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this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?

in general, public transport before world war II was generally privately owned. it was a business, like railroads had been since the start of the industrial age. nobody liked the privately owned monopolies that owned public transit. 2/

basically, these monopolies dominated metro areas, because they weren't just the transport monopoly. in la, oakland and miami, the train company was the biggest real estate developer. in atlanta, new jersey and new orleans, they were the power company. 3/

these monopolies were hilariously corrupt as well, and they had few friends. henry huntington (of LA's red cars), or charles yerkes (of the chicago eleveated) were as detested as bezos and zuckerberg were today. 4/

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/

in many cases, the train company was _also_ the bus company! the pacific electric railway in LA also owned the motor transit company, which ran the region's buses. 6/

But to get back to how badly the trains needed upgrades, let's compare like with like. Here's a sample trip from Downtown LA to Culver City. - LA Metro E line (2026): 30 minutes - Motor Transit Co. bus (1948): 39 minutes - Pacific Electric Railway (1948): 43 minutes 7/

On top of that, the new, shiny buses often had A/C, and the streetcars only had fans. The first air-conditioned bus was introduced in 1946. The first air-conditioned streetcars weren't introduced until 1976. 8/

Put yourselves in the shoes of passengers. Given the choice between a new bus with A/C and an old streetcar without A/C... this is a no-brainer. 9/

All of this is to say, GM was picking the bones of the dying streetcar companies. Think vultures, not eagles. And when we talk about the GM conspiracy charges... GM-affiliated National City Lines actually kept streetcars running longer than peer systems. 10/

The final closure of LA's streetcars was actually carried out by the predecessors of the LA Metro. /11

There was, however, one exception to this: Minneapolis-St Paul. There, a finance bro, the mob, and a crooked lawyer really did buy the trains and sell them for scrap - but that was the exception, not the rule. 12/12

(addendum: if you want to read the book, it's called "the lost subways of north america". if you get a copy directly from me, i'll sign it for you)

Streetcars were not doomed; some of them survived with downtown tunnels as in Boston, SF, Philadelphia & Pittsburgh. More could have been upgraded into what we now call light rail. Ed Tennyson cited specific actions by auto interests to obstruct that in Pittsburgh & Philadelphia.

This is interesting stuff. Have you ever looked at The Mears company in central FL? 30 years ago I found Paul Mears running an effective monopoly of tourist and airport-hotel transit, including shuttle buses and taxis. Suspect he (or his heirs) still have it—though Lyft/Uber probably dented him.

Hi, Pittsburgher here. Can confirm. Local newspapers here in the 1950s and '60s had letters to the editor and news stories begging Pittsburgh Railways to convert its system to buses. The nostalgia came later. At the time, streetcars were seen as old-fashioned, inflexible traffic obstructions

Another problem, which I think you allude to in your book, @lostsubways.com, is that in Pittsburgh, the streetcar company was obligated to pave streets and maintain bridges where tracks ran. It was a crippling expense. Bus companies, of course, had no such obligation

I'm not sure whether Pittsburgh Railways's franchise agreement required that, off the top of my head, but it was a common requirement in early 20th century contracts. (Obvi, I'm happy to go on your show to talk about this stuff.)

My grandmother always blamed the oil industry for the death of the Pittsburgh streetcar

I love trains and trolleys, but they work best in high-density areas. Pittsburgh is spread-out. We also have a lot of narrow 19th century streets. If someone parked a car too far from the curb, the streetcar couldn't get around, and traffic would quickly back up. Buses are way more flexible.

The question is: Why were they "not in the cards"? It's not conspiracy theory to say that the political power of the automobile interests had something to do with it.

Blaming the auto lobby is too simplistic, I think. Most of the Western world was shutting down streetcar lines in favor of buses through the 1970s. Even Lisbon, which keeps a decent-sized network today, pared down their system pretty dramatically in favor of subways and buses.

To be clear, in my opinion highway lobby political pull was just one factor -- but it was a sizable factor. I'm home & have my Tennyson letters. All this is from the Pittsburgh one: "General Motors had the state constitution amended in 1947 to forbid use of highway funds for Public Transportation."

Why was the West interested in shutting down streetcar networks while the Communist Bloc was keen to preserve, rebuild, and even expand streetcars at the same time? Also why did Europe tend to replace streetcars with subways (“cars and trains urbanism”) while the U.S. replaced them with nothing?

"grade separations" for the layman?

The trains don't share road space with cars, they get their own dedicated space. So traffic congestion doesn't affect the train.

Oh thank you. In my mind "streetcar" was synonymous with shared space, so I couldn't connect the dots.

The Philadelphia Subway-Surface trolley tunnel was extended from 23rd St to 40th St in 1955. The MBTA Green Line D branch opened as a grade separated trolley extension in 1959.

Both leveraging pre-war downtown subway tunnels that would have likely never materialized anew after 1950

and both tunnels (+Twin Peaks) were built too narrow for buses to ever bustitute, forcing their preservation as part of large multimodal transit systems (contra Rochester)

I grew up in the suburbs of Boston along a route of the Middlesex & Boston Street Railway. The trolleys were gone by 1960 because running buses was cheaper for the M&B than maintaining the tracks. (Then, of course, they were absorbed into the MBTA.)