Comment on Whitt and Yago,"Corporate Strategies and the Decline of Transit in U.S. Cities" (Urban Affairs Quarterly 21: 37-65,1985)

Whitt and Yago argue that balanced transportation never developed in the United States because consumer options and spatial densities were illegitimately manipulated by an auto-oil-rubber complex. On this basis they criticize the conventional technology-efficiency hypothesis. This comment reviews the principal arguments and sources of evidence offered by Whitt and Yago. Their arguments presume that balanced transportation is feasible and desirable in the United States simply because it exists in Europe, rest on theoretical assumptions of class struggle and rational planning which are not demonstrated, and become internally contradictory in comparing the U.S. and European cases. Because the authors blend together political and economic analysis, evaluation of transportation options winds up depending on whose class interests an investigator proposes to favor. They therefore side-step the methodological problems of ever demonstrating the superiority of balanced transportation, since its existence in Europe is likewise attributed to political struggle.