[PEN-L:8362] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: California Gree -Reply -Forw

["Michael Hoover" <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Milwaukee retained its trolleys for several decades, and many
> European cities have excellent transit systems to this day.
> To say that GM done it would be overly simple, but there was and is very
> much a political economy of transportation investment, of which GM was a
> part.
> Peter
>
> Tim Stroshane wrote:
> > Forwarded mail received from: PERMIT1:NAL1
> > The GM conspiracy theory has little or no credibility in
> > transportation circles. It's true that a GM-owned company bought
> > up trolley- based transit systems and converted them to bus
> > operation. But if it hadn't been GM, it most likely would have
> > been someone else.

many US trolley lines were originally built by real estate developers
to transport people to their developments on city fringes...they
generally operated their transit systems at a loss and subsidized them
with profits from their developments...once all the property was sold
and they had no more incentive to subsidize transit, they turned to
local gov't for financial aid or sold the systems to local gov't...

most US street car systems disappeared in 1940s when transit companies
changed to buses and paved over streetcar rails...between 1935 and
1970, the number of streetcar track miles declined from 25,000 to
about 750...you don't have to subscribe to a GM conspiracy
theory (which I may well contribute to here by noting that it was a
consortium owned by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil that bought
LA's public transit and tore up the streetcar tracks) but, as Peter
notes, you shouldn't discount the importance of GM (and Firestone &
Standard Oil) to the political economy of transportation in the US...

even in their heyday earlier in the century, US mass transit carried
only about 1/5th to 1/3 the passengers of European systems...and
Europeans consistently invested in modernizing train and transit
operations, the result being efficient intercity and intracity
systems that are fast, punctual, widely used, save on oil costs,
and hold down air pollution...   Michael Hoover