The Re-organization of the Transport Services in Me´xico City

(Urban Planning) Wilson, Bunnell & Borgstrom, Ltd. The Re-organization of the Transport Services in Me´xico City [cover title]. [Toronto; Me´xico, D.F.?]: 1931. 4to, [74] typescript leaves; typed note from architect Jose´ Luis Cuevas laid in; stiff-paper folder with prong fastener, edge-worn with small closed tear, else very good. Unrecorded Canadian report advising the Mexican government about changes to public transportation in Me´xico City. Me´xico City's first electric trams went into service in January, 1900 and the Mexican Tramway Company, the largest operator, was largely Canadian owned. Fifteen years later motor-buses and jitneys appeared and competed with the tramways to provide increased mobility in the rapidly expanding capital. By 1930 there were 1.24 million people living in the city, and public transportation was reaching a crisis. This report by a Canadian landscape architecture firm was commissioned by Me´xico to look at the relationship between rail and buses during a period of intense competition in which fares had been driven lower than the cost of service. Following a review of North American transportation systems and existing Mexican demographics, the report concluded that buses could not supplant rail in Me´xico City and that a single co-ordinated system will best serve passengers. (Despite the city's history of decentralized and informal public transit.) Most devastatingly, the report inaccurately estimates the city's future growth and rejects the idea of a rapid transit system. This copy presumably that of commission member Jose´ Luis Cuevas (1881-1952), a pioneer of urbanism and urban planning in Me´xico City. In the 1920s he designed two of the city's greenest neighborhoods: Condesa-Hipodromo and Loma Chapultepec. In his note he writes that the report has changed his mind about the continuation of the tramway system. Not found in OCLC. SOLD