Taken For A Ride
Taken For A Ride is a documentary about how GM helped bring down rail transit in this country (wiki):
Why Does America Have the Worst Public Transit in the Industrialized World, and the Most Freeways?
Taken for a Ride reveals the tragic and little known story of an auto and oil industry campaign, led by General Motors, to buy and dismantle streetcar lines. Across the nation, tracks were torn up, sometimes overnight, and diesel buses placed on city streets.
The highway lobby then pushed through Congress a vast network of urban freeways that doubled the cost of the Interstates, fueled suburban development, increased auto dependence, and elicited passionate opposition. Seventeen city freeways were stopped by citizens who would become the leading edge of a new environmental movement.
With investigative journalism, vintage archival footage and candid interviews, Taken for a Ride presents a revealing history of our cities in the 20th century that is also a meditation on corporate power, city form, citizen protest and the social and environmental implications of transportation.
So why is this documentary and all the court convictions and all the supporting evidence so important?
The evidence shows that the electric rail systems of America were dismantled against the wishes of the American people.
BRT proponents will talk about how the ‘private trolley streetcars’ of the early 20th century were losing money hand over fist, how nobody liked to ride them, how buses were the only viable alternative, people loved to ride the buses, etc. This is a complete fabrication, sometimes put forward out of dishonesty, and other times out of ignorance.
I’d been wanting to see this documentary for a long time, and I finally got to see it. It’s a bit difficult to get your hands on. The main library has a VHS copy you can check out, or you can sign up for a slot to watch the video on one of the seven or so video stations they have set up there — they’re usually pretty darn crowded, and you have to walk in to reserve a slot.
You may also be able to find it via torrent, but that might require some tech skills.
The film is important enough that I think we should try to convince New Day Films to release it into the public domain. Or maybe we can find a transportation-type organization, or consortium of them, that might be willing to pony up the money to buy the rights to the film.
We might also be able to get discounted or free rent to show it on local public access television, but that seems like a difficult, time-consuming road to take.
A whole bunch of interesting people and places appear in the movie - including our very own Joseph Alioto - Mayor of SF from ‘68 to ‘76. I don’t know about the rest of his policies, but the documentary sure made it seem like he had his head on straight with respect to mass transit.
I don’t think the film was based directly on the book of the same name, but I’ve added this book to my ’soon to read’ list.
Some of what has fueled my hatred towards BRT is knowledge of some of the evidence surrounding GM’s criminal conspiracy (for which GM and others were convicted) - specifically, Alfred Sloan’s alleged feelings towards the ride quality of buses. I haven’t been able to track down his quote regarding the ride quality of buses yet. Alfred Sloan was president and chairman of GM for a long time - including the run-up to and through part of World War II - when he kept GM supplying Hitler with machinery for his conquest of Europe. Thus, Sloan’s famous quote about not wanting to be bothered with that whole question of morality — “The business of business is business.” I hear that some GIs were surprised to see German military vehicles that looked oddly familiar. Swell guy, that Sloan.
Now, Sloan’s money goes to all sorts of things - some even good, I suspect. But I do wonder about the virtue of naming a business school after a guy like that.
In the movie, US Attorney Brad Snell said that at the time of the case there was no anti-trust law, which seems odd because the the Sherman Act was passed in 1890 - and General Motors and others were convicted of conspiring to monopolize a local industry, so consider me confused on this part. With regards to the Sherman Act, is anyone surprised that it was passed in an attempt to constrain an oil company - namely, Standard Oil? Snell’s research was presented to a congressional committee, and can now be found in books or online with the title ‘American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus and Rail Industries‘ (rtf/Word doc).
Another book I picked up from the library recently, but haven’t had the time to do more than skim yet, is The Motorization of American Cities by David St. Clair. It seems really good and has lots of facts and figures. I believe it was originally his doctoral dissertation.
Here are a couple of other quick notes from the film:
- One of the scenes showed a bunch of the (Philly?) streetcars being burned, which was kind of odd, because many others had their scrap metal re-used, apparently. It reminded me of those scenes from Who Killed The Electric Car? where all the e-cars get crushed. “Five gallons of kerosene went with every [street]car.” Was it just a bit of GM triumphalism? Or making sure they could never be brought back? Or both?
- In speaking about electric streetcars (trolleys), the narrator says: “Steel track and quiet electric motors made the ride smooth and clean and comfortable.”
- A Commander Edwin Quinby, who happened to be a rail fan and financial sleuth, put together a 33-page document that basically showed how GM was pulling down the private rail car companies. He mailed it to people in cities around the U.S. This letter was, apparently, one of the keys to kicking off the federal antitrust investigation that eventually led to conviction of both GM and National City Lines. He wrote to city managers of GM’s efforts to: “…deliberately destroy public utilities…which you will find impractical to replace…after you discover your mistake.” I guess this is why it was so important to National City Lines to tear up whatever tracks they could. I want a copy of this document.
- We hear more stories of how important key appointments are in government - that proximity is worth a lot (of money). Former General Motors CEO, Charles “What’s good for GM is good for the Country” Wilson, as SecDef. The Interstate Highway System was justified on ‘national security’ grounds (Canada might invade!). Francis Du Pont (yes, of the massive company; family was a huge stockholder in GM) got appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Public Roads, and that got him access to President Eisenhower, so he could talk the ‘highway-building talk’ in Eisenhower’s ear.
- Alioto says the highway lobby would build a road straight through the Vatican if they thought it would shorten a trip for them.
Good flick. It’s worth your time.
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