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By jason (registered) | Posted November 10, 2009 at 22:43:53
Grassroots, the history of transit systems in North America ends up being another sad tale of the oil/auto lobby swaying government to their product at the expense of all others. Oil companies bought many US transit systems and dismantled them in order to create a market for private cars. I caught myself listening to 3 minutes of the 'Scott Thompson' show today on CHML and he said something to the effect of Canada having developed around the car, and not rail like Europe. I'm paraphrasing, but that was his point. Wrong. Canadian cities absolutely had tremendous rail systems that were the mode of transportation for decades. Sadly many cities followed the lead of their US counterparts and dismantled world class streetcar systems (including Hamilton) in order to use dirty diesel buses and make way for more cars. The only reason transit systems dont' turn a profit now is because the auto/oil cartel got the government to invade the free market and force bad urban design upon our cities in order to create a false market for their product. Even with trillions of tax dollar subsidies and the complete destruction of fabulous transportation systems in North American cities, the auto industry is on it's deathbed. Only now are we slowly seeing a rebuild of urban streetcar systems in North America. We've come full circle, destroyed a lot of wonderful urban neighbourhoods and made a small few folks billions of dollars along the way, but perhaps have learned our lesson....for now.....
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