第一个是自上世纪70年代以来，关于投资新城市铁路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蔓延弊病的最佳希望，伴随而来的是污染，能源浪费和社会孤立问题。但许多经济学家嘲笑铁路是一个闪亮的玩具，消耗公共资金更好地用于公共汽车运输。这场争论的双方都没有仔细研究铁路系统的详细、定性的历史。 这个研究项目希望表明，在真实的世界中，决策和目标的设定比经济模型所考虑的因素要复杂得多。学术的第二个主体是技术史的研究，特别是利奥马克思及其追随者的神话和象征的方法和技术的社会建设的研究。将这些方法应用于战后的轨道交通，可以解释一种高度公共化的技术是如何随着其发展而积累功能的。

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.