The history of transit system management in the United States has largely been a history of failure–failure to come to grips with the real issues involved and failure to develop effective policies for an efficient and rational system.

This book, the first major survey in more than a decade, catalogues management attempts to overcome constraints imposed by external institutional and sociopolitical factors, as well as by internal labor and resource problems. In combining actual case histories with academic insights, it offers managers and consultants the tools to make transit systems work.