Comments on: Don’t Let It Happen Again

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:24:00 +0000

If you support the street car, then please go (with all your friends) to the City Commission meeting Thursday Jan. 10th at 10:30am- @ Dinner Key (Pan American Drive, Coconut Grove). The people need to show that we support public transit in our city!

By: JM Palacios

JM Palacios — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 01:03:00 +0000

Joe, you were right about the location. It’s Flagler St., although I don’t know what intersection. If you click to enlarge the photo and look closely, the destination says “NW 3rd Ave.” The caption where I got the picture mentions the Coral Gables Rapid Transit Corporation that ran trolleys, so I guess those cars belonged to that company.

James, follow the link in the word “killed” in the post to read about some of the streetcar conspiracy.

miami-forum, that is one way to hit Braman where it hurts! I may have to look for a car soon, but I plan on steering clear of any Braman dealerships.

By: Miami-Forum

Miami-Forum — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 03:14:00 +0000

I have a BMW, which happens to need a lot of work done. But I’d sooner cut off my left arm then bring my car to the downtown BMW Stealership! The Braman dealership is as crooked as they come. Especially the service department.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:45:00 +0000

Gabe, I just posted about this on orphanroad.com, but unfortunately I don’t know how to link- you may wish to leave your link in the comments there.

Incidentally, the story I heard about the National City Lines case was that the judge fined GM one dollar. Either way, not even a mosquito bite to GM. Henry Kaiser said it cost him $50 million to learn he was too poor to go into the automobile business.

By: alex

alex — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:12:00 +0000

Wasnt Braman also a critic of the orginal metrorail line and helped kill future lines from being buit in the 80’s-90’s?

By: JMD

JMD — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:55:00 +0000

Let us also remember that the streetcars were heavily taxed to use the streets and in turn those taxes went to build roads.
Many a streetcar line were still profitable but the taxes put them badly in the red.
That is one of the reasons the non-NCL lines went to buses were they were not taxed as much. In other words streetcars were subsidizing the buses and cars.

By: James Good

James Good — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:10:00 +0000

Thats Gabe. That’s very interesting… Looking forwards to reading your coverage of it.

Happy Christmas!

-James.

By: Gabriel J. Lopez-Bernal

Gabriel J. Lopez-Bernal — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 07:09:00 +0000

James- Yes, a GM led consortium created NCL (National City Lines) which bought up over 100 streetcar lines across the country. GM was ultimately found guilty in federal court and fined the grand sum of $5,000 for their actions. We’ll cover this in more detail very soon…

By: James Good

James Good — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:17:00 +0000

Guys - you say that the auto makers bought out the streetcar companies and shut them down. That’s incredible. Is there proof of that?

-James.

By: Gabriel J. Lopez-Bernal

Gabriel J. Lopez-Bernal — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:56:00 +0000

Anon- Thanks for your support, we’re actually in the process of setting up an account to receive donations for this project. We’ll let you know when we’re ready and what exactly we plan to do to mount our campaign…