The question is for America only, for Europe and the remainder of the world have maintained their responsibilities, in many cases with very advanced systems. Americans however have so confounded their own real interests that here virtually any form of public transportation is looked upon as something only the poorest of the poor have to resort to.

Actually, we was robbed.

The major answer to this question is the long-standing opposition of The Highway Lobby -- the auto, oil, tire and cement industries. You don't hear much these days about "The Highway Lobby" as such. The reason is that it has done its destructive job which is to make America an occasion for ribbons of crowded highways carrying millions of motor vehicles as the only "practical and direct" way to get around on the ground.

At times the lobby has to resort to crime to achieve its assaults on public transit, while at other periods, it just used its money, muscle and propaganda with state and Washington lawmakers. Twenty eight crimes were committed by General Motors and its oil and tire company co-conspirators in the Thirties and Forties leading to their convictions in federal district court in Chicago during the late Forties. The U.S. Justice Department's charge, upheld in court, was that these large companies, inorder to eliminate their major rivals -- the trolley industry -- bought up these firms, tore up the tracks in and around 28 major cities in the U.S., including the biggest one in Los Angeles, and lobbied legislators to build more and more highways to sell more and more vehicles, gasoline and tires. Earlier, GM tried to pressure banks to reduce credit to these trolley companies and when that did not succeed sufficiently, the conspiracy to buy out their competitors and shut them down was hatched.

This is more than corporate crime history. Everyday, today, tomorrow and the next day, millions of Americans find themselves on clogged, bumper to bumper commutes because there is no convenient mass transit or no mass transit at all where they live and work.