Taken for a Ride - The U.S. History of the Assault on Public Transport in the Last Century

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4&feature=youtu.be

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Cartoon man:  What a beauty!  I think I'll buy a new car!  

Cartoon woman:  It's 3:00, boss!  It's time to go home.  

Cartoon women in car:  [Chatting indistinctly.]  

Radio DJ's voice over:  We're off to the usual crawl on the San Diego freeway!  The fast lane is taken up by the accident.  

Man:   We start out on the 60, go to the 210, then to the 134, and then to the 5.  It's been forever -- it's 4 hours per day!  It's dark when we leave and go home.  

Woman:  I'm with them more than my own family.  

[Theme music playing.]  

[2:00]

Narrator:   This is a story of how things got the way they are.  Why sitting in stalled traffic seems perfectly natural.  Why our public transportation is the worst in the industrialized world.  Why our highways cut right through the hearts of our cities.  

This is a story about how the auto and highway industries reshaped America.  

Brad Snell has made a career of researching the auto industry.   He spends much of his time here working on a book about General Motors.  

Offscreen interviewer:  How long have you worked on this project?  

Snell:  I hate to admit it, but it's been 16 years.  

Interviewer:  Why so much time on one book?  

Snell:  They're the largest corporation in the world with operations in multiple countries.  If you compared their sales with revenues countries would ordinarily receive, it would be the 6th largest country in the world.  But there's no history!  

[3:45 -- "What's Good For GM..."] 

Narrator:   When you talk about public transportation in America, for the first part of the century you're taking about street cars.  Trolleys ran every few minutes.  Steel track and quiet, electric motors made the ride smooth, clean, and comfortable.  

The center of the road was reserved for street cars and automobiles had to move out of the way.  

Snell [offscreen]:  In 1922, only 1 in 10 Americans owned a automobile.  Everyone else used the rail.  

Alfred P. Sloan saw this as a great opportunity.  90% of the market was out there to be turned into automobile users.  If they eliminated the rail alternatives, they could sell their cars.  Otherwise, General Motors sales would be leveled.  They had to get rid of street cars because they wanted the space they used.  

They had to find something they could replace the street car.  Sloan wanted to motorize all the cities in America, so he introduced buses.  Ultimately he hoped no one would want to ride the buses, so they would buy General Motors automobiles.  

Sloan bought the largest bus production and operating companies in the United States.  They moved into Manhattan, acquired interest in the United States railways, and methodically destroyed the rails.  

When they finally motorized New York, they showed ads all over the country to show that motorization is the wave of the future.  They said, "the motorization of 4th and Madison is the most important and epical event in the history of community transportation."  

[6:45]

Narrator:   In the mid-1930's, General Motors worked hard to create the impression of a nationwide trend away from rail.  There was no trend!  Buses were a tough sell.  They jolted, smelled, and inched through traffic.  It took the hidden hand of General Motors to replace street cars with yellow coach buses.  

In 1936, a company was founded that would grow to dominate American city transportation.  National City Lines had no visible connection to General Motors.  The director of operations came from a General Motors subsidiary, Yellow Coach.  Members of the board came from Greyhound, which was founded and controlled by General Motors.  The money to start the new company also came from Greyhound and Yellow Coach!  

To hide these connections, the company needed a frontman.  Roy Fitzgerald got his start in Minnesota where he hauled miners and school children in a couple buses.  General Motors motors would groom him to become president of National City Lines.  

Over the next several years Standard Oil, Mack Truck, Phillips Petroleum, and Firestone Tire would join General Motors in backing this venture.  

[8:23 -- "The Plot Thickens..."] 

Jim Holzer:  All of a sudden you get these fellas with fedora hats, spats . . . I'm not making that up!  Two-tone shoes, broad ties, black shirts, white panamas.  They show up and the word goes out that we're being bought.  

Offscreen man:    Fitzgerald, big name in buses!  He's now the prime operator of City Lines.  The prime mover is Roy Fitzgerald, who describes himself as "one of five farm boys trying to run a few buses."  

Holzer:  The Fitzgeralds came in here just like every other city: they destroyed an established public transit system that had been built to meet the needs of the people.  

Emilia Ramiras:  We loved reading in the street cars!  It was fun because they were big.  

Della Clementi:  We'd catch them at the same time every day and we'd know the same conductor.  You weren't afraid to talk to someone, you saw the same people every day!  

Raul Montes:  The streetcar was fast!  The conductor would go, "clink clink clink!" every time he came to a crossing.  

Offscreen Narrator:   You'd go on the trolley cars yourself?  

Charlotte Bullock:  Oh yeah!  They were here!  [Laughing.]  

Offscreen Narrator:   They were here when we were younger!  

Bullock:  That was the best form of transportation.  Then someone had the brought idea to take up all the tracks and get rid of all the trolleys.  That's when the headaches started.  

Offscreen interviewer:  How long did it take before they started getting rid of the streetcars?  

[10:30]

Holzer:  It was about 90 days.  

Offscreen interviewer:  Weren't the streetcars making money in Los Angeles?  

Barney Larrick:  After I chopped their heads off we made money!  We cut the miles down.  Sold off the properties.  Pulled the company down.  

Holzer:  They didn't take the service out, they cut it back.  They took it from 10 to 15 minutes, from 15 to 20, from 20 to 30.  As they cut back the service, they make it less attractive so there are less riders.  Then they say that proves they can't make any money!  

Offscreen Interviewer:  I heard that you went in and fired everyone.  

Larrick:  That's right.  If you don't need the people, what would you do?  There were people there who were up for retirement.  You get rid of the old ones first.  That's what we'd do.  

Holzer:  Larrick was just like everyone else.  All they were interested in was taking the money out.  They sucked the system dry, raised the fares, and skimmed every penny off the top.  I'm just telling you from what I've seen.  

If you take a finely-tuned Rolls Royce, for example, and give it to a shade-tree mechanic and he ruins it you'll be bitter.  That's what we had.  We had the finest public transportation system anywhere in the country.  In 10 years, it was history.  

[12:36]

Narrator:   National City Lines grew quickly.  By 1926 they controlled public transport lines in over 80 cities.  Baltimore, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, LA... two buses from Minnesota had grown into an empire.  

Snell:  The appearance was that this was a country owned only by the Fitzgeralds, but the money was coming from the corporate sponsors!  

Offscreen Man:  [Reading on screen at 13:17 -- to the mayor, to the city manager, to the city transit engineer, to the members of the committee on mass transportation, and to the taxpayers and the riding citizens of your city.]  You are entitled to this warning.  There is a carefully, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your electric railway system!  

Narrator:   Commander Edwin Quinby was a rail buff with a talent for financial sleuthing.  In 1946, he mailed a warning to influential people in hundreds of cities across the country.  His 30-page broadside was filled with detailed research that brought to light what General Motors had worked hard to hide.  

Offscreen Man:   The plan is to deliberately destroy public utilities which you will find impractical to replace after you discover your mistake.  Who are the corporations behind this?  Why are they permitted to destroy valuable electric railways?  

Queer Case of Quinby by Ross Schram.  Edwin J. Quinby took full advantage of the American privilege of the free press to feed the lunatic fringe of ridiculous and crackpots springing up like weeds in the United States today.  The document, printed on cheap paper, is natural fertilizer for suspicions and disunity.  

[14:46.]  

What is the Quinby pattern?  Was he used by some strange political influence?  

Narrator:   Edwin Quinby's efforts didn't stop National City Lines's movement in major cities, but the cat was out of the bag.  In 1946, the Justice Department began an anti-trust investigation into National City Lines, General Motors, and the other investors.  

Offscreen Man:  It appears that National City Lines and its General Motors associates have entered into a plan to secure control over local transportation in important cities in the United States.  If these companies are allowed to continue their program, they will soon have a stranglehold over the industry.  

[15:30]

Snell:  The key lawyers in the case told me there is no doubt that these defendants (General Motors and the others) had set out to destroy street cars.  But since there was no anti-trust law at that time, the only way they could get them on a violation was to proceed the criminal anti-trust conspiracy route.  

Narrator:   The government's case was straightforward.  The defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to monopolize the local transportation field.  

Snell:  To reconstitute these systems today would probably cost $5 billion.  These companies were individually fined $5,000.  The individuals involved, like the treasurers in General Motors, was fined the magnanimous sum of $1.00 at the conclusion of the trial.  

Narrator:   The Justice Department spent the next 25 years trying to limit General Motors's influence over transportation.  They two other investigations regarding their monopoly practices.  One was settled out of court and one was eventually dropped.  An effective way to reign in General Motors was never found.  

[17:16-- Turning Point . . .]

Offscreen Man:   Things are looking up for civilian car buyers, but don't rush out to buy one now!  This sample won't be available for 2-3 months.  

Narrator:   The post-war years were an auto executive's dream.  After 15 years of Depression and war, returning GI's had money in their pockets and were eager to get on with life.  Federally subsidized mortgages encouraged movement from cities to suburbs.  

Offscreen Man:   These are the 36 men who built this house.  

Narrator:   Every new suburban home needed a brand new automobile.  The cities were at a crossroads.  During the war, streetcar ridership reached an all time high.  Factories ran round the clock, and so did the street cars.  Tracks were worn to the nub and trolleys were worn out.  

It was a moment of choice.  Rebuild the trolley lines, or watch them die.  Europe and Japan rebuilt, but America's privately owned transportation companies resisted such a venture.  There was pressure for private companies to take over.  And bring the rail systems up to date.  

By now, National City Lines was a model for a cheap and easy way out.  Across the company, private operators followed its lead.  

Offscreen Man:   Elimination of railway cars and inusitation of buses are necessary to keep the railway out of hot water!  13 of the systems 19 rail lines will have to go.  

Narrator:   Los Angeles had two street car companies.  One was owned by the Fitzgeralds, and the other were the Pacific Electric red cars that were the pride of LA.  There were hundreds of trains per day and miles of track connected the beach to the mountains.   

[19:51]

Offscreen Man:   You said you used to ride the red cars?  

Roger Arnebergh:  Yeah.  Many of us would play bridge or something while we went down.  They were fast!  I preferred them to the bus.  As long as it was practical to me, I rode the cars.  

Narrator:   The state of the cars made front page news for more than a year.  The public was outraged.  

Offscreen Man:   A blistering attack was made by civic leaders.  They said you wouldn't solve the cities traffic problems by turning hundreds of buses loose to stink up the air, slow down traffic, and tie up the streets.  A survey of San Fernando valley residents said that 88% want rail passenger service retained.  

Narrator:   Pacific Electric needed heavy support to get their plan past the utility commission, so they brought in Arthur Jenkins.  He had been chief engineer of the commission, and was highly respected.  He had separated rail improvement in the past, but he started working with the Fitzgerald brothers in 1946.  His position quickly changed.  

Offscreen Man:   There's only one issue involved: whether Pacific Electric should be allowed to follow the course of the rest of the country by replacing obsolete rail passenger services.  

Jenkins:  I remember some of this!  [Laughing.]  It brings back some very interesting recollections.  It makes me remember that people will say what's very beneficial to their cause.  

Offscreen Man:   To what extent did you consider the noxious fumes that would result from the coaches?  

Offscreen Man:   There is no harmful effects from the fumes.  Numerous tests have been done on that account.  

Jenkins:  Some of the buses stunk so bad I couldn't ride them because they made me sick!  There's no question about it, the buses dramatically added to the pollution.  

Offscreen Man:   The state public utilities commission granted Pacific electric the right to use buses instead of trolleys in most suburban lines.  It will probably take 3-6 months before the big red cars stop rolling.  

[22:36 -- End of the Line . . .]

Joe Alfonsi:  Every street in Philadelphia had a trolley on it.  The line just went up and down until they branched out in the north.  

Jack Boorse:  More than 50% of the east-west streets had tracks.  There was a change in management and a concerted effort to maximize the use of the bus.  

Narrator:   Philadelphia was the last big city transit system to face Big City Lines.  The anti-trust case had forced General Motors to sell its stock in National City Lines, but the Fitzgeralds continued to tear out trolleys.  General Motors continued to provide the buses.  

Offscreen Man:   PTC has completed a $36 million dollar modernization program to provide 1 thousand new diesel motor coaches.  It's a story of diesels and dollars!  

Alfonsi:  They cut and they cut.  As the new buses came in, another trolley line went out.  

Boorse:  I think it did hit the afternoon paper.  One story said the new Vice President handed the department head a list of people to fire.  He brought them in one at a time and asked them to leave.  When he was done, he went back in, and then the Vice President fired him.  

Alfonsi:  National City Lines never came to make the system any better.  Their idea was to scrap.  They sold everything!  Almost everything we sold was now sold.  

Boorse:  I didn't consider working for them.  I stopped considering it.  I didn't think I would want to work for an organization I don't believe in or support.  

Offscreen Man:   All but 6 of the city's main interchanges were handicapped with streetcar operations, before the big change.  By the end of December 1957, 3 streetcar service lines were all that remained.  There were only 14 in the entire city!  

[26:00]

Alfonsi:  They did it all over the country.  I could see what was happening!  They came in to do a job.  5 gallons of kerosene went with every trolley car.  They put a torch to it.  

Now, you've stripped everything so they don't have to say!  Once they sell you buses, it'll perpetuate itself.  

[27:25 -- Road to Nowhere . . .] 

Man:   Will you stop honking, Mack?  We ain't going nowhere.  

Offscreen Man:   This is agony alley.  Morning rush and evening wait.  It's your country!  Give yourself the green light!  

Offscreen Interviewer:  How did General Motors influence highway lobby in Washington?  

Snell:  They originated it!  In 1932, the chairman created the National Highway Users Conference.  He brought together all the companies that had anything to do with transportation.  They spent millions of dollars on pushing highways.  

Narrator:   Alfred Sloan headed the conference for 20 years.  When he retired, the next General Motors president took his place.  Everyone wanted freeways.  At the top of General Motors's agenda was a system that would become the main form of travel both between and in cities.  

With an army of paid lobbyists, the highway lobby was the most powerful pressure group in Washington.  

Man:   Freedom to travel safely and comfortably on our highways is a big freedom.  People in their own communities are getting together to do something.  

[29:29]

I'm Helen Rathburn, the 4th grade teacher at the new elementary school.  I came here just to listen, but after hearing some of the arguments against the new highway proposal I'd like to say one thing.  I work all day with children.  They're your children!  Your children will have a better country to live in because of these new roads!  It means a whole new way of life for the children!  

Narrator:   General Motors also had strong allies inside the white house.  In 1953, General Motors president Charles Wilson was appointed Secretary of Defense.  There, he pushed for freeways as a vital part of national security.  

That same year, Francis Dupont (whose family owned the largest share of General Motors) became the chief administrator of federal highways.  

Frank Turner:  Dupont was the key to working towards the interstate system.  The Dupont name had a great deal of pressure to open the door.  He proposed to President Eisenhower that this was a program the nation needed.  He immediately got favorable reaction and was told to go ahead.  

[31:04.]  

Narrator:   In 1956, after years of promotional films and outside influencing, Congress passed the Interstate Highway System.  About half the money would build freeways in cities.  To pay for it, Congress created the Interstate Trust Fund with money from a gasoline tax.  This fund could only be used to build highways.  More highways meant more driving, which meant more taxes, which meant more roads.  

Offscreen Man:   Oh almighty God, who has appointed men to have dominion over the earth, who has commanded us to make straight the highways, to lift up the valleys and to make the maintains low, we ask thy blessing on our nation's road builders and their friends.  

[32:17 -- Trouble in Paradise . . .]  

Offscreen Woman:  This is highway 93.  It's the final, 8-lane southern link of an interstate highway.  Building the road required the relocation 4,000 people, 26 businesses, and part of the Mystic River.  The road has a problem!  It doesn't work.  It would feed 4 extra lanes of traffic into a 3-lane highway on which traffic already backs up.  

Offscreen Man:   They built this freeway in LA, but the people didn't like it and began protesting!  

Joseph Alioto:  They wanted to complete the freeway down the center, and I wouldn't let them.  They had to get our permission to close the streets.  Government Regan sent the lieutenant governor down to see me, but I said I wouldn't let them put the freeway in our city.  

Ben Kelley:  For the two years I was at the Federal Highway Administration, it was a drumbeat of citizen unhappiness with urban highway plans.  

Woman:  We started in 1964 with the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis in Washington DC.  Highway I-95 was going to go right through the community I lived in.  It was almost 26 lanes!  It would bisect neighborhoods, take schools from people, take churches from people.  

Johnnie D. Wilson:  U Street was the street for black folks, so that's how we got practically all the inner city people to join us.  We showed that street was going to be uprooted so someone from outside the city could drive right through.  

Alioto:  They built the freeway out by fishermen's wharf, and then out to the green.  There isn't a view anywhere like that in the world.  Just to get over the Golden Gate bridge!  

Marion Agnew:  The whole highway lobby was pushing for this!  The cement companies, the road builders, everyone.  It's not our government, we haven't paid enough for it.  The people who own the government bought and paid for it.  

Alioto:  That highway crowd would put a freeway right through the Vatican if they thought it would save a little space or money.  

Woman:  We heard from New York, New Orleans, Nashville, Atlanta, Newport, Phoenix, and we were putting up people from West Virginia.  We were helping them go downtown in Washington to plead their case and their homes were bulldozed that very day.  It was a brutal period in our history.  

[35:54]

Narrator:   Citizens worked to stop 17 urban freeways across the countries, but most were built as planned.  

Agnew:  Sooner or later there's going to be a collective will and they'll say they're not going to fund this anymore.  It's very foolish!  

Offscreen Man:   The motor car shapes and forms.  It mutilates and deforms!  We're exchanging the meaningful and varied life of the city for a monotonous life on wheels.  

Mumford:  The question is clear -- does the city exist for people or motorcars?  

Narrator:   By the mid 60's, the answer was motorcar.  Public transport continued its downward spiral as readership fell, routes were dropped, property and assets sold off.  

Finally local governments bought what was left.  They were 15 years too late.  For better or worse, the great American love affair was in full bloom.  

[38:01.]  

Offscreen Man:   The one thing you always notice about car commercials: the car is always in a field or by a lake.  It's on an open road with no other car for miles around.  It's never caught in a traffic jam!  

Offscreen Man:   Ladies and gentleman, and smog alert is now in progress.  Remain indoors.  Tune to your local radio station for additional information.  

Offscreen Man:   The worst smog of the system hung over the city this 4th of July week.  It's particularly bad for the very old and young.  

Pat Pitts:  They can only stay inside 10 minutes at a time.  Then they need to come inside to rest.  

Offscreen Man:   The EPA said today that they might need to remove 8/10 cars from southern California's highways during the worst smog months.  

Man:   I don't know what it's like to not have a car.  

Man:   You've gotta have it.  It's a necessity of life.  There's not enough public transportation to get you around.  

Newscaster:  The House rejected a proposal that would allow them to spend their part of the Highway Trust Fund on things like busses, trains, and subways instead of on highways.  

Newscaster:  The House voted to block funds for mass transit, which we all need.  They'll pour billions more into highways that only the highway lobby wants.  

Narrator:   In 1974, the Senate antitrust committee held hearings about the roots of the public transportation crisis.  Brad Snell, then only 25, was hired to organize the sessions.  

Alioto:  I think the automobile industry is a prime example of an industry that has literally changed the quality of our lives.  They've done so on the basis of serving corporate interest.  

Hruska:  Was it General Motors that really wrecked the streetcar system in America?  

Alioto:  Yes.  General Motors actually formed the companies to go in to buy them out.  

Hruska:  General Motors came into a situation where the streetcars were inefficient, inflexible.  Do you know of a streetcar system that could serve San Francisco with all its outlying communities and suburbs?  

Alioto:  I don't want to outlaw the automobile.  I'm not an anti-automobile nut.  I'm saying it must be supplemented by rapid transit systems.  I won't accept the argument that those systems broke down because of their complete inefficiency to serve the public because the systems in Europe and Japan belie that argument.  

Finally, I must say with great deference that if the streetcars were breaking down of their own weight, why was it necessary for General Motors to get together with other companies to go in and buy the systems and tear up the tracks?  

[41:41]

Offscreen Man:   Unfounded accusations about General Motors have come to light recently.  Streetcars failed for economic and demographic reasons, and had nothing to do with any plot.  General Motors provided financial support to National City Lines did not influence National City Lines to convert from streetcars to buses.  

Hruska:  Here was a breakdown of a system and in came the bus.  You can't get away from buses, can you?  

Alioto:  I'm not trying to get away from buses!  

Hruska:  I thought you were trying to get rid of General Motors and buses.  

Alioto:  What we want is balance.  You ought not to treat the automobile with $15 billion of favor per year and treat everything else like an orphaned child.  What's good for General Motors is not necessarily good for the country.  In the field of transportation, what has been good for General Motors has been bad for the country!  

[42:51 -- Back to the Future . . .]

Narrator:   For a time after the senate hearings in '74, public transportation staged a partial comeback.  After years of comeback, Congress allowed highway trust funds to be used for highway improvements.  Subways were improved and many cities began development of light-rail, the the modern term for streetcars.  

Jack Borse is a rail engineer who helps communities build new systems.  

Borse:  When I worked as a student, there were trolley tracks.  I remember the old trolleys there, and now the new ones are here!  

Offscreen Man:   Did you think the light-rail would come back?  

Borse:  I thought there was a good possibility that some of the lines would come back.  I wasn't sure I would live to see it!  But it happened.  

Narrator:   25 cities now experiment with light-rail systems.  They cost less, pollute less, and bring new life to city centers.  The auto and highway lobbies have different ideas about what America needs.  

Offscreen Man:   America is one of the few countries in the world where people have always had the freedom to come and go as they please.  Now, that freedom is being threatened!  What can frustrated drivers do about it?  

Narrator:   The highway lobby may have lost its 1950s power, but it's still powerful.  They're pushing for a new program with 4 times the amount of interstate.  In the cities where people won't allow another lane to be added, they've developed a new approach.  

[45:26]

In 1989, the highway administration formed the intelligent vehicle highway society.  Its idea was to automate cars and highways.  Computers would control chains of cars traveling 60 mph, bumper to bumper.  The hope is to double or triple the amount of cars on the road and would require a lot of new technology.  

Man:   This is Sony's new navigation system.  It incorporates GPS and CD-ROM.  

Man:   We have a electronically controlled, electrically powered steering unit.  It would take about 2,000 pounds of force to steer and park a car.  It generates about 1,000 pounds to lift Mary.  The next generation of this technology could become a key component for hands-off steering as part of the automated highway systems of tomorrow.  

Narrator:   This might sound like a futuristic fantasy, but the highway lobby has found powerful allies in the computer and information industries.  

90% of federal funding for transportation research goes to intelligent vehicle process.  If the cyber-scheme ever becomes a reality, it will cost $200 billion.  

[47:08]

Narrator:   If Alfred Sloan were alive today, he'd love LA.  With the old rail lines gone, more people drive cars here than anywhere in America.  Those who don't depend on the overburdened bus system.  

Woman:  90% of the ridership on buses is low income residents.  The job centers get further from where we live, and we have to go so far to get groceries.  

Woman:  It's so full that at times the buses have to deny.  

Woman:  There have been many times where 2-3 buses pass me by at the bus stop so I have to walk back home to ask someone for a ride.  It's not a good system at all.  

Narrator:   All over America, public transit is in crisis.  Federal operating support has been sliced practically in half.  At the same time, highway funding continues to grow.  Philadelphia is one city that's been badly hurt.  

Man:   This is the most comprehensive cutback we've ever seen.  

Woman:  I drive 15 miles to the Parkersburg Train Station.  If it's closed, I'm not driving 30 miles to the next-closest train station.  

Louis Gambaccini:  We've had to cut 10% out of our budget of $65 million.  We've squeezed in every possible direction.  We're down to the last resort.  I don't want to do it.  I think we'll pay a dear price for it later!  

Narrator:   One of the many cuts the city has had to make is terminating 4 trolley lines.  The city has worked hard to hang on to the rail cars left by National City Lines, but now they finally have their way.  

Bob Hughes:  We'll be out of business in 2 weeks.  They give us 2 weeks to sell everything else.  

This one was brought down for inspection.  I will be running the streetcars through the 12th of September.  If you believe they're going to bring back the streetcar in a few years, you believe that Chrysler will bring back the Dosota.  And I don't think they are.  

Sharon Banks:  It's called a spiral unto death.  You cut back service, lose passengers, lose revenue, lose confidence of your ridership, and it's happening all over the country.  Half of the transit operators are cutting service or raising fairs.  

Elliot Sclar:  I'd like riders to have a choice.  I'd like them to have their automobile, but also be able to have a meaningful choice in the use of transit.  They don't have that choice right now!  

Vuckan Vuchic:  The only good transportation you can have in modern cities is the one that combines public transportation, private transportation, uses bicycles, and has a diversity of modes.  Otherwise the system collapses.  

Alioti:  When there's only stop and crawl traffic, there will be no urban delight!  Mass transit has to be improved and expanded.  It's vital to the health and beauty of the city!  

Eric Mann:  We're here on the first step of a long term campaign to bring mass transit to the public.  

Woman:  We've had quite a few demonstrations at the board of supervisors.  If nobody's talking, people might think it's something that will blow over.  If people begin to talk about it, they think they can change it.  That's where we make a difference.  

Banks:  This is a critical moment.  In the next 5 years, it will determine if there is a viable transit systems in half the areas of the country.  

[End.]