Public transit. In North America, public transportation has been the major casualty of the commitment to the automobile. Ridership on public transportation declined in the United States from 23 billion per year in the late 1940s to 7 billion in the early 1990s. At the end of World War I, U.S. cities had 50,000 kilometers of street railways and trolleys that carried 14 billion passengers a year, but only a few hundred kilometers of track remain. The number of U. S. and Canadian cities with trolley service declined from about fifty in 1950 to eight in the 1960s: Boston, Cleveland, New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Toronto. Buses offered a more flexible service than trolleys, because they were not restricted to operating only on fixed tracks. General Motors acquired many of the privately owned streetcar companies and replaced the trolleys with buses that the company made. But bus ridership has declined from a peak of 11 billion riders per year in the late 1940s to 5 million in the 1990s. Commuter railroad service, like trolleys and buses, has also been drastically reduced in most U.S. cities. The one exception to the downward trend in public transportation in the United States is the subway, now known to transportation planners as fixed heavy rail. Cities such as Boston and Chicago have attracted new passengers through construction of new lines and modernization of existing service. Chicago has been a pioneer in the construction of heavy rail rapid transit lines in the median strip of expressways. Entirely new subway systems have been built in recent years in a number of U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Public transportation is particularly suited to bringing a large number of people into a small area in a short period of time. Consequently, its use is increasingly confined in the United States to rush-hour commuting by workers in the central business district. A bus can accommodate thirty people in the amount of space occupied by one automobile, while a double-track rapid transit line can transport the same number of people as sixteen lanes of urban freeway. Despite modest recent successes, most public transportation systems are caught in a vicious circle, because fares do not cover operating costs. As patronage declines and expenses rise, the fares are increased, which drives away passengers and leads to service reductions and still higher fares. Public expenditures to subsidize construction and operating costs have increased, but public officials in the United States do not consider that public transportation is a vital utility deserving subsidy to the degree long assumed by European governments. In contrast, even in the relatively developed Western European countries and Japan, where automobile ownership rates are high, extensive networks of bus, tram, and subway lines have been maintained, and funds for new construction have been provided in recent years. Since the late 1960s, London has opened 27 kilometers of subways, including two new lines, plus 18 kilometers in light rail transit lines to serve the docklands area. During the same period, Paris has built 65 kilometers of new subway lines, including a new system, known as the Reseau Express Regional (R. E. R.) to serve outer suburbs. Smaller cities have shared the construction boom. In France alone, new subway lines have been built since the 1970s in Lille, Lyon, and Marseille, and hundreds of kilometers of entirely new tracks have been laid between the country's major cities to operate a high-speed train known as the TGV. Which of the following is NOT true of the public transportation systems in the developed countries?