karlock: The simple fact is that Portland had a private transit system until the city council refused to grant a fare increase, resulting in Rose City Transit going out of business...

Yes, and in general streetcars were required to accept a flat fee for trips of any distance.

The only reason automobiles and buses were even able to compete with streetcars in the first place was due to the public financing for the building and improvment of roads. As desirable a method of transportation as the car is, the fact remains that neither automobile companies nor automobile drivers have ever had to pay for more than a fraction of the infrastructure required to reorganize society around their use.

They did not pay for improved roads. Before roads were improved (mostly from dirt and cobblestone) an auto trip was very uncomfortable, and unreliable with drivers often having to replace several tires in one trip.

The did not pay for extending of municipal services such as sewer, electricity and water into the new automobile suburbs. This was funded by the taxpayers, the majority of whom were not car owners, and stayed in the city and along the streetcar lines.

They did not pay for traffic signal installation, and they did not pay for increased need for police officers, etc.

They also do not pay for their dominance of the right of way (ROW). The ROW is either public property, or an easement over privtate-property. It was either bought from a private party, taken through eminent domain, dedication and acceptance, or from a town's "allowance land". In any case, this land that constitutes the ROW, that is used to the near exlusion of pedestrians, by the risk of bicyclists (at the inconvenience of cars), and a small percentage by rail, was never paid for by automobile companies or drivers. This is not to mention the vast amount of land that is devoted to cars in the form of parking spaces. In fact, there are 98 million acres of developed land in the US (in 1997); which is 4.3% of the US's total area, 1.7% of the total land is dedicated to cars (or 2.5% per capita)--1.7% cars, 2.6% everything else. This represents a huge opportunity cost.

Now, even after nearly a century of subsidization, drivers pay just over half of the price for all of the required maintenance and elective building of new roads.

Now I don't think it would be difficult to argue that at some point it became a general public concensus that the automobile was the way of the future, and the the public should pay for that infrastructure. But it would be impossible to argue that the public didn't pay for it, and that it wasn't a massive redistribution of wealth, and property values.

karlock: The only way that the auto companies dismantled Portland’s mass transit was by providing a product that people liked better. It is called freedom, a concept often forgotten in that planners paradise, Portland.

what is freedom? being able to own an automobile and drive wherever you like, and not having to pay the full costs? That is fine for you, and it works well for me too.

freedom for others is not having to own a car, not having to drive, and also not having to pay the full costs.