Taken For A Ride documentary

mejuan
Last Modified: February 22, 2008
Issue: February 2008

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Taken for a Ride whose “point of view” is perfectly clear is a scenic tour of how General Motors, beginning in 1922, dismantled urban mass transit across the United States and made mobility contingent upon the gas engine. By buying up trolley systems through its shadow subsidiary, National City Lines GM systematically gutted those streetcar companies and made efficient, reliable, clean transportation a endangered species.

Directed by Jim Klein and Marcy Olson, Taken for a Ride tells a story that’s been told before. But their use of archival footage, GM’s own film propaganda and interviews with the people who ran the assassinated rail-car systems makes the film a potent piece of environmental and political activism.

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mejuan I'm an independent artist seaching for freedom with in the system
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Tags: car culture, documentary, public transit

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Concerned Individual 12 March 2008 1:47 pm

The documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car” also talks about this subject, drawing parallels to the way the car manufacturers have acted in the development of alternative fuel systems (ie. electric).

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