#  Rachel Y. Kim (Harvard) 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **April 3, 2026** 

 12:00PM - 01:30PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **WJH 1550**  

For the Zoom link email jviator@fas.harvard.edu

 

 

 



 

**"All Aboard?: Managing Consensus in the Moral Economy of Public Transportation"**

Amidst significant inter-city competition for regional public goods, why do some cities receive full access to regional infrastructure systems while others receive downgraded investments or nothing at all? This study examines how regional infrastructure systems’ unique material features shape the specific political conditions under which they are built. Empirically, this study draws on the case of Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)—a regional public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area—and four of its proposed rail extensions after 1999. Drawing on archival data and over 80 interviews with Bay Area agency bureaucrats, politicians, business lobbyists, and urbanism advocates, this study investigates why two extensions (BART to Silicon Valley and BART to Warm Springs) received “full” system-standard BART extensions, eBART was given an “abridged” extension, or a less costly rail technology, and BART to Livermore was canceled. Bridging economic sociology, political sociology, the sociology of development, and social scientific research on infrastructure development, this study highlights how regional infrastructure systems’ fragmentation problems require state and non-state actors to achieve moral-political consensus about the legitimacy of their interests.



 

 



 

 

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