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CounterPunch
August
31, 2002
The Highway
Lobby
by Ralph Nader
Ever since the first public transit -- a ferryboat
near Boston in 1630 -- got underway, a Broad variety of carriers
have emerged -- buses, trolleybuses, vanpools, jitneys, heavy
and light rail, cable cars, monorails, tramways and automated
guideway transit. Rarely did these transports ever attract private
investment -- that was reserved for The Car on publicly funded
and maintained highways.
In the year 2000 Americans took 9.4 billion
trips on public transportation, an increase of 3.5% from 1999.
But in 1946 Americans recorded 23.4 billion trips which is still
unsurpassed even though the population was only half of what
it is today. What happened to account for the decline of public
transit, which is safer, more efficient, less polluting, and
reduces highway congestion, while stimulating nearby economic
development?
The major answer to this question is
the long-standing opposition of The Highway Lobby -- the auto,
oil, tire and cement industries. You don't hear much these days
about "The Highway Lobby" as such. The reason is that
it has done its destructive job which is to make America an occasion
for ribbons of crowded highways carrying millions of motor vehicles
as the only "practical and direct" way to get around
on the ground.
At times the lobby has to resort to crime
to achieve its assaults on public transit, while at other periods,
it just used its money, muscle and propaganda with state and
Washington lawmakers. Twenty eight crimes were committed by General
Motors and its oil and tire company co-conspirators in the Thirties
and Forties leading to their convictions in federal district
court in Chicago during the late Forties. The U.S. Justice Department's
charge, upheld in court, was that these large companies,  in order to eliminate their major rivals
-- the trolley industry -- bought up these firms, tore up the
tracks in and around 28 major cities in the U.S., including the
biggest one in Los Angeles, and lobbied legislators to build
more and more highways to sell more and more vehicles, gasoline
and tires. Earlier, GM tried to pressure banks to reduce credit
to these trolley companies and when that did not succeed sufficiently,
the conspiracy to buy out their competitors and shut them down
was hatched.
This is more than corporate crime history.
Everyday, today, tomorrow and the next day, millions of Americans
find themselves on clogged, bumper to bumper commutes because
there is no convenient mass transit or no mass transit at all
where they live and work.
Lots of people have little or no idea
of all the flexible and super-modern modes of public transit
that reach all the way toward something called "personal
public transit" which would allow you and fellow passengers
to call up a monorail car to take you to your destination in
some future resurgence of public transit technology.
First, change must replace the dominant
highway lobby imagery with sleek public transit imagery. For
example, have you ever seen a television advertisement for a
new car stuck in congested traffic? By contrast, have you ever
seen an ad for public transit showing people zooming to work
in a modern transit train, while they were snoozing, chatting
or reading the newspaper, and racing ahead of a parallel highway
clogged with trucks, vans and cars moving in slow motion? Fifty
years of this bias and it is not surprising how low are the public's
expectations.
Second, the bias has translated into
the reality of residential, shopping and other developments geared
to the car and inimical to public transit in a vicious circle
of reinforcement for the highway lobby's designs for America.
Still, there are the public transit optimists.
Every other month Ireceive and read a magazine called Transit
California, published by the California Transit Association.
The current issue is full of news regarding
innovative advances and expansions in public transit from Santa
Monica to Santa Clarity Valley to Contra Costa County and all
the stages before various kinds of public transportation delivered
to residents.
The Association will be having its 37th
annual fall conference in Ontario, California (info@caltransit.org)
and would be pleased to hear from interested communities writing
to the CTA, 1414 K Street, Suite 320, Sacramento, CA 95814
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