| Who Killed the Streetcars? |
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| Written by Joshua Liberles | |||||||||||
| Tuesday, 11 December 2007 | |||||||||||
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About.com does a great job of answering part of the question in the must-read article The Great American Streetcar Scandal. It’s a great primer on how General Motors, with the help of corporate giants Standard Oil, Firestone Tire, Mack Truck, and Phillips Petroleum were instrumental in dismantling the nation’s elaborate streetcar system and building up the nation’s highway infrastructure. According to About, in the 1920’s most people traveled by trolley and streetcar; one in ten were automobile owners. 88% of people polled after World War II wanted the streetcar lines expanded. GM, however, had other ideas.
From About.com:
GM first replaced trolleys with free-roaming buses, eliminating the need for tracks embedded in the street and clearing the way for cars. As dramatized in a 1996 PBS docudrama, Taken for a Ride, Alfred P. Sloan, GM’s president at the time, said, “We’ve got 90 percent of the market out there that we can…turn into automobile users. If we can eliminate the rail alternatives, we will create a new market for our cars.” And they did just that, with the help of GM subsidiaries Yellow Coach and Greyhound Bus. Sloan predicted that the jolting rides of buses would soon lead people to not want them and to buy GM’s cars instead. Sounds a lot like GM’s behind the scenes work to bury the electric car – a tale revealed to great effect by the recent documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? But Public Transportation ridership is on the upswing. Fed up with traffic, pollution, and hassle, public transportation use in the U.S. has risen 21% since 1995 according to the Public Transportation Partnership for Tomorrow. Photo via flickr by Mike Wood Photography
Comments (5)
Mike Cunningham
said:
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Back in the early 70s I enjoyed the tramways of Dusseldorf, travel anywhere for just DM 1!! Smooth, fast, convenient, the list goes on! OH! and non-polluting!  Mike. |
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I'm 78 and remember a few still around Hartford, Ct. I will always remember my mother saying. "I wish they would bring back the old trolley cars. I hate the damned buses. They stink and they make me sick." I'm not for going back that far, but I think trolley buses would be neat. |
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if denver returned to it's trolley car glory, i'd ride them all the time. as of now i'm an avid bike rider (though my bike isn't as fancy as most other people's). i support my city's light rail, however it really only links the south metro area with the metro area. it's not worth taking to cross town. but if we had trolley cars on our main streets, well how cool would that be? and it would irk those car lovers so! ^_^ one could dream. |
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No, seriosly, Who frame Rodger Rabbit is all about an evil genius (from 'Cloverleaf') who wants to get rid of the streetcars in LA. |
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I remember that Taken for a Ride program. If I remember right the automobile giants were also pushing for the government to push millions of dollars in to a convoy system that would allow more cars to us the same roads by basically have a computer in the car that would 'tailgate' a control car. I can't remember how many 100s of miles of light rail/subway they said that same amount of money could build but it was quite big. |
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