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Property developers in the 1950s taking advantage of REITs, racism (white-flight, the idealization of suburban living), and the advent of shopping malls probably did more to create car-dependence than anything GM did vis-a-vis mass transit. Plus road design that made places uninhabitable for bikes.

So if I had to summarize this thread, it's that the US has been a hellscape for so long that we traded a full monopoly for a cartel and both suck

and they tore down toon town too.

At my age, I am on a book re-homing mission. So no more physical books allowed to come into this house. At one point I had over 1200. I think we are down to about 800 now. It seems to me that an epub is ideally suited to maps.

Read the book, loved it

Understandable, I’ve managed to fix that for myself by having like eight different library cards 😂

This is a 2023 title. My library has it on libby right now, no waiting. There's always going to be a long wait for new stuff in libby but depending on your library, older stuff is usually not so in demand.

Cool, I was confused. You should be able to use the libby epub format on an iPad as well. (I work in a library and deal with a lot of Kindle users. Some seem unaware that kindle is a proprietary format owned by Amazon. And don't get me started on "why don't you have this Audible exclusive title?".

It's akin to the plot of 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'

A fourth one: the Supreme Court invented corporate personhood out of nothing in 2010.

The Iranians had oodles of motivation to destroy Carter based on his sheltering the Shah and subsequent events, and they like to fuck US presidents, as we’re learning again. Multiple investigations have quickly wrapped up.

Manchester like all British cities lost their trams. It took until 1992 for a light rail system to be introduced. So not all of Europe

And also the 80-90s renaissance of urban streetcars based on "light rail" systems was perfect for a lot of middle-sized urban areas.

It sounded cockeyed to me that electric trolleys would be replaced by busses to move people to drive their own cars. Not a good plan, imo.

This is extremely helpful. Also, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT is not a historical document.

Hey, you can’t fool me- I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”

There was an electric interurban that ran all the way from Toledo to Ashtabula that went out of business during the Great Depression because it ran out of money. Easier to blame some grand conspiracy than admit people liked the speed and independence the Model T gave them.

People actually just got tired of having to choose whether the trolley was going to run over one person tied to the tracks or a bunch

I hate rapacious, renegade 20th century corporate greed as well as the next neo-hippie, but, just sayin' www.latimes.com/me-2003-los-...

Our OP Berman does say Mpls-St Paul was the exception where there was an actual conspiracy (post 12/12)

In Pittsburgh, our bus numbers originate from the numbers of the trolleys that served those same routes. We don't like doing new shit here, especially if it costs money, so we just left the original trolley tracks in the street in several places and now the light rail uses those again.

For decades, at the end of the 110 freeway in San Pedro, California, there was massive pile of street cars slowly being cut to pieces for scrap.

public transit nerd here... your book looks awesome! adding it to my TBR!

A national rail system will happen only if the economy, budget, public support, and national priorities align—and voters believe the long-term transportation benefits justify the cost. As far as the downfall of urban electrified streetcars—that's been debatable for a very long time.

Thank you. It's infuriating when this conspiracy surfaces. "Car company bad" is lazy and ignores how new technologies and consumer demand changed how transportation worked. Freeways also killed Detroit as its success came from its location on the straight where iron met coal. Freeways undid that.

I remember that the city sold their streetcars to Mexico City.

One of the things I remember reading when doing literature review in urban history was that in LA the streetcars were absolutely insufficient for transit due to congestion from population growth, so the pressure to develop alternative transit was huge, not a conspiracy

Wait… paved roads were a conspiracy by big auto and big oil? We’ve hit peak stupidity

Well this may not be true, it is true that private industry has sought to squash public transit, forever. In Nashville, the Beaman Automotive Group has been the number one opponent to public transit. And very successfully I might add. F*** Lee Beaman.

huh -- "In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were CONVICTED OF COSPIRING to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL....The verdicts were upheld on appeal in 1951"

The car industry to this day is state sponsered economic growth to the benefit of the automobile industry. Take a step lower to the supply industry and find out what "saturn eats its children" means. Lol the stale train monopoly compared to the flexible car industry rofl

Ahhhhhhhh thank you. That makes sense.

The Wikipedia article linked in the quoted post has the fine amount ($5K, or roughly $62K in 2025 dollars) Oh, and the GM treasurer was fined $1. The judge presiding over it basically said that based on the evidence he probably wouldn’t have come to the same conclusion as the jury did.

Good thread! Reddit has invented so much misinfo and pseudohistory on the history of public transport in America that needs to be refuted lol.

The irony is that many of the trolley/surface rail routes have been converted to greenways, ultimately enabling people to ditch their cars and hike, bike, walk, and run to their hearts’ content!

Thanks. That's a shame.

The public ones skill generally got scrapped though.

This fits nicely into how providing passenger transit has never been a money maker, and when private companies did it it was always a loss leader in support of other ventures. You can charge higher rent on a building with rail service, etc.

funny how this all turned out in japan

Or am I thinking of the els actually

I dont really understand Yerkes because of his role in the London Underground - do you have a view on why London succeeded and US systems failed? Is it really just tunnels?

the trains got a serious challenge from cars in the early 20th century. and by the end of world war II, the train systems were worn out and needed massive government investment to survive. but because the transit companies were shitty monopolies, nobody wanted to help them out! 5/

Patricia Storace's description of Margaret Mitchell's maternal grandparents comes to mind: "They were the kind of family who as stockholders in the City Railway Company could send a servant to stop a passing trolley car outside their house until they had finished dressing and were ready to board."

Charles Tyson Yerkes Who moved to London (the Original), and created a lot of what is the modern Underground system here. Also kept J P Morgan out of the Underground. We still lost the Tram system in London and the rest of the UK. They are back now however.

this is probably comparing lemons to limes - but in both Hong Kong and Japan the private train companies were also real estate developers, and yet didn't seem to generate the animus that the US transit companies did. Is this accurate? (or is the question entirely outside of your wheelhouse?)

Yellow Cars after the great reorg. He had nothing to do with the PE after 1911. Don’t forget that he was a part of SP.

oooh, a Red Car. (There were also Yellow Cars.)

PSE&G! "The company began in 1903 as the Public Service Corporation, a combination of 400 gas, electric and trolley companies. The company has been headquartered in Newark since its founding."

So, there’s a great big US novel around this.

Always evil

I live in West Virginia where trolleys used to run all the way to Pittsburgh. it’s basic local history that car&tire companies bought the lines and killed the trolleys. Now we have multiple mostly unused four-lane highways to Pittsburgh. Great welfare to local construction companies and cars.

I once read that cars over trains was a left/progressive position in LA in I think the 20s—greater freedom for the working man. Is that accurate?

are you calling this guy a liar?

My Grandfather worked for an interurban railroad. When it shut down in the early '60's, it was still profitable. Not profitable enough for the investors however.

Social media urbanists never seem to have heard of the bus. 😆

Wait, you don’t get your history from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Who Killed Roger Rabbit?”

"large numbers" being equal to "two or more" I guess. 🙃

Yes, I was aware because I like history, the good, the bad, the ugly.

Still have to love that Disney created a whole ass movie around a conspiracy theory.

Brother, what a way to run a railroad! All told though, I'd still love to go back to that, but with publicly owned rail instead of private.

It was a conspiracy! Cloverleaf industries bought the Red Car to dismantle it, to make way for their newfangled "freeways".

umm, convictions seem to argue against you. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General...

Very interesting! Thanks for the real history. We still need better transport in LA.

Great thread. Read it and learn something you likely never knew

Are you sure?

This sort of thing was Peak Twitter, and also a scene from Annie Hall. "I am the world authority on this and, NO"

Can confirm! Jake got back to me quickly to give permission to use his beautiful, detailed Pittsburgh map of historical streetcar & funicular map for an article.

thank you!

To that end, the traction company's franchise with the city actually REQUIRED modernization of the system and retirement of streetcar lines in favor of newer transportation methods, which is why so many lines were abandoned in 1936 when the franchise first took effect.

Struck by the parallel story in the UK, ie, lack of investment post war is the real culprit, although unions play a part in a mostly more state owned system, because buses are more labour intensive if cuts had to be made it was to the tram system.

Hah, when I saw that posted, I immediately thought of your book!

There's also the part where suburbs and exurbs were deliberately built far enough from urban centers to require a car, and the lack of public transit outside the urban core is a feature for many people. Most people in the suburbs do not want people from the city in their neighborhoods.

This reply about conspiracy is a conspiracy.There wasn't any to begin with.They are admitting to being poor consumers and citizens. England used electric trucks to deliver milk and other goods.Quiet and cheap to operate and did not use fuel.USA didn't even try. Just think where we would be we now.

Thank you. One addendum about my hometown company Pittsburgh Railways - they came out of receivership in 1953 and began abandoning lines or converting them to busses. NCL was not involved. And like LA, Baltimore was an NCL property that maintained its streetcars in good order into the early 60s.

There is no conspiracy. This is capitalism. Theft and deceit for profit is business. Like we can't see the forest because of the tree conspiracy.

Great thread. Thank you.

Are you saying Who Framed Roger Rabbit? lied to me??

Public acquisition in 1940 kept the trains running despite Robert Moses cleaving neighborhoods in half for highways to the newly emerging suburbs. I wish the city had kept the Redhook trolly alive.

Hell, a whole stretch of interstate highway, I-88, was built between Albany and Binghamton (some of the least populated areas in the state) so the state senate majority leader could drive home more easily.

Ah great! I read the thread but didn't see this. Thanks!

Also probably worth mentioning that a lot of these streetcar lines were primarily ment as a way to sell stocks and bonds to Wallstreet investors, and providing a public service was secondary. Many lines were built in basically a financial bubble and fell apart the second investor money dried up.

awesome! thanks so much for this history, something I think about a lot but never knew the real history of

And if a trolley is stuck on the track behind a disabled trolley car...they just have to wait. If a bus is disabled, the one after it can just go around it.

You can make a streetcar rather longer than a bus, too, of course.

Streetcars can fit on more tightly constrained ROW than buses as they always will be in the same position relative to the rails, can fit in smaller tunnels than buses, and if double-ended do not require a loop to turn around, which saves space at termini.

I had no idea this was a myth and I often repeated it, ashamed to say. Thanks for the education.

Yep! And my chapter on the Twin Cities got excerpted here:

Interesting stuff. Thanks 👍

That one just wont die. People love it though.

Yes. This is a well known story from the 1960s.