WTF ...201

[MindMover]

There was a rumor that between 1938 and 1950, officials at General Motors were buying up train and light rail systems in cities so that people would have to buy more cars. The only falsity in this theory turned out to be that it wasn't just GM that was in on this ploy, but several other companies, as well.



Its no wonder we don't have public transportation like every other developed country ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

[DrDan]

1. I recently had the pleasure of taking the fast train in spain - Barcelona to Madrid, then

Madrid to Sevilla

what a treat - 300 kph - smooth - quiet - on-time

we are sooooooo far behind them in mass-transit

[marym625]

2. exactly why in L.A., you need a car.

[pbmus]

3. This is definitely a wtf ...

wondered when someone was gonna catch on ...

[brewens]

4. We should also be shipping much more by rail. The cost of all those trucks on the road is

astronomical. Even a staunch conservative friend of mine agrees with me on that. He's what I consider a real conservative though. Really only looks at it from his small businessman perspective. He's 80 now. Never believed in God and thinks abortions should be legal.

[Thespian2]

5. What the US did with the scrap steel...

"This photograph of Chinese Americans picketing at the Port of Astoria appeared in the Oregon Journal on March 3, 1939. The picket was organized to protest the sale of scrap iron and steel to Japan, where it was recycled into war material. At the time of the protest, the Japanese government was waging an undeclared war against China. In 1939 approximately 2,000,000 tons of scrap metal were exported from the United States to Japan."

The Japanese in WW II turned the scrap into weapons and shot our buses back at us...

[eppur_se_muova]

6. There's a great documentary about that ...

http://www.newdaydigital.com/Taken-for-a-Ride.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0236785/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taken_for_a_Ride

[treestar]

7. An LA friend of mine grew up taking trolleys all over the LA area

He knows it. That Los Angeles once had a good public transportation system. And then they built the freeways.