General Motors streetcar conspiracy

From Robin's SM-201 Website
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Articles and/or categories related to Robin's Special History Project


This article is part of
"The Early Bay Area History Project"
Click here for Bay Area History category page
Click here for Special History Projects information
Key System trsin #187

The Great American Streetcar Scandal, also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy, refers to General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum forming the National City Lines (NCL) holding company, which acquired most streetcar systems throughout the United States, dismantled them, and replaced them with buses in the early 20th century. The scandal alleges that NCL's companies had an ulterior motive to forcibly gain mass use of the automobile among the U.S. population by buying up easy-to-use mass light rail transportation countrywide and dismantling it, leaving populations with little choice but to drive.

By the time the scandal was brought to court and its perpetrators identified and penalized, its intended result had already been achieved. The judge presiding thought that the scandal was of little real consequence: GM was fined $5,000 and each executive was ordered to pay a fine of $1.

Background

Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities, including Detroit, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and replaced them with GM buses. The scandal is rehashed in books like Fast Food Nation; testimony by Government Attorney Bradford Snell to a United States Senate inquiry in 1974 gave the scandal its current prevalence and weight in U.S. popular culture.

Depending on who is telling the story, to one degree or another, the scandal also invokes the Interstate Highway System as an additional culprit, since the system began its initial construction in California after the large-scale dismantling of that state's trolley network. (Some documentation of the California rapid transit interurban systems - some pieces of which survive as local and semi-local transport systems - is provided by historians such as The Electric Railway Historical Association of Southern California.)

Defenders of auto and highway interests argue that streetcars faded away at the invention of the internal combustion engine and the rise of the private automobile, and then the bus. They argue it signaled the obsolescence of the streetcar. At one time, virtually every city over 10,000 in America had at least one streetcar, before the invention of the automobile and the bus. 95% of all streetcar systems were at one time privately owned. According to the CATO Institute, in its study, "A Desire Named Streetcar: How Federal Subsidies Encourage Wasteful Local Transit Systems" it states, "Some supporters of mass transit have perpetuated the story that General Motors conspired to destroy the nation’s transit systems by replacing “efficient" streetcars with 'dirty' buses...." The study says this is not true and "has been debunked by numerous books and articles." It also says, "General Motors did purchase an interest in various transit companies, but its only goal was to sell its brand of buses to companies that were already converting from streetcars to buses. The simplest evidence of this is that General Motors never controlled more than a small fraction of the nation’s transit lines, and it controlled none after 1949. Yet transit companies in many cities not controlled by General Motors, including Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle, all converted from streetcars to buses, mostly during the 1950s."

Elements

The trolley industry had deep financial and structural problems (ancient equipment, etc.), and these issues largely predated the auto industry's interest in getting rid of that industry, so some transportation historians argue that the conversion to buses would likely have occurred anyway, given that streetcar ridership was steadily declining through this period due to several factors:

Deterioration of streetcar systems during World War II, during which no new rolling stock and few replacement parts were manufactured;

  • The need to rebuild rails every few decades, requiring the system to be shut down, entailing inconvenience and expense;
  • Politically or socially-motivated opponents of streetcar systems, like Robert Moses and New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (Between 1926 and 1936 GM acquired New York Railways, but left it languishing under continued underinvestment and poor service);
  • Federal subsidy of competing systems;
  • Low fare revenues leading to inability to upgrade the rolling stock, causing further erosion of ridership;
  • Legislation that prevented power utilities from owning trolley lines: e.g., Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935;
  • Rising real-estate prices, leading to transit companies selling off real-estate holdings to meet current obligations;
  • Widespread car ownership giving greater individual mobility;
  • Competition with automobiles for road space, and
  • Suburbanization.

Los Angeles had two separate trolley systems, known as the Red Cars and the Yellow Cars. National City Lines owned only the Yellow Cars, yet both ended up being dismantled. It is worth noting that the two systems were often used in conjunction by travelers, and cutting service on one line made the other less convenient as compared to automobiles. Regardless, during this period automobile ownership was rising everywhere in the United States, both in cities where GM had purchased the local streetcar systems and in cities where it hadn't.

The scandal ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court in United States v. National City Lines Inc. 334 U.S. 573, 596 (1948) ("National City I")[2] which reversed lower court rulings on the case. The proceedings were against General Motors, its subsidiary National City Lines, and seven other corporations. They were indicted on two counts under the US Sherman Antitrust Act. The charges, in summary, were conspiracy to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly (all defendants were acquitted on this charge), and conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines (General Motors alone was convicted on this charge).

References

See also

  • National City Lines - Company was responsible for buying up streetcar systems throughout the United States.
  • Pacific Electric Railway
  • Transportation in Los Angeles
  • Rail transport in the United States
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which the scandal is masked and set in Los Angeles
  • The Geography of Nowhere

Further reading

  • Adler, Sy "The Transformation of the Pacific Electric Railway: Bradford Snell, Roger Rabbit, and the Politics of Transportation in Los Angeles." Urban *Affairs Quarterly, Volume 27, Number 1, 1991.
  • Bottles, Scott L. Los Angeles and the Automobile, University of California Press, 1987. isbn 0-520-05795-3.
  • Black, Edwin "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives," especially Chapter 10, St. Martins Press 2006
  • Goddard, Stephen B. Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century, Basic Books, 1994
  • Kunstler, James Howard (1994). The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. Free Press. isbn 0-671-88825-0.
  • Snell, Bradford C. American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus and Rail Industries.
  • Report presented to the Committee of the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, United States Senate, February 26, 1974, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, pp. 16-24.
  • Slater, Cliff "General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars" published in Transportation Quarterly vol 51, 1997 puts forth the argument that the streetcar was eliminated by the market.
  • Thompson, Gregory Lee (1993). The Passenger Train in the Motor Age: California's Rail and Bus Industries, 1910–1941. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH. isbn 0-814-20609-3.
  • Cato Institute, "A Desire Named Streetcar: How Federal Subsidies Encourage Wasteful Local Transit Systems."

External links

Chain-09.png
Jump to: Main Page • Micropedia • Macropedia • Icons • Time Line • History • Life Lessons • Links • Help
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root
Retrieved from "http://www.sm-201.org/a/index.php?title=General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy&oldid=78609"