The 2nd half of the SF Weekly hit piece on Muni was just as badly written
as the first. Among the many errors was one I thought was most amusing,
because it simply isn't true!
Peter Byrne states that "...Marmion Mills and Sydney Bingham engineered
Muni's switch from environmentally friendly electric streetcars to
smoke-spewing diesel buses sold by General Motors." If Byrne had bothered
to research this, he would have found that Muni replaced its worn-out
ex-Market Street Railway trolley cars with environmentally friendly
electric trolley coaches, using inexpensive Hetch Hetchy electric power.
Muni did not buy a single GM bus until 1969, long after Mills and Bingham
had passed from the scene.
GM did destroy the street railway industry in the United States. But not
in San Francisco.
Peter Ehrlich
F-Line Operator
Green Light Rail Division
<norcalrr@sprynet.com>