Taken for a Ride: Difference between revisions

| narratorsnarrator = Jim Klein<br />[[Renée{{unbulleted Montagne]]list

| released = {{Film date|1996}}

| gross =
}}

''Taken for a Ride'' begins with interviews on the inefficiencies and congestion on [[Transportation in Los Angeles|Los Angeles' highways.]] Next, the film displays a variety of archival footage on streetcar systems around the United States, asserting that [[streetcar]]s were a widespread and efficient means of transportation. The film continues into a description of the [[General Motors streetcar conspiracy]], starting with a history of [[National City Lines]] and [[Pacific City Lines]] and General Motors' investment in both companies. The film builds the argument that streetcar systems purchased by these companies were deliberately sabotaged through service reductions and fare increases, then replaced with profitable, less convenient, bus systems. Next, the film makes a connection between this conspiracy and the construction of the [[Interstate Highway System]] and the suburbanization of America in the face of the [[Highwayhighway revolts]] in the 1960s and 1970s. The film ends with footage of the reduction of [[Trolleybuses in Philadelphia|Philadelphia's trolleybus system]] at the time of filming.

''Taken for a Ride'' was described by [[Caryn James]] as "an uneven documentary" whose "nostalgia for the streetcar system as a glorious, clean model of efficiency seems addled rather than convincing".<ref>{{cite news|last1=James|first1=Caryn|title=At the End of the Line: The Decline of Transit|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/06/movies/at-the-end-of-the-line-the-decline-of-transit.html|accessdate=10 July 2017|work=New York Times|date=6 August 1996}}</ref> Academic Sara Sullivan gave the film a mixed rating in her 2010 review: "(''Taken for a Ride'') presents a compelling history of the streetcars and the battles over freeways in the 1970s," but that the film "feels incomplete, with certain aspects needing to be fleshed out and other links made."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Sullivan|first1=Sara|title=Taken for a Ride (Review)|journal=Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies|date=2010|volume=40|issue=2|pages=142–144|doi=10.1353/flm.2010.0001|s2cid=143505886|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/film_and_history/v040/40.2.sullivan.pdf|accessdate=14 January 2015}}</ref>

[[Category:American1990s English-language films]]