I think Uncle Cecil really missed the facts on this one. There is plenty of evidence to show that GM and other auto affiliated companies conspired to kill public transportation starting in the 30’s, not the least of which is how whenever that consortium bought up raillines, they DISMANTLED them. Sheesh, it is not like there is no precedent for this type of underhanded corporate behaviour. What about present day Wal-Mart activities to coerce suppliers into supplying their products at the price Wal-Mart wants. What about Standard Oil’s take over of the oil industry? And what about the story behind Cadillac Desert and the movie Chinatown? C’mon Cecil!
The column is Did General Motors destroy the LA mass transit system? – even though it’s the lead column at present, it will not be in the future, so it’s nice to have a link.
That GM destroyed LA’s superior mass transit is a conspiracy theory that won’t die. The problem with the conspiracy is that the same forces that were at work in LA were at work in every other major city in the country at the time, and the exact same progression took place, GM or no GM. In a rapidly physically-expanding metro area, buses have huge advantages over fixed rail and easily available auto ownership has advantages over both. That remains true today, as well. Fixed rail proponents can’t see this for reasons that I have never been able to understand.
Probably the best online resource that directly debunks the conspiracy is The Myth Behind The Streetcar Revival, by Robert C. Post, from the May/June 1998 American Heritage magazine.
If you have some similarly authoritative cite that argues against GM, I’d be very interested in reading it.
Cecil quoted: “[GM]…(2) forced the railroads to replace nonpolluting electric locomotives with GM-built diesels.”
Non-polluting electric locomotives? So these things just pulled the electricity out of thin air? The locomotive itself might not have created any pollution but the powerplant that generated the electricity used to run it sure did. Plus, due to losses over the power lines and in transformers, generating electricity elsewhere and sending it to LA actually produces more pollution than the diesel-electric locomotives produce. But hey, it’s someone else’s air being polluted so who cares.
Also, isn’t one goal of a business to have as big a market share as possible, thereby eliminating any competition that can’t adapt? People decided they’d rather wait for the buses on their street or drive their own cars whenever and to wherever they wanted, instead of walking to the nearest streetcar line.
Incorrect logic. You can’t count the transmission losses in one side of the scales but ignore the greater efficiencies of a stationary power plant sitting in the other side.