HUD reports

The HUD Reports were a series of studies in mass transit systems, funded by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) department of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HUD reports were extremely influential in the development of the personal rapid transit (PRT) concept, small pod-like vehicles that automatically travel from point-to-point in extended networks. Their publication in early 1968 sparked off PRT development projects at dozens of companies around the world. In spite of intense interest in the early 1970s, political winds shifted and today there is only one HUD-inspired PRT system in commercial operation, the Morgantown PRT in West Virginia.

By the late 1950s it was becoming clear to urban planners that something was seriously wrong with the major cities in the U.S. The rapid increase in automobile ownership in the post-war period was providing citizens with unprecedented mobility, allowing them to leave the cities for housing in the newly created subdivisions at ever increasing distances. As a result there was a flight of capital from the downtown areas, leading to widespread and rapid urban decay.

The creation of the federally funded Interstate Highway System fed into this evolution, and by the early 1960s there was increasing political pressure to do something about the problem - if federal funding created the problem, it should solve it too. A bill was proposed in 1960 to provide federal assistance for mass transportation projects, but never made it out of the United States House of Representatives. After the election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1961, the bill was re-introduced as part of a larger urban housing bill. This time it passed, and was signed into law on 30 June 1961.

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