Quote Originally Posted by mwilbert View Post
The future looked a lot different in 1956. And the streetcar system was old, losing ridership, and losing lots of money, as more people moved out of the city and into cars. We can wish that the city fathers of 1956 had known what they were doing [[they might have planned fewer freeways, or figured out how to have some kind of metropolitan institutions when that might still have been possible) but they weren't uniquely incompetent.
I thought the ridership thing was debunked? The streetcars were hardly running empty in 1956. I imagine it was a pretty jarring change, if you were a rider at that time, to experience the transition from a rail based to bus system. In NYC they some times replace train service with buses that replicate the train routes so that they can do track maintenance on the weekends. Even on the weekend, which is "off peak," it's always a complete clusterfuck because bus systems don't move people as efficiently as rail based systems.