GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered

Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?

First let them remake what they destroyed.

GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.

GM met the rise of the hybrids with "light trucks."

GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.

GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth.

For this alone, GM's managers should never be allowed to make another car, let alone take our tax money to stay in business.

But there is also a trillion-dollar skeleton in GM's closet.

This is the company that murdered our mass transit system.

The assertion comes from Bradford Snell, a government researcher whose definitive report damning GM has been a vehicular lightening rod since its 1974 debut. Its attackers and defenders are legion. But some facts are irrefutable:

In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses.

Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile. Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail routes managed by 1,200 companies employing 300,000 Americans who ran 15 billion annual trips generating an income of $1 billion. According to Snell, "virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system."

But GM lost $65 million in 1921. So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.

The campaigns varied, as did the economic and technical health of many of the systems themselves. Some now argue that buses would have transcended many of the rail lines anyway. More likely, they would have hybridized and complemented each other.

But with a varied arsenal of political and financial subterfuges, GM helped gut the core of America's train and trolley systems. It was the murder of our rail systems that made our "love affair" with the car a tragedy of necessity.

In 1949, a complex federal prosecution for related crimes resulted in an anti-trust fine against GM of a whopping $5000. For years thereafter, GM continued to bury electric rail systems by "bustituting" gas-fired vehicles.

Then came the interstates. After driving his Allied forces into Berlin on Hitler's Autobahn, Dwight Eisenhower brought home a passion for America's biggest public works project. Some 40,000 miles of vital eco-systems were eventually paved under.

In habitat destruction, oil addiction, global warming, outright traffic deaths (some 40,000/year and more), ancillary ailments and wars for oil, the automobile embodies the worst ecological catastrophe in human history.

Should current General Motors management be made to pay for the ancient sins of Alfred Sloan?

Since the 1880s, American corporations have claimed human rights under the law. Tasking one now with human responsibilities could set a great precedent.

GM has certainly proved itself unable to make cars that can compete while healing a globally-warmed planet.

So let's convert the company's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.

FDR forced Detroit to manufacture the tanks, planes and guns that won World War II (try buying a 1944 Chevrolet!). Now let a reinvented GM make the "weapons" to win the climate war and energy independence.

It demands re-tooling and re-training. But GM's special role in history must now evolve into using its infrastructure to restore the mass transit system -- and ecological balance -- it has helped destroy.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with Harvey Wasserman'S History of the US and A Glimpse of the Big Light. His Solartopia Show airs at WVKO-AM/1580, the Air America affiliate in Columbus, Ohio.

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Comments

[justime]

Wasserman you are right. It is time to take this woe full situation as an opportunity to revamp the entire transit concept in North Amereica. Many of our interstates are clogged with traffic. The highway infrastructure is in poor shape. The fuel for our vehicles is running out. The institutional mindset of Detroit auto makers is concrete. The death and injury toll in automobiles is heavy. All point to the need for a new transportation plan which will address this and next centuries realities.
It is a decision we have resisted maybe this is an opportunity to face it.

[o4tuna]

Mass transit? You people are nuts! OOo, lets build subway's and elevated trains all over the frickin place. Oh, and while we are at it, lets build mega-towers and move everyone out of the burbs and bedroom comminities and stick them into these overgrown termite temples that can hold millions of people. and hey, while we're at it, let move all the businesses into these mega towers, at least all the ones we can stand to have in the building, like banks, insurance agents, doctors, and Walmart. Oh yeah, for entertainment, we can all gather around the building during migration and watch birds hit the dam thing on foggy mornings. This is a much better solution than mass transit. If you think about it. Which you won't.

[jnah]

honestly where are you living, I live in boston with arguably one of the worst mass transit systems in the country it still is 1000% more efficient than everyone owning a car.

[wendynyc]

Yes - lets invest $25 billion each year for the next 10-15 years to develop mass transit in the United States. No to GM! Their time is gone! Their workers will get employment with these new companies.

[StefanyH]

Mass transit has got to be the answer for the 21st century. Now whether the plants of the Big 3 (and their UAW workers) land the contract to build the trolleys, light rail etc? That's another question. Using public transportation has to be marketed to the commuter weary, road-raged driver as the answer to their prayers, not an inconvenience for the 'other guy' to use. And what a public infrastructure project! But it's gonna take the average American (not just those in NYC, Chicago and Philly who are used to using the train) to willing lay down those car keys. I still think gas oughta hit $10 a gallon. It's the only way to force the issue.

[customgreen]

Come on be real. General motors single handedly killed mass transit? Here is what you do not know. Mass transit is alive and well in New York, Chicago, Detroit, and most other urban areas. Electric "trolleys" were replaced with buses, cabs, trains, subways (still electric). There is not a need for mass transit on any great scale outside of urban areas, especially not electric. Trying to span great distances with an electrical power grid is not cost efficient. As far as the federal highway system goes, you could not be farther away from reality. We are no longer and agricultural based society, and haven't been for 100 years. Moving people, materials, and goods prior to the federal highway system was a slow process. Since our country is so large it was absolutely the right thing to do. The highway system vastly improved the economy, as well as making it easier for individuals to travel. Green is one thing, trying to rewrite history is another. If you hate gasoline engines so much buy a horse.

[jp5472]

I have known the facts for years - Sloan, Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, Firestone, and many in Washington at the time were in collusion to prop up a floundering industry and ensure a market for oil and assorted products. What in many ways was perhaps beneficial in some respects to the nation at the time, surely has been detrimental for just about 40 years now as far as our having to import oil, having these companies try to manipulate the marketplace to keep the status quo, and having dismantled many public transportation lines that could be used by suburbanites, and the development of new systems as well. Yes, our cities still have subways and buses, but there is a need for commuter rail lines for all the suburban hubs around these cities. With the recent $4+/gal, ridership on Amtrak and state/local lines was overburdened, where as before that they would be failing. Is that not a wakeup call to our policy makers?

Cabs? Again - gasoline powered carbon spewing (Why still?). I remember a push in the eighties that Ford Crown Victoria cabs were running on LPG, but what happened to those programs?

Agree with you on our highway system - it is what allowed this country to grow and expand. Unfortunately 50+ years later, most of them are "parking lots" through most hours of the day.

[mjt218]

Amen . . . It's amazing how people fail to see the positive impact rapid autonomous transportation using extremely cheap oil has had on our society. Even if some consortium led by GM was responsible for the "death of public transportation" in the 70's, it's not as if they did it to destroy the planet. They did it, because they knew that the lifestyle transformation their product would bring about would make them a ton of $$. Just like every other business person in this country, in every business from Wal-Mart to Tesla Motors . . .

[cylindar]

Yes, what they did to our mass transit system is well documented and people should take note that we need mass transit now and bailing out those idiots will not be a good idea.

[BlueLuna]

Firestone was also involved at the same time. The movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is built upon the frame of the destruction of the transit system in LA in support of the rubber (tire) industry - while amusing us completely. Similar to "Chinatown" and water in the desert that is LA. The citizens of the U.S. have the collective memory-bank of a newt.

[gfs5541]

Let's be real: GM at this point can't remake anything. Moreover, it couldn't compete with the likes of Bombardier. However, Wassermann is right about one thing: We do have to reinvent Mass Transit so that the "next" oil crisis won't affect us and we won't have to worry about what countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela is doing. That's my challenge to the folks in this forum. When something unfair like California’s Proposition 8 passes, folks in the GLBT community go insane, protest, disrupt church services, but when it comes to Mass Transit, we aren’t as passionate, but we need to be. We must push our politicians on whatever level to support more Mass Transit. Sure, Californians have passed Proposition 1A, but that’s only the beginning. By breaking our dependence on foreign oil, we need to take the first step in doing so, by increasing our funding of Mass Transit projects, either on the city, county, state or regional level even if it means decreasing some funding on roads. We need to build our Mass Transit networks by whatever, whenever and however means necessary. Bus Rapid Transit, Light Rail, Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, Monorail, Personal Rapid Transit, Maglev, and Bike Trail . . . Whatever is necessary to get folks moving without need of a car. Moreover, we need to make it easy to someone to telecommute is possible.

[ObamaSheeple]

"When something unfair like California"s Proposition 8 passes, folks in the GLBT community go insane"

That's where I stopped reading anything more you had to say! Good job!

[Anciano]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for putting into one article all the rage that many of us feel about G.M.'s responsiblity for our environmental and fiscal destruction. Not one cent of our tax dollars to these criminials------unless they start building transit vehicles and High CAFE Standard vehicles. Incidentally, G.M. makes most of the World's railroad locomotives at La Grange, Illinois. It would be interesting to see how their factory there works to produce real industrial products versus the fashion- heavy consumer products that cars are.

[DuganS1]

There are already companies that build "transit vehicles", like Wabtec.

[KillTheMessenger]

Actually, the production version of the Volt looks like a Cross between a Prius and a Civic hybrid. And why wouldn't it? The laws of nature have not changed for GM and in order to be energy efficient they need a reasonable Cv. And that requires a shape which looks similar to a Prius...

:-)

[jp5472]

Yes, but $40 grand for a 40 mile range?

[larry278]

I don't think that you got it. GM is broke. It's almost certain that GM [Chrysler & Ford] can't rebuild itself [themselves] for they are afflicted by incompetent managment. These duds can't build or manage anything. If the USA is ever again to have functioning mass transit systems, these systems must be built & managed by competent people. There is also the kicker that many areas which once had wonderful mass transit systems aren't the same as they were in 1915. Some regions which supported a fine mass transit system have turned from compact cities into sprawling suburbs with no center. LA is one of those places. If LA rebuilt the Pacific Electric system 1 it would be obsolete; 2 the towns PE once served are now rubble; LA's attempts to rebuild a mass transit system have been, at the very best, a mixed bag.
If mass transit systems are to be built or rebuilt, executives from the big 3 can't do the job. GM is the mark of mindless mediocraty, not excellance. That goes for Ford & Chrysler too.

[nexus1961]

Larry.. you hit the main point square on the bull's-eye... we could dump billions of dollars into GM,
and as long as the same greed-head halfwits are running it, the money will be wasted.
What should happen is the nationalizition of the Big 3 .. they've shown their utter incompetence
beyond ANY arguability.. which I believe, would allow Gov't take-overs... and the first thing on the
to-do list is the TOTAL BANISHMENT of any exec above the assembly-line level.
NO one involved in the planning & selling of the Big 3's cars since 1975 should EVER be
allowed to work in the industry again.