Remember "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"? That had the car companies' buy-up of PT as its background story.

That was one where GM was actually innocent. But the GM, Firestone, etc. holding company (National City Lines) did, from the mid-30s buy a great many transit companies and scrap the streetcars.

I mailed Cory about these ads, and he suggested that I post my mail here -- and here it is!

Thought you might like to know that I (and some of my friends and coworkers) have written GM about their advertising campaign. We all of us recieved apologies -- from different actual humans -- and have been assured that our complaints are being forwarded to their advertising agency. Thanks for posting that! In an era where government money for cars is "investing in infrastructure" but government money for transit is a subsidy, it pays to make a stink (har har.)

GM"s illegal manipulation of city governments to eliminate the credible case for public transit is the reason that industrial cities are addicted to greenhouse-belching petrochem, both in the US and abroad. Climate change's primary effects -- unprecedented Aussie fires, enormous snowstorms, flooding, etc -- can be laid, in part, at the feed of the company that saw to it that most Americans would have to own cars to get from A to B.

Remember "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"? That had the car companies' buy-up of PT as its background story.
This also reminds me of Margaret Thatcher's comment that 'if a man is still taking the bus when he's 26 he can count himself a failure in life'.
Me? I ride a bike.

Chris

Cory - one thing. What does the aussie Bushfires (note: Not Brushfires) have to do with GM? *puzzled look*

--Rob
(an aussie!)

Sheesh, people. The bus is going to creeps and weirdos! They put the destination on that sign, not the contents of the bus!

Zed,

   Hmmm. Linkage indeed points to nastyness between '39 and '49:

   http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html
   http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/nclchoms.htm

   At least one site starts the plan around where I believed:

   http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/CarCult-Big3.htm

   I think WW2 cuts both ways on this -- a *massive* industry had built around the Detroit factories; unless the population switched to cars and the highways built to support them, this infrastructure would collapse from its own weight. So those schemes that started small were accelerated in both their pace and their scale.

   My point isn't that the evisceration was a good thing -- only that we'd live in a very, very different world without it, and it'd be a world not necessarily utopian.

--Dan

Mark made me giggle.

Uh, Dan, the streetcars were doing just fine through the start of WW II. It was after the end of WW II they were eviserated (one thing making that easier was that wartime shortages had prevented a lot of maintenance, so they were falling into disrepair and financially strapped.)

The car-in-every-pot thing really didn't start to catch on till the fifties.

"Right after the court hears the defamation suit launched by drivers against the commercials which branded them all as supporting terrorism because they drive SUVs?"

Sounds like a great idea, Red! Let the bloody bastards feed on themselves.

Go private, too - complain to the body that controls the "Community Contributor" logo, and get them to
pull their authorization to use the logo and
'community contributor' description, which is
quite likely trade-marked.

The law of Unintended Consequences affects GM's evisceration of public transit as much as anything else. It's been said that World War II was won in the factories of Detroit. No evisceration, no market, no factories.

Nothing is ever cut and dry.

RHB -- that quote is really good :-)

--Dan

http://www.adstandards.com/en/Standards/submission.asp

complain here.

Note that the bus's number is 23.

"There's always one big huge creep or wierdo on every bus. If you look around and don't see one, it's probably you."

He he! Too true! I think I'll make that my new bumper sticker.

"Seems like all the users of the Vancouver transit system could get together and file a class action suit against GM for defamation of character."

...Right after the court hears the defamation suit launched by drivers against the commercials which branded them all as supporting terrorism because they drive SUVs?

The sword of justice cuts both ways, etc.