Editing Personal rapid transit (section)

===UMTA is formed===
By the late 1950s the problems with [[urban sprawl]] were becoming evident in the United States. When cities improved roads and the transit times were lowered, suburbs developed at ever increasing distances from the city cores, and people moved out of the downtown areas. Lacking [[pollution control]] systems, the rapid rise in car ownership and the longer trips to and from work were causing significant air quality problems. Additionally, movement to the suburbs led to a [[flight of capital]] from the downtown areas, one cause of the rapid [[urban decay]] seen in the US.

Mass transit systems were one way to combat these problems. Yet during this period, the federal government was feeding the problems by funding the development of the [[Interstate Highway System]], while at the same time funding for mass transit was being rapidly scaled back. Public transit ridership in most cities plummeted.<ref>Irving, pg. 1-2</ref>

In 1962, President [[John F. Kennedy]] charged [[United States Congress|Congress]] with the task of addressing these problems. These plans came to fruition in 1964, when President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] signed the [[Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964]] into law, thereby forming the [[Urban Mass Transportation Administration]].<ref>[http://www.fta.dot.gov/about/about_FTA_history.html "The Beginnings of Federal Assistance for Public Transportation"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090827051813/http://www.fta.dot.gov/about/about_FTA_history.html |date=2009-08-27 }}, Federal Transit Administration</ref> UMTA was set up to fund mass transit developments in the same fashion that the earlier [[Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956]] had helped create the Interstate Highways. That is, UMTA would help cover the capital costs of building out new infrastructure.