[PRCo] Great Streetcar Swindle Debunked

[Fred Schneider]

All you really have to do is look at the motor vehicle registrations in this country and it should be clear: 

 Year 1900 … 8000 cars in the USA …  that's 1 car for every 6,100 people over age 16 in the USA.

     Year 1910 … 458,000 cars …. now were up to 1 car for ever 132 people over age 16

     Year 1920 … 8,132,000 cars … that's 1 car for every 8 1/2 people over age 16

     Year 1930 … 23,035 cars … huge gain … now were up to now its 1 car for ever 3 1/2 people over age 16

     Because of the Depression and War Time production restrictions, the share of people stayed about the same until the late 1940s.

     Year 1950 …. we have a car for every 2.6 Americans over age 16.

     Year 1960 …. it's now a car for every 1.6 Americans over age 16.




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And if you read the book about the 1919 US Army convoy that took two months to get from Washington to California … Ike was on it … you get a good feeling for the state of the highways then.   California had some of the best highways in the country back then … no snow, very little rain.   Sure they wiped out Pacific Electric.   

But conspiracies are great.   They allow us to transfer blame from ourselves or our ancestors to something totally unrelated and allow us to feel good.   We would not want to blame our parents and grandparents for driving the trolleys out of business with our car, now would we.   Better to create a fictional bus empire.   


On Apr 26, 2016, at 6:39 AM, DF Cramer via Pittsburgh-railways wrote:

> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/25/story-cities-los-angeles-great-american-streetcar-scandal
> The author tells the story to help debunk the myth of the great streetcar swindle. Too bad most still do not believe it.
> 
> Dennis F. Cramer 
> http://home.windstream.net/dfc1/
> 
> 
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