The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has recently posted scanned versions of its annual Transit Fact Book dating back to 1942. While most of the data from these earlier versions has been transcribed to an Excel spreadsheet in the latest edition, it is still interesting to see how the organization’s priorities have changed.
The last honest fact book.
Once known as the American Transit Association, the organization was then headquartered in New York City, which made sense as New York is the nation’s largest transit market. Today, of course, it has adopted a confusingly broad name that seems to embrace modes of travel other than urban transit and has relocated to Washington DC, which makes sense as Washington is the nation’s largest source of public subsidies.
