What Do You Know?

I've been getting annoyed lately by talk of the old streetcar system that there used to be here in Los Angeles (and by extension those that used to exist in other American cities). I'll be online and see somebody I know has posted a map showing where the streetcars used to run. They'll be saying how we had this paradise of wonderful, extensive public transit, and then the villainous car companies ripped it all out and doomed us to gridlock.

I don't know how true that all is. I know a little about the streetcars and the stories about why they're gone, but not a lot. At least I admit my relative ignorance. You won't hear that from the romantics bemoaning the loss of something they never experienced personally. I wonder if it is as simple as the innocent public being robbed of something they wanted by evil General Motors. I'm inclined to doubt, so much do we hear about America's love affair with the car.

Even setting aside that the public was turning to cars, these people have the idea that because they've seen a map with lines on it signifying streetcar routes, that means that the routes all offered sterling service. When you don't see the actual thing a map represents, you could get that idea. You might think that LA's 405 freeway offers speedy travel all the way if you only saw it as a line on a map, but then you'd be unaware of the crushing traffic that often paralyzes it.

I've read likewise that the streetcars may not have been the perfect mode of travel that we usually hear they were. I gather that perhaps they weren't so fast, and that the companies running them weren't based on totally sound business models. There are a lot of reasons apart from nefarious activities (that I don't deny happened at some level)  which can explain why those streetcars don't run now, but all you hear is a lot of tooth-gnashing and wailing over their loss by people who I don't think know what they're talking about.

I don't know what I'm talking about all that much either, but knowing that you don't know something is a good place to be. You speak carefully to stay on solid ground, and you resolve to learn more before going out on a limb. I'd like to find out more about this streetcar thing before I start throwing around a lot of anguish about losing them. Maybe it wasn't the tragedy that it's made out to be. I'll personally withhold my judgment.