Give Yourself the Green Light 1954 Automobile Film

[PetrScorpio]

ford, ford, chevy, caddy, ford, chevy, chevy,  ford.........

[MegaTmarshall]

GM purchased and closed the efficient trolley / subway system that once existed in LA to enhance the sales of their automobiles. It's as simple as that!

[DTD110865]

This is what happens when we don't build the roads we need:

watch?v=r8VdN8ijiUM&p=85498BF5­472270E6

watch?v=o5FURRt56A4&list=PL854­98BF5472270E6

[manuel92595]

it was about a dream now its about it being green

[SAMROSS55]

The Nation on Wheels!

Look at us now ...

[DTD110865]

@SAMROSS55

Yeah, hundreds of unfinished highways and thousands of traffic jams.

[abbyasta]

I miss driving my '50 Chevy on bad country roads like these with bias ply tires, 6 volt

headlights, and no seat belts! Good times!

[gopconservative78]

ah the 50s where everybody smoked lucky strike cigarettes

[mistersmith6000]

Freedom on wheels!! The decade that America gave up on railways and became addicted to oil, supermarkets, malls and a mode of transport, CO2 and big bodies. When you need to carry one and half tons of steel a couple of miles to buy a banana and a pack of cigarettes you know it's not good - forty years too late!

[DTD110865]

@mistersmith6000

Uh, we were "addicted to oil" long before then, and you could just as easily blame the decline of railroads on airplanes.

BTW, trains are bigger than trucks, and they use the same "oil."

[mistersmith6000]

@DTD110865 Sure, but the decision to make Americans rely on cars was official in the 50s, with Eisenhower's highway program, the closure of the LA trolley system, the decision to embrace oil, and a bunch of other factors compounded many still have a legacy today. The decision not to extend the LA subway system (should have been built in 50s) to LA airport is a case in point. Florida's recet desion, 2011?, decision to axe the planned high speed bullet train too.

[DTD110865]

@mistersmith6000

The closure of LA's trolleys had more to do with their own failings rather than any "addiction to oil." Florida's cancellation of the high-speed bullet train wasn't as bad of an idea as you might think, considering that it included too many stops between Tampa and Orlando that would've slowed all the trips down, and would've deprived Amtrak's existing route of needed funds.

[mistersmith6000]

@DTD110865 Trolleys, (trams), got culled through the 50s/60s in the west, and then following that in the 70s and 80s across Asia. It's a complex systemic thing that involves, among other things, car usage. Trams get in the way of cars, cars slow down trams, trams become inefficient so close them down. Done, story over(take a few pics for nostalgia) Snaghai actually banned bicycles! Florida story= nothing to do with saving Amtrak. Those folks would have let Amtrak hang out to dry decades ago.

[DTD110865]

@mistersmith6000

The actual decline of trolleys began after World War One, and this is due to the overhead wires, and other cost and safety concerns. For the record, while some trolleys were replaced by buses, others were replaced by subways. And yes, Amtrak did lobby against the high-speed rail project between Tampa and Oralndo, because it was intended to run along the median of Interstate 4, but that wasn't the only reason it wasn't as good of an idea as you might think.

[mistersmith6000]

@DTD110865 Trolleys killed far fewer people than cars. But what you have to realize is that throughout the 20th century and particularly post ww2, powerful conservative pressures have pushed us towards highways and urban sprawl and the Florida gov is in this tradition. He said he will never support rail. Amtrak are collecting some of the cash from the cancellation, of course they will, they need any penny they can get. Rail supports density, roads support sprawl. That is at stake now.

[DTD110865]

@mistersmith6000

No, you have to realize that's a load of garbage. The increase in highway spending and decline of trolley had nothing to do with "powerful conservative pressures." They had to do with the increase in population and the fact that the roads of previous generations couldn't handle the traffic of the period. Plus, there has been plenty of sprawl without improved roads, so don't blame it on road improvements.

[mistersmith6000]

@DTD110865 In the 19C the same forces charged the dialectic between rail development and land speculation . Transport infrastructure is not a benign or passive factor in the equation. No ones fault, but sprawl in America could not exist without roads and cars. Trains are expensive and loss making but they can help. In the future, carbon tax will hurt the states where sprawl is worst although it is likely they will get help from denser (population) areas.

[DTD110865]

@mistersmith6000

You may not realize this, but there are plenty of places where sprawl has occured without road improvements, and in fact there are places where it has occured as a result of the railroads. Ever hear of Garden City, New York? That place is an example of suburban sprawl built by trains. In any case, I can show you places all over the US where highways should've been built, but instead have housing developments, shopping malls and industrial parks and such.

[johnnyfarout]

Happy Americans sitting endlessly in traffic jambs on their way to a fruitless future of nightmarish heavy metal dreams and nuclear doom .

[sprenky72]

This is a cool old video!

Thanks for posting!

Saw an old car in there exaclty like mine!

[hep2jive]

guy on tracker looks like benny goodman

[smithwicks2]

Notice everyone sitting in traffic has their windows rolled down, almost no cars had air conditioning in 1954, save for the most exspensive models; Cadillac, Lincoln, Packard and Buick. (no seatbelts either!!).

[BuzWeston]

Having grumbled in my previous post, it is important to add that the primary message of the video is just as true today. Everyone wishes mass transit could work. But people like the independence that cars give them. We must face this and build our communities to maximize efficient traffic flow.

[BuzWeston]

"The expressway speeds over a densely populated area of Brooklyn without disturbing life below."

What they forget to tell us is that the plan instigated by Robert Moses decimated entire neighborhoods in order to build the expressways. These areas never recovered from the destruction.

[dodge09challenger]

The inner cities have been decaying for decades as the result of interstate highways.

[DTD110865]

@dodge09challenger

No, they were decaying before the interstate highways.

[DTD110865]

@BuzWeston

Except that there were other factors that had nothing to do with Robert Moses which decimated the neighborhoods. Because of the efforts to stop the completion of these highways we now have more traffic and air pollution than we could possibly have imagined.

[DTD110865]

@BuzWeston

The Bushwick Expressway, and Cross-Brooklyn Expressway were never built and the neighborhoods they were supposed to go though didn't exactly turn into utopias.