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by ingsoc79
2907 days ago
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The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale. The vast majority of American towns, with their lower density and wider streets than their European counterparts, were simply better served by the automobile than by mass transit in 1920, and after 100 years of car-centric planning are even more so today. The genie is already out of the bottle, and with the exception of a few rapidly-growing cities, mass transit use in most American cities is falling. |
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> The reason the streetcars went away in the US was because of competition from cars, which, not coincidentally, were beginning their rise to dominance ~100 years ago. GM and Ford were in the process of killing streetcars the moment the Model T went on sale.
They killed it because they knew that a car-dominated culture would substantially increase their markets. By killing streetcars, they were simply increasing their market. They did not do this out of any sense of altruism.
The other step that greatly helped was convincing the Federal Government to invest in an interstate highway system that deliberately cut through the major cities.
> The vast majority of American towns, with their lower density and wider streets than their European counterparts, were simply better served by the automobile than by mass transit in 1920, and after 100 years of car-centric planning are even more so today.
They weren't always this way. Suburbia as we know it now was a consequence of the postwar boom and white flight; most towns fairly dense. In fact, they were dense enough to be effectively served by trams!
> The genie is already out of the bottle, and with the exception of a few rapidly-growing cities, mass transit use in most American cities is falling.
No its not.