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Bruce's avatar

In the 1950's the Hollywood Freeway was widened and the highway engineers bragged that it would provide enough capacity for the next 10 years. A year later the freeway was at 100% capacity. People changed their routes or took trips on the freeway that they would not have done before. Sixty years later this is still the case. But it is wrong to think of freeways as efficient ways to move people around but instead as profit making opportunities for construction companies and real estate developers and auto and truck companies, and the insurance industry. The composition of the California transportation advisory board shows who benefits from building new freeway capacity.

General Motors, Firestone Tire, and Standard Oil conspired to destroy public transportation in the country's cities after WW II and they were aided by President Eisenhower who had admired the autobahns built in Germany by Hitler's people without realizing that 98% of the war material and people movement was done by the country's railroads. Workers are now forced to buy and maintain automobiles to be able to get to work, to shop, to school, or a public park. More than 50% of the area of American cities is devoted to automobiles and this is 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

We are 70 years behind Europe where one can safely bicycle through the cities or get on a train and travel in comfort at 200 mph from Paris to Venice. We are 20 years behind China which has also funded high speed trail lines and bicycle and pedestrian paths in their major cities. But the American way is far more profitable for the vulture capitalists that run our governments at the local, state, and federal levels.

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Bob Palmer's avatar

I fear that these initiatives that work in more cooperative societies will not work here. Case in point: guns. And for Americans their cars are as cherished as their firearms. Nice thought though. In a better world, in a better time . . .

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