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>No, Elon wants to cancel public transportation. Just like in the 1930's when car companies bought public transportation to shut them down. Except that's not w
by gruez 1y ago
>No, Elon wants to cancel public transportation. Just like in the 1930's when car companies bought public transportation to shut them down.
Except that's not what happened. Streetcars were already on the decline when car companies bought them. Claiming "car companies bought public transportation to shut them down" makes as much sense as "hospice doctors gave cancer patients painkillers to kill them".
From wikipedia:
>Quinby and Snell held that the destruction of streetcar systems was integral to a larger strategy to push the United States into automobile dependency. Most transit scholars disagree, suggesting that transit system changes were brought about by other factors; economic, social, and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed fares during inflation, changes in paving and automotive technology, the Great Depression, antitrust action, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, market forces including declining industries' difficulty in attracting capital, rapidly increasing traffic congestion, the Good Roads Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies favoring private vehicle ownership, taxation of fixed infrastructure, consumerism, franchise repair costs for co-located property, wide diffusion of driving skills, automatic transmission buses, and general enthusiasm for the automobile.[
- FireBeyond 1y ago> Streetcars were already on the decline when car companies bought them. And yet... LA has, still, 1,000 miles of light rail, and many other locations 500 miles plus. And then you have Melbourne: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Melbourne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Melbourne > ... consists of approximately 1,700 tram stops across 24 routes. It is the largest operational urban tram network in the world and one of the most used, with more than 500 trams and 250 kilometres (160 miles) of double tram track. It carried 154.8 million passengers over the year 2023-24. Trams are the second most utilised form of public transport in Melbourne after the city's metropolitan commuter railway network.
- whynotmaybe 1y agoI guess we should make some comparisons between marketing budget for cars presented as "freedom" and public transit as outdated VS public transit discrediting cars. Why were there tax incentives to own cars? Because cars were manufactured locally and required a lot of labor so we can say that it was a relatively positive thing for the economy. But how come that some countries have both a strong public transit and huge car industries like France or Germany?
- queenkjuul 1y agoI've found that most Americans literally don't know that France has a car industry at all
- whynotmaybe 1y agoMany would be astonished to learn that a French car company saved AMC from bankruptcy when AMC owned Jeep.