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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

@unroll.skywriter.blue unroll

tagging @jetjocko.bsky.social

How much of a factor were fare restriction laws (5-cent fares) in the challenges of streetcars? (I’m buying your book so maybe will find out there.)

This is fascinating. I knew elements of this history. But hadn’t had it explained in terms of unpopular monopolies, capital order investment etc.

There's a lot of similarities between the transit barons of old and the tech barons of today. But while most of the transit barons funded civic infrastructure (e.g., the Huntington Library in LA, the Lyric Opera House in Chicago, the Yerkes Observatory in WI) to stay in the public's good graces...

...the tech barons have seemingly no desire to be loved, no noblesse oblige, no desire to publicly appear virtuous. It's absurd to imagine Zuckerberg, Musk or Ellison funding a modern-day equivalent of a Carnegie Library.

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.

He literally wrote the book on the subject, what the fuck are you doing?

I agree that they could not survive as they were, but saying it's also true that auto interests were a negative force and there could have been better outcomes.

New streetcar grade separations were not the cards in the critical period from 1945-1975. Pittsburgh Railways was in receivership until the Port Authority took it over, and PTC's system was in full collapse mode. Tellingly, the tunnels that saved the streetcars were all pre-war.

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

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.

"grade separations" for the layman?

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.

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.)

The idea of light rail was only invented in the 1960s in Cologne and brought to the US and Canada in the 1970s in Western cities. The Boston Green Line and Philadelphia Subway-Surface Trolley generalized in a different way and that mentality turned into conventional subways.

The Pacific Electric Long Beach, Pasadena, and (freeway-median-running!) Van Nuys lines were pretty clearly light rail even if they didn't use the term. So were the Stockholm premetro from 1933, the Vienna Stadtbahn from 1925, and the Ekeberg & Lilleaker lines in Oslo from 1917-1919.

Ordered the book from your site! Side question: Based on your research, do you have any tips if I wanted to find maps of early school bus routes?