Read a complete history of urban mass transit in the United States

Mass transit in America began with horse-drawn omnibuses in New York City in 1827

The omnibus, a large horse-drawn stagecoach that ran a fixed route and carried a dozen riders at an affordable fare, was different from a private carriage because it carried everyone, not just the wealthy.

Learn about how General Motors dismantled America's streetcars

This documentary argues that GM systematically bought up and destroyed streetcar networks across the US in the 1930s, replacing them with buses and helping put the automobile at the center of American culture.

Boston opened the first subway tunnel in the US in 1897

By the end of the 19th century, nearly 400,000 people were packed into less than a square mile of downtown Boston, with 8,000 horses pulling trolleys through streets choked with noise, manure, and congestion. This prompted the city to pursue a then-controversial subway system.

45% of Americans have no access to public transit

Most US transit was built on a monocentric design, funneling riders into a downtown center. But today's most common commute is from suburb to suburb, meaning the system is built for a work pattern that no longer exists.

LA used to have one of the best mass transit systems in the country

A century ago, Los Angeles had one of the greatest urban transit networks in America. Today, driving in LA traffic can still be faster than taking the train. The city's rail design, which funnels traffic through a single point, fails to support a city with such a spread-out population.

Public transit has been a front line of civil rights battles for over a century

Public transit was among the most contested terrain in the fight for racial equality in America, because it was where Black Americans and white Americans were unavoidably forced to share public space.

The federal government pumped $70 billion into transit amidst reduced ridership during the COVID pandemic

When ridership collapsed by 75% in the spring of 2020, Congress sent transit agencies nearly $70B to help them survive. But that money has largely run out, and ridership remains 14-28% below prepandemic levels, leaving many transit systems with large budget deficits.

Visualizing New York City's public transportation commutes

New York City is one of the largest cities in the world, and transports one of the largest numbers of commuters on a daily basis. This data visualization tells the stories of those commuters, showing the varying volume of travelers throughout the week and day, where they are going, and maps of high-traffic areas like stadiums and midtown. Dive into the data here.

Washington DC's streetcar network built the modern American suburb

Washington's first electric streetcar line launched in 1888, and real estate developers quickly built lines to open new neighborhoods. A 35-minute ride from Chevy Chase, Maryland, to downtown Washington transformed farmland into a suburb.

The New York MTA is North America's largest transit system

The MTA's FY2026 budget is $21.3B, and the system carried 1.6 billion riders on buses and subways in 2024, making it by far the largest transit network in the country.

Nearly 40% of American cars were electric in 1899

They were most common in cities, where battery swap stations allowed drivers to "refuel" their vehicles reliably. Innovations in combustion engines caused electric cars to lose ground until environmental policies and advances in battery technology revitalized interest.

Self-driving cars may upend transit before cities can build it

Austin approved a $7.1B light-rail in 2020, but components of the plan have already been cut. Simultaneously, Waymo launched a 200-car autonomous fleet across the city. Cities now face a choice: invest in decadeslong fixed infrastructure projects or embrace flexible, on-demand autonomous vehicles that can navigate anywhere.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Explore stories from riders of San Francisco's transit system

Since 2008, the "Muni Diaries" podcast has collected true stories from more than 4,000 transit riders, from a man riding with a black crow on his shoulder to the bus driver who moonlights as a poet.

How the US built the Interstate Highway system

As late as World War II, it took a well-prepared motorist roughly 10 days to cross America from coast to coast in a car. That all changed when the nation undertook its biggest public infrastructure project in 1956, the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, initiating a 36-year, $114B mission to lay 41,000 miles of roads across America. Watch a smart overview here.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The Bill of Rights toured the United States on the Freedom Train from 1947 to 1949

Alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the Bill of Rights traveled the country for 18 months. Nearly 3.5 million people viewed the documents as they traveled to all 48 contiguous states in the US. (Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.)

American Express stopped its rail service when President Wilson seized American railroads

After the US entered World War I, the federal government took control of American railways and consolidated rail companies. American Express officially exited the express shipping business in 1918 and turned its focus to its travel and financial services.

The seven major US freight rail companies

The US railroad industry is dominated by seven long-running freight conglomerates. Get the basics on each of these companies with this brief overview.

Henry Varnum Poor published a guide to the railroad industry in 1860

Poor's guide to the railroad industry helped investors evaluate changes and business decisions that might impact their investments. It was the first step in building the thorough datasets tracking companies and industries that Standard & Poor's is known for today.

See nine airplane models that transformed aviation

This visual guide jumps over the dawn of modern air travel and begins with the open-cockpit biplane flown by the first scheduled airline, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

40% of Americans didn't read a book in 2025

The median American only read two books in 2025. Most of the books Americans read are consumed by a small segment of the population, with 4% of readers accounting for nearly half of all books read.

The southbound Underground Railroad: finding freedom in Mexico

Until recently, the southbound Underground Railroad, as some scholars call it, has been largely overlooked, mainly because it left so few traces in surviving records. Read this article to learn more about this dangerous path and its travelers.

A primary source timeline of US history (1600-1968)

Compiled by the Library of Congress, this archive walks through important events in US history through civil rights era, while providing primary sources to explore.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Roughly 350,000 billboards advertise across the US

The world's oldest form of advertising can feel antiquated in a digital age, but the place-specific signs are the basis of a $9B business. Learn the history of these ads and how they remain relevant in a digital age.

Running became more popular in the mid-20th century

Once considered a fringe activity, running eventually became an American interest. The trend was spurred in part by the 1966 book "Jogging," which was cowritten by Bill Bowerman, the cofounder of Nike.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

In its famous catalog, Sears sold $600 DIY house kits from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in an estimated 100,000 'Sears and Roebuck homes.'

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.