Introduction: "Agency Run Amok"
1. A Bridge to Prosperity
2. A District Divided
3. The District and Its Enemies
4. The Defeat of the Golden Gate Authority
5. Rapid Transit Versus the Golden Gate Bridge
6. James Adam, Boss of the Golden Gate Bridge
7. Regionalism, Transportation, and Perpetual Tolls
Conclusion: Subsidies, Suicides, and Sensitivity
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
Drawing on previously unavailable archives, Paying the Toll describes the high-stakes struggles for control of the Golden Gate Bridge, and offers a rare inside look at the powerful and secretive agency that built a regional transportation empire with its toll revenue.
Louise Nelson Dyble teaches history at Michigan Technological University.
"A splendid blend of narrative political history and political
science theory based mostly on deep archival digging, newspaper
research, and interviews. . . . Dyble indicts the Golden Gate
Bridge and Tunnel Authority for its arrogance, corruption, and
self-perpetuating administration of the bridge."—Journal of
American History
"Urban historian Louis Nelson Dyble lays bare the politics,
scandal, corruption, and arrogance that mask what she calls the
bridge's 'mythic proportions' and 'heroic beauty'. Dyble's work is
not a deconstruction of the bridge itself, but rather an intriguing
exposé of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation
District. . . . Her telling of this experience is useful for any
emerging scholar seeking to unravel the intricacy of public policy
debates. It can be an uncomfortable, awkward, suspect, and
thankless task, but Dyble's book shows the benefits when one
prevails."—Journal of Historical Geography
"An important contribution to the study of business history. . . .
Louise Nelson Dyble recounts the history of a special district, the
Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District (aka the Bridge District),
which was created to build and service the debt for financing the
Golden Gate Bridge."—Enterprise and Society
"Dyble possesses a firm grasp of current scholarship, drawing upon
work written by historians, political scientists, and legal
scholars. Her in-depth discussion of special districts during the
course of the twentieth century and how they played out is itself
worthy of the price of admission. . . . Paying the Toll has,
unquestionably, added an invaluable chapter to historical
scholarship. It is deeply researched, very well organized, and well
narrated."—Pacific Historical Review
"Dyble's account is complex and in many instances compelling. . . .
What might have been an expose of corruption and greed assumes
greater power as an assessment of power and policy. Because she
writes so well and draws effectively from the archives she managed
to penetrate, her argument is both clear and compelling."—Journal
of Planning Literature
"In this magnificent gem of a book, Louise Nelson Dyble takes the
reader from the dark corners of avaricious public officialdom and
smoke-filled rooms to the bright vistas and architectural wonder of
the Golden Gate Bridge itself. At once steward of the public
interest, notorious bureaucracy, and gateway to northern
California, the Bridge and Highway District emerges in Dyble's
telling as the center of a multilayered history of the state. The
bridge and its legacy have found their historian."—Robert O. Self,
Brown University
"Not merely the history of one particularly unresponsive and
incompetent government agency that managed to survive—even
thrive—despite decades of public discontent and organized
opposition from influential politicians and business leaders,
Paying the Toll provides us with greater understanding of the
institutional structure of American government. A must-read for
everyone concerned about our fragmented public sector and its
difficulties confronting the demands of the twenty-first
century."—Gail Radford, author of Modern Housing for America
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