Idiotic liberal thinking: why would you want GM to build transit systems?

Harry Wasserman, writing in Common Dreams, in "GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered," states that as a kind of reparations for the pro-bus streetcar wrecking agenda that GM executed in the 1920s and 1930s that GM should have to rebuild that system.

My response:

dumb. The people who run GM aren't the ones you want to have rebuild intra-regional transit. GM made buses. They never constructed streetcars or other light rail vehicles, although they did make locomotives for trains. They need to slink off to Stuttgart and China and run GM International... be happy with that.

Also see for example, The Innovator's Dilemma, which isn't completely relevant. And even Ted Levitt's discussion of "GM isn't a car company, it's a transportation company" in the book Marketing Imagination.

GM was a transportation company focused on cars, which was its most profitable division. They aren't transit people. They aren't train people. They are mass production manufacturing people who aren't good at transformation.

If you think of GM in transit, think instead of the Acela train (too big, not fast enough) not French TGV style trains, German maglev, or Alstom futuristic light rail. (Although the old EMD streamlined locomotive engines, paired with Budd streamlined passenger railroad cars were quite beautiful.)

A bullet train pulls in at a railway station in Shanghai January 28, 2007. The new CRH (China Railway High-speed) bullet train, which has a top speed of 250 kph (155 mph), would cut the journey time on the key Beijing-Shanghai route from nine hours to five, Xinhua News Agency said. REUTERS/Aly Song (CHINA)


A car of the new Paris tramway is seen at Porte de Versailles, South of Paris, shortly after its inauguration in Paris, Saturday Dec. 16, 2006. The tram will transport some 100,000 travelers a day to and from the southwest area of Paris. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

Think bigger.

Hell, bring back General Electric's streetcar manufacturing division... I'm sure the people in upstate New York (like Schenectady) would be happy with that.