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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: combjelly who wrote (374761)3/22/2008 3:42:36 PM
From: tejek  Read Replies (1) of 1577925
 
Did you read this part of the Wikipedia entry:

"Though National City Lines never owned the Cleveland Railway Company transit system in Cleveland, General Motors did negotiate the sale of buses to the city - resulting in the shut down of the streetcar system. Recent records indicate that Cleveland was on the General Motors' "Hit List" of cities targeted for takeover by National City Lines. Cleveland Mayor Raymond T. Miller had been on the city council’s transportation committee in 1946, when the decision was made to dismantle Cleveland’s streetcars. Four years later, Mayor Miller received a new GMC dealership a month after GM won the contract for supplying new buses to the city of Cleveland. The FBI refused to investigate based on high profile nature of the people targeted. The Cleveland streetcars were sold to the Toronto TTC where they remained in service for 30 years, until 1982."

GM was not the sole source of the destruction of America's streetcar system but there is ample evidence that it was a major contributor......frequently their undermining was done in very subtle ways...influencing gov't to go in the direction of buses and freeways rather than stick with light rail like many European cities were doing. You need look no further than our history to see their impact......I mean what other country besides the US decided to build this huge, and I mean huge infrastructure of freeways at a tremendous cost in the middle of the 20th century. It all came out of the thinking prevalent in the 1950s when GM was still a corporate king. You are being ingenuous if you don't believe that the building of that freeway system was not influenced by GM and Ford.

But the real test is experiencing the ride on light rail opposed to a bus......the difference in the ride is huge. Smooth, much less jolting, faster, no gas fumes, etc. Why would Americans voluntarily give that up for buses is beyond me? And frankly, I don't think they did. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans who ride mass transit rarely had much clout then and now.
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