Originally Posted by patc
What gets to me: Ottawa, like many other North American cities, had a perfectly good light rail system until the late 50's/early 60's
which they tore out!. Then, in the 80's, they realised the "oops" and started taking public transit seriously, but went with buses. Now, 50 years after removing the last street car, we are spending big $$ building a light rail system. Hello, does no one think about the long term?
you guys probably mostly all know this already, but...
General Motors and a tire company (Firestone i think) and an oil company were found GUILTY in US Court for conspiracy for exactly this:
they indirectly bought the trolley systems in vairous cities (Portland, Sanfrancisco + others) and replaced them with busses = tore up or paved over the tracks == more vehicles to sell, more tires and more oil! they were found guilty in court and had to pay some penalty but the damage was already done!
not sure if the same thing happened in canada, but very likely.