Mental Conditioning #3 The U.S. Somehow Can't Afford Freeways AND Transit

From

http://www.peaktraffic.org/compromise.html

a quote of an interview with Angela Rooney, an activist with the organization "Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis" that took a hard not another inch of freeway stance, often under the slogan, 'no white mans roads through black mans homes".

 Our first rallying cry was: "No White Men's Roads Through Black Men's Homes!"  We had to do that as offensive as it was to some people because it was absolutely the truth. It was indeed Black men's homes and businesses that were being confiscated. It was a very personal kind of insult, especially in a city where many blacks worked for the Federal government the city, to find out that your home could be gone just like that. The highway proponents felt no compunction about this. I don't remember whether it was the highway lobby men or the representatives from the FHA but they would say, "yeah, we built that road and we didn't even have to give them the moving money. They didn't know they were supposed to get it...

Our other rallying cry was: "Freeways No!, Metro Yes!" That was in everything we put out to focus hard on the fact that we needed good public transportation. If they built I-95, the inner loop, the outer beltways and all the other roads, there was no hope for a Metro being built because there would be no money. So we fought long, long and hard for years to break open the trust fund for other kinds of transportation. People had no idea that they had an option.

Even in the 1960's, we were calling loud and clear for a multi-modal, interdependent, complete transportation system.

What is strange is that the officials had been calling for just that, building transit and freeways, yet Rooney appears to not know that.

The November 1, 1962 transportation report commissioned by the Administration of John F. Kennedy included both transit and freeways.

By neglecting that, Rooney was playing into the hands of those seeking to condition people to expect less from the government in terms of the general welfare.