Jim,
You should see the film. Near the end the narrator says "National
City Lines, General Motors and the other defendants were found guilty
of conspiracy to monopolize the local transportation field."
That sounds like somebody believed it was a conspiracy. The film
covered other cities around the USA, byw, including Philadelphia,
Baltimore, etc. So it wasn't just the Red Car lines.
Gene
On Nov 23, 2009, at 2:43 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Eugene Coyle wrote:
I'll tout once again the film "Taken for a Ride" about the GM and
Firestone conspiracy to rid the world of public transit.
I wouldn't call this a "conspiracy," since (at least in Los Angeles),
a lot of people consciously went along with it (especially those with
the most political power, i.e., the rich and middle classes,
businesspeople, the LA TIMES). It's more like GM and its allies were
the vanguard of a movement.
Remember that there was little or no opposition, because for there to
be an opposition something like a labor movement or a
social-democratic movement was needed (and didn't exit). One reason
why there was no major opposition was partly because the Red Car
(Pacific Electric) trolley system had been allowed to decay and was
interfering with car traffic. (It went both ways: the cars slowed the
Red Car movement, too, making the Red Cars less attractive.) Note that
the Red Cars were never especially profitable, because there was so
much overhead. The effort by GM and its allies to get rid of the Red
Cars fell on a fertile political field.
Note that the choice was not (1) keep the Red Cars or (2) get rid of
them. Instead, it was (1) invest a lot of money in upgrading the Red
Cars (perhaps putting them in the middle of the new freeways, which
were already being planned); or (2) replace them. In fact, given the
system's losses, the Pacific Electric would likely have to have been
taken over by the city and county of Los Angeles.
Part of the problem, of course, was that when the system was abolished
in the 1940s and early 1950s, people didn't know the full implications
of the ending of the train system. It took a few years to sink in.
It's only in the 1960s that suddenly the problems became obvious.
By the way, it's not that public transport was abolished in Los
Angeles. Rather, the Red Cars were replaced by municipal buses, which
were and are much less convenient (because of the dispersed nature of
LA) and more pollution-intensive.
the article in the Wikipedia is informative.
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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