Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Documentaries I Wouldn't Pay To See*

The Capital Group Sierra Club is presenting a series of films on Transit. I don't know why either.

Their next film is called Taken For A Ride, and is a 1996 documentary about how the streetcar industry was dismantled by sinister and greedy automobile and petroleum companies.

From what I've gathered, the film's theory is that a very young General Motors figured people would give up on public transportation and buy more of these new things called automobiles if the heaven-on-earth that was the electric streetcar was replaced by smelly, bouncy, slow-moving buses (made by GM.)

Perhaps the next film in the series will deal with how the evil streetcar megacorporations plotted with the Big Coal power industry to railroad majestic horse transportation out of existence...

Or how greedy equine ranching monopolies jockeyed for the top spot at the expense of pure and honest pedestrian mobility...

We should all be flagellated. Locomotion indeed. Ok I'll stop.

Anyway, here's the Great American Streetcar Scandal wikipedia page.

(*because they're free. Also, I'll be out of town, going on a trip, in a car.)

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