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Paved Roads & Public Money
Connecticut Transportation in the Age of Internal Combustion
The Driftless Connecticut Series & Garnet Books
Sales Date: 2020-09-03
Paved Roads & Public Money describes the evolution of transportation systems in modern Connecticut. It is the second book in a two-volume study that begins with the bicycle craze of the 1880s, and ends with the efforts of the Malloy and Lamont administrations to revitalize Connecticut transportation in the twenty-first century. The story includes aviation, highways, bridges, ferries, steamboats, canals, railroads, electric trolleys, and water ports in Connecticut and along the multi-state travel corridor from New York to Boston. Drawing on a wide array of primary material, Richard DeLuca examines how land, law, and technology have shaped the state and its transportation systems, giving special attention to the state's two largest transportation monopolies: the New Haven Railroad and the Connecticut Department of Transportation. The book focuses on key events in the development of transportation and legislation. It is arranged chronologically, and by highlighting themes from each period shows the implications of the state's transportation history on current debates about infrastructure and funding. It features 50 illustrations and three appendices: population by geomorphic region, a list of controlled access highways, and a list of notable highway bridges.
Preface • Introduction: The Bicycle Leads the Way • Chapter One: The Early Auto Age • Chapter Two: Connecticut Takes to the Sky • Chapter Three: Parkways, Expressways & Interstates, Part I • Chapter Four: Parkways, Expressways & Interstates, Part II • Chapter Five: A Public Monopoly: The First Fifty Years • Conclusion: An Historical Perspective: 1614 to 2015 • Appendix A: Population By Geomorphic Region, 1900-2000 • Appendix B: Controlled Access Expressways • Appendix C: Notable Highway Bridges • Notes • Bibliography • Index
RICHARD DELUCA is a writer and former civil engineer who worked in the transportation field for ten years as a state highway planner and regional transportation planner. The first volume of his two-volume series on transportation in Connecticut, Post Roads and Iron Horses: Transportation in Connecticut from Colonial Times to the Age of Steam, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2011.
"This is a wonderful, and wonderfully readable, study of a subject that is central to our well-being. It is so rich in interesting surprises you almost forget how much in-depth thinking underlies each chapter. A study of transportation in Connecticut from Albert Pope's nineteenth-century bicycle to the deeply stressed multimodal transportation networks of the present, Paved Roads and Public Money provides the historical background we need to make the difficult choices that lie ahead. DeLuca doesn't just describe Connecticans' journey from the past to the present, he outlines the values that must inform our future. Required—and fascinating—reading."
~Walter W. Woodward, associate professor of history, University of Connecticut