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GM & the
Streetcar--
American Ground
Transport* |
Reprinted by permission from The Third
Rail, September 1974 |
Street Railways: U.S. vs. National City Lines
Recalled
by Paul
Matus
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NO
FORCE CAPTURED and guided the
American imagination in the Twentieth Century so powerfully as the concept
of progress.
Progress implied the
steady and natural advance of a nation moving forward toward a future
goal, even as our predecessors in the last century pursued manifest
destiny until our national borders stretched from ocean to ocean. This
same progress demanded that we put aside all which the forces of change
decreed as obsoleteand that we never look
back.
The story of Americas
transportation evolution in the automotive age illustrates, as no other
area of our national experience, the meaning of progress. At the turn of
the century, America had a massive complex of public transportation . .
.
Continued on page 2
Copyright © 1974 by Third Rail Press, © 1999 by The
Composing Stack Inc. Reprinted by permission. Not responsible for typographical
errors.
*Quotations in this article are taken from AMERICAN GROUND TRANSPORT,
A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus, and Rail
Industries, © 1973 by Bradford C. Snell. Excerpts used by permission of
the author.
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logo are trademarks of The Composing Stack
Inc.
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