[PRCo] Re: little note on Henry Ford and the streetcar...

[Ken & Tracie]

My goodness.......An interesting web site. Too bad the environmentalists and
the social engineers are on the same side of the fence. The social engineers
have helped to destroy the nuclear family and in turn helped make the
central cities dangerous, causing people of means to flee to the suburbs.
Not enough population density to support mass transit is a by product of
this implosion of urban culture. I certainly am not going to use the bus,
car line, bicycle or walk if my travels take me through a gang-infested,
economically depressed central city. Then there is the racial aspect. Try
being a white person walking through a black neighborhood. I don't worry as
much about being harrassed for being white as I am about being harassed by
the police who think I'm looking to purchase crack cocaine.

Portland, Seattle and San Francisco have vibrant downtowns, even if some
surrounding neighborhoods are in decay and decline. There are also
neighborhoods close to downtown that are home to working, productive
citizens. The downtowns have retain enough social and economic activity,
i.e., entertainment and business. The surrounding residential density to
provide an excellent environment for mass tranist, walking and cycling.
Seattle's and San Francisco's hills would certainly provide a good physical
work out and reduce an individual's stress level! :-) A number of businesses
provide showers and lockers for cyclists who commute by bicycle. And of
course, there are bike racks on the streetcars and coaches.

But in areas where businesses have relocated to the suburbs and people are
commuting suburb to suburb, unless one is commuting from Library to Mt.
Lebanon or Dormont, or live in the vicinity of New York City or Chicago
where rail commuting in deeply encultured, it may be impractical to push for
the alternatives to automobile commuting.

Try to level violent, dangerous inner city neighborhoods, run out the gangs,
criminals and other assorted morons to build upscale, commuter friendly
neighborhoods and the social engineers whine about "gentrification."
Conversely, anybody who whined during the '60s on through the present about
scum bags moving into and diminishing the quality of life in working and
middle class central city neighborhoods were, and are, accused of everything
from being snobbish to racist.

Productive citizens of all races and ethnicities need to take back our
central cities and inner ring suburbs without any guilt or excuses. This
action may recreate the proper environment for mass transit. We need to
start at home with good family values and respecting our neighbors to build
up a sense of community.

The loss of viable city centers and the destruction of outlying rural and
suburban areas for the resulting suburban sprawl saddens me deeply. When the
true environmentalists wake up and see they are in bed with socialist
extremists who have helped destroy both central cities and the economic
forces that had complimented each other, the Greens will make a break from
the neo-Communist morons and diminish the latter's political power. Then we
can retake our cities and rebuild "streetcar neighborhoods."

Urban density equals a potentially successful rail transit environment.

Okay guys, let me have it....................

P.S.- Has anybody every seen that gasoline streetcar Henry Ford propsed for
small towns and lightly travled lines? Picture a Birney car with a pair of
Model T engines for (under)power.

Matt Barry wrote:

> Passage from:   http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/lifestyle/autos.htm
>
> But transportational dependency can lead to even larger profits. Henry
> Ford believed in an America in which each family or person would own a
> car. At the same time, he was absolutely opposed to the use of
> streetcars, even to the point of insisting on not doing business with
> any company that received or shipped goods using their services (freight
> traffic on the streetcar lines was a good source of profit before the
> depression). What was so wrong with streetcars? Were they inconvenient
-- Trailing quotes stripped by Listar --