while there seemst to be some evidence of the GM conspiracy story in one or two cities, the fact that the same thing happened in other cities where there was no GM conspiracy tends to indicate hthe problem was systemic rather than a conspiracy.  It is like blaming Robert Moses for all of New York Citeis mass transit ills when the same thing happened everywhere else, only worse, in every other major city without a robert moses.  there are deep structural reasons for the direction of US urban change  in the middle of the 20th century, related to the US role in proping up global consumer demand after the great depressoin, that are no longer in force.  . w. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">--------- Original Message -------- From: "Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport" <sustran-discuss@list.jca.apc.org> To: "sustran-discuss@list.jca.apc.org" <sustran-discuss@list.jca.apc.org> Subject: [sustran] Conspiracy or fate? Date: 06/04/06 02:57 I support Jonathan's point -- even in social democratic sweden and left-centrist france, governments of the 1950s and 1960s dissasembled many local and intercity rail systems and rationalized bus systems -- instead of making private motorization face its real costs -- so that these systems, on their way into disuse anyway, were spared the suffering and suffocation from auto use. No one dared keep residential expansion into single family dwellings in the US structured close to rail corridors etc. The real point is that many people love the store of the GM/FIrestone/Standard oil "conspiracy", but it happens everywhere if cars and roads are cheap and more or less already there. The nice streetcars of the 1920s in the US went bankrupt because cities would not let them raise fares. ANgry consumers bought cars as the next alternative for commuting, and the car was out of the bag, so to speak. A geographer at UC Berkeley, Skip Vance, wrote a book about this in the late 1980s that was to be published by a major publisher that was bought out and the book project dropped. In short, take away the "conspiracy" and you still have the same develoments, just perhaps retarded by the "retarded" response by p olicy makers. And, oh yes, the Parisians are trying to replace the circumferential rail system they destroyed in the 1950s, Sweden has now reintroduced private and public buses (and some rail service) to replace the intercity systems that decayed through the 1970s, and the US, well.. that's another story. >>> <A class=autolink href="mailto:richmond@alum.mit.edu">richmond@alum.mit.edu</A> 4/6/2006 10:32:32 AM >>> While your other points are well-made, there are questions about the so-called GM conspiracy to buy up electric railways. The reason for this activity was that railways were losing money. True, GM wanted to sell buses, but the natural conversion from an efficiency point of view was from rail to buses. Even without GM's activities, the railways would have gone out of existence without government intervention, which was certainly not available at the time. --Jonathan ----- Jonathan Richmond Visiting Scholar Department of Urban Planning and Design Graduate School of Design Harvard University 312 George Gund Hall 48 Quincy St. Cambridge MA 02138-3000 Mailing address: 182 Palfrey St. Watertown MA 02472-1835 (617) 395-4360 e-mail: <A class=autolink href="mailto:richmond@alum.mit.edu">richmond@alum.mit.edu</A> <A class=autolink href="http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/" target=_blank>http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/</A> ================================================================ SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus is on urban transport policy in Asia. ================================================================ SUSTRAN-DISCUSS is a forum devoted to discussion of people-centred, equitable and sustainable transport with a focus on developing countries (the 'Global South'). Because of the history of the list, the main focus is on urban transport policy in Asia. </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> ________________________________________________ Message sent using UebiMiau 2.7.9