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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/

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/

Also, transit fares were fixed, on a nominal basis, by state and local statute years before the US went off the gold standard and secular inflation became a thing.

And rail transit maintenance + expansion costs were already rising even before broad inflation, meaning private owners were essentially signing their own death warrants by agreeing to the fixed fare

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/

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?)

They're fundamentally different models. The MTR is a state-owned enterprise that doubles as a real estate developer. Japan has multiple competing, privately-owned rail companies that double as real estate developers.

Isn’t the increase in real estate values a positive externality from the transport network [so like anti-pollution]? In which case, isn’t it legitimate for operators to benefit from that [‘internalising the externality‘] - and shouldn’t that give them incentives to reduce transit charges?