Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Did the car companies really conspire to kill the trolleys and streetcars of bygone days to force us to become dependent on automobiles instead?-- Taylor Howe, San Francisco, CA
Indeed, in the 1920s automaker General Motors (GM) began a covert campaign to undermine the popular rail-based public transit systems that were ubiquitous in and around the country’s bustling urban areas. At the time, only one in 10 Americans owned cars and most people traveled by trolley and streetcar.
Within three decades, GM, with help from Standard Oil, Firestone Tire, Mack Truck and Phillips Petroleum, succeeded in decimating the nation’s trolley systems, while seeing to the creation of the federal highway system and the ensuing dominance of the automobile as America’s preferred mode of transport....continued
Cities everywhere tore down their streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. I'm sure GM made things worse, but I think most streetcar lines would have disappeared anyway.
As an aside, why do people think streetcars are better than buses. They are more charming, but if the route has no separation from traffic anywhere I don't see the advantage.
Also, this made me think the whole statement "funding / constructing roads is a subsidy to transit as well since buses use roads" is rather silly. Before good roads were built, local transit services very similar to bus were around: streetcars. Since roads are around, we might as well have transit that uses the roads (buses), but without roads there was good if not better transit.
Did the car companies really conspire to kill the trolleys and streetcars of bygone days to force us to become dependent on automobiles instead?-- Taylor Howe, San Francisco, CA
Indeed, in the 1920s automaker General Motors (GM) began a covert campaign to undermine the popular rail-based public transit systems that were ubiquitous in and around the country’s bustling urban areas. At the time, only one in 10 Americans owned cars and most people traveled by trolley and streetcar.
Within three decades, GM, with help from Standard Oil, Firestone Tire, Mack Truck and Phillips Petroleum, succeeded in decimating the nation’s trolley systems, while seeing to the creation of the federal highway system and the ensuing dominance of the automobile as America’s preferred mode of transport....continued
The Apple II among others decimated the typewriter business as well.
San Francisco switched from streetcars to bus lines in among other things an attempt to speed up the slow, uncomfortable street cars with faster, more comfortable buses. Worked for a time, but now the congestion is so bad the buses are slower than the streetcars used to be. Modern streetcars are better, but they're still really slow, especially in mixed-traffic. The problem with streetcars today isn't so much the noise and abysmal ride (they're quite and comfortable and smooth, preferable to a jerking noisy bus); it's the upfront costs. You spend tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and months or years of frustrating construction and you end up with.... light rail in mixed-traffic which does pretty much exactly the same thing you had when you were using a bus in mixed-traffic. It's not any faster, service isn't usually any more frequent, you just spend a lot of money. More comfortable, yes, but that's a lot of money and headache (lost bus services, ripped up roads) for more comfortable.
Cities everywhere tore down their streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. I'm sure GM made things worse, but I think most streetcar lines would have disappeared anyway.
As an aside, why do people think streetcars are better than buses. They are more charming, but if the route has no separation from traffic anywhere I don't see the advantage.
Also, this made me think the whole statement "funding / constructing roads is a subsidy to transit as well since buses use roads" is rather silly. Before good roads were built, local transit services very similar to bus were around: streetcars. Since roads are around, we might as well have transit that uses the roads (buses), but without roads there was good if not better transit.
Streetcars have better identity and attract more riders for whom transit usage is a choice. People are more comfortable using it as its route is fixed with no possibility for deviation. The ride is smoother, the capacity often higher and operations cost lower.
The busier bus routes where I live would be very unlikely to be removed unless it's to be replaced by rapid transit. Moving streetcars two streets over would be unlikely, but I'm not sure why a bus route being moved two blocks over would be such a big deal.
Cities everywhere tore down their streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. I'm sure GM made things worse, but I think most streetcar lines would have disappeared anyway.
This statement kind of assumes that cities (as in municipal governments) owned their own streetcar lines. With very few exceptions, they did not. Streetcar networks were owned by private, for-profit businesses, who paid the city for the right to operate on city streets. Some streetcar lines went out of business because of erratic business cycles, or failed speculation (a streetcar line that ran from a downtown to a new suburb that didn't take off, for example.) A lot were lost during the Great Depression, which did away with plenty of businesses. But many of these companies had a hard time because local governments' efforts to pave roads was, in effect, creating a government-subsidized competitor, and private streetcar companies couldn't compete.
There were lots of reasons why they did this. At the time, big companies were looked at very dimly--they were considered cheap, dishonest, manipulative and greedy, and there was a big move towards government control and regulation of private industry. Much of this was pretty well-deserved: a lot of railroad and streetcar companies were cheap, dishonest, manipulative and greedy. But there were other industries, just as greedy and in some ways even more manipulative, who took advantage of public sentiment to trade one transportation monopoly for an even stronger one.
Quote:
As an aside, why do people think streetcars are better than buses. They are more charming, but if the route has no separation from traffic anywhere I don't see the advantage.
Smoother ride, more predictable route, clearer evidence of investment, and, yes, they're more charming so people like them more. Consumer choice is important! Streetcars and other forms of fixed-rail transit are also more conducive to certain types of development. And while streetcars often have no separation from traffic, that does not necessarily have to be the case: they can also travel on private right-of-way and on transit plazas where cars are not allowed, depending on routing. It can also interact with other forms of rail transit networks, like light rail, subway or elevated lines.
Quote:
Also, this made me think the whole statement "funding / constructing roads is a subsidy to transit as well since buses use roads" is rather silly. Before good roads were built, local transit services very similar to bus were around: streetcars. Since roads are around, we might as well have transit that uses the roads (buses), but without roads there was good if not better transit.
Buses' only real advantage is that they can use the same roads cars use, but they don't provide the other advantages--no real estate developer built "bus suburbs" the way they used to build streetcar suburbs.
Cities everywhere tore down their streetcar lines and replaced them with buses. I'm sure GM made things worse, but I think most streetcar lines would have disappeared anyway.
Cities didn't tear down the streetcar lines. The streetcar lines were mostly owned by private companies, which were bought out by front companies backed by GM and the oil companies. They could do that because of the lack of anti-trust laws or lack of enforcement of the laws. There was a lot of corruption going on in the government (as there is today) that allowed them to do that. GM was acting as any predatory corporate raider does, buying out the competition in order to destroy it.
The Secretary of Defense at the time was a former CEO/President of GM. This was the guy who came up and pitched the BS idea to Eisenhower that building a national interstate system was somehow vital for national defense. Half the politicians of DC and mayors of the country were bought off by the auto, highway and oil lobbies. The corruption was very open.
Where cities had ownership of the transit system, GM would often bribe city officials outright. Reportedly, the outgoing members of the Tampa City Council were all bribed with Cadillacs to vote to scrap their municipal transit system for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
As an aside, why do people think streetcars are better than buses. They are more charming, but if the route has no separation from traffic anywhere I don't see the advantage.
Simple. Busses are very noisy. They have a jolting, jaw-rattling ride. They produce smelly fumes. Versus streetcars which make little noise, have a smooth ride and produce no emissions. Busses are not pleasant to ride in.
To use a car analogy, its like riding in a Mercedes versus riding in a WW2-era Jeep. If you offer people a poor alternative to their cars, not many will want to use it. Busses are a poor alternative to private automobiles. So if busses are the only transit option available in their area people will prefer to remain in their cars.
Anti-trust laws actually helped National City Lines buy more streetcar lines: federal antitrust legislation made it illegal for a power company to operate a streetcar line, on the basis that the power company could sell power to its own streetcar line at below market rates. Because a lot of power companies owned streetcar lines (like Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railway were), they had to sell them off.
In the 1940s, buses were viewed in a very different light: in articles about the end of streetcar service in Sacramento, writers waxed eloquent about how we would no longer have to ride noisy, creaky, clanky, smelly streetcars, and would instead glide around in sleek, silent, elegant buses.
In the 1940s, buses were viewed in a very different light: in articles about the end of streetcar service in Sacramento, writers waxed eloquent about how we would no longer have to ride noisy, creaky, clanky, smelly streetcars, and would instead glide around in sleek, silent, elegant buses.
That was the propaganda being promoted at the time. The reality turned out to be quite different, however. The busses produced by GM ran on diesel fuel, which of course due to the nature of diesel engines are shockingly loud, rough-running, dirty, polluting. Much more so than gasoline engines even.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The reality turned out to be quite different, however. The busses produced by GM ran on diesel fuel, which of course due to the nature of diesel engines are shockingly loud, rough-running, dirty, polluting. Much more so than gasoline engines even.
