By Julie FrenchThe Daily Northwestern

“Chicago is not a great city that became a great transportation center. It is a great transportation center that became a great city,” reads a sign at a new exhibit chronicling Chicago’s early transportation history.

The exhibit, located on the first floor of the University Library, includes displays about the decision to divert the flow of the Chicago River and the first automobile race in the United States, a 54-mile loop that took seven hours for the two competitors to complete.

Kay Geary, the public services librarian for the Transportation Library, assembled the display after the library received a book found in a Virginia library containing Chicago street traffic data from 1915. A history of Chicago’s waterways, railways, cable cars and air lines round out the exhibit built around the new book.

“I think it’s good to know where we come from,” Geary said.

NU has long recognized the importance of studying Chicago transportation, she said, with the founding of the Transportation Library in the 1950s, along with the Transportation Center, an interdisciplinary research institute. There are several graduate programs, and an undergraduate major was created in 2002.

Chicago’s early transportation affects what is built and studied today, from the demise of early cable cars to the first airport, with its 75-cent taxi fares for a nine-mile ride downtown.

“Given the fact that most transportation involves some huge infrastructure, that means you actually have to live with what you create decades, even centuries, afterward,” said economics Prof. Ian Savage, co-director of the transportation and logistics undergraduate minor.

The study of transportation involves engineering feats as well as political considerations. Those who study the socioeconomic side of transportation, for example, study issues such as whether the government should bail out failing airlines, or if people should be charged to use the roads to reduce congestion, Savage said.

For Geary, the quirks of Chicago’s transportation history, like the practice of saving parking spots during snowstorms, are what makes it interesting.

Rob Delaney, a Weinberg senior from Nashville, Tenn., said he didn’t realize Chicagoans claimed their parking spaces.

“I can’t say I blame them,” he said.

Reach Julie French at [email protected].