GM Killed Mass Transit: Now it Must Help Repair it

Now that General Motors is facing financial ruin and seeking a federal bailout, Harvey Wasserman argues that before it receives any help, GM must redress its participation in the conspiracy to destroy America's mass transit system.

November 17, 2008, 11am PST | Michael Dudley

"Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system? First let them remake what they destroyed.

In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses. GM [had] lost $65 million in 1921. So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.

GM has certainly proved itself unable to make cars that can compete while healing a global-warmed planet. So let's convert the company's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses."

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GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered

Published on Sunday, November 16, 2008 in CommonDreams