[snipped rec.bicycles.tech since this isn't a technical discussion
about bicycles]
"Ken M" <
[email protected]> writes:
> Todd Tracy wrote:
>> http://www.slate.com/id/2131049/
>
> It is a myth that you can't live in America without owning a MV. I
> often think that it was probably started by some MV company in an
> effort to boost sales. Perhaps this happened around the time of the
> oil embargo of the 70's. Anyway, I have not owned an MV in over 5
> years and I get alone fine without one.
Good for you.
The myth of the necessity of car ownership was started in about 1922
by the president of General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan. He formed an
illegal consortium with Firestone, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum
and Mack Trucks to buy up and disable public transit trolley lines
across the country. The created a front company, National City Lines,
which bought up and then put out of business trolley lines- replacing
them with buses when they kept the transit companies in business at
all. One in ten American families owned an auto in 1922. The plan
was successful in acieving its goal of getting more Americans to buy
cars (and gasoline, oil and tires). In 1932, GM formed the National
Highway Users Conference to lobby for roads, highways and policies
friendly to the automobile.
In short, the American car culture is the result of social engineering
by GM and others.
In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed the GM president as Secretary
of Defense and the president of DuPont as Secretary of Transportation.
Between the two of them and Congress, the largest public expenditure
for civilian projects was the paving of America. At that time the
Highway Trust Fund was created to make sure that gasoline taxes were
funneled into roadbuilding. In 1972, GM convinced Congress to block
funding for rapid transit to a great extent. It wasn't until ISTEA
that federal money for urban transit became widely available, and many
cities are now developing light rail lines to replace the services
that were destroyed by GM et al in the 1920's-1950's.
Locally, "save the car" is the conservative rallying cry for transit
planning. Despite the new light rail transit line having its 10
millionth passenger last week, in under two years in a metro area of 3
million people, the conservatives continue to claim that transit is a
"failure." The Taxpayer's League has spent a lot of money painting
transit as "social engineering," conveniently ingoring the history of
transportation social engineering that has brought us to the state we
are in now. It's all very laughable.
One good benefit of ISTEA/TEA-21 is that we now have many miles of
bike paths that are actually intended to be useful commuting routes,
linking suburbs to downtowns and eventually linking the downtowns.
During the reasonable months of the year, they are crowded with people
obviously commuting to work by bike.