I don't think we've created a thread on this subject which gets discussed and debated on various other threads. So I'll start by posting this article from more than three decades ago when Americans were facing long lines at gas stations, rapidly decaying cities, public housing gone amiss, suburbanization into overdrive and ruined transit systems that in too many cities no longer served the masses and instead became a transport system of last resort.

 

How did this happen?

______________________

 

http://www.thethirdrail.net/9905/agt1.htm

 

GM & the Streetcar--

 

‘American Ground Transport’*

 

Reprinted by

permission from

The Third Rail,

September 1974

Street Railways:

‘U.S. vs. National City Lines’ Recalled

by Paul Matus

 

 

    NO FORCE CAPTURED and guided the American imagination in the Twentieth Century so powerfully as the concept of “progress.” 

    “Progress” implied the steady and natural advance of a nation moving forward toward a future goal, even as our predecessors in the last century pursued “manifest destiny” until our national borders stretched from ocean to ocean. This same “progress” demanded that we put aside all which the forces of change decreed as “obsolete’‘—and that we never look back.

    The story of America’s transportation evolution in the automotive age illustrates, as no other area of our national experience, the meaning of “progress.” At the turn of the century, America had a massive complex of public transportation....

 

Steam railroads provided frequent service between urban centers and branch lines carried passengers and freight to the remotest comers of the country. Barely a dozen years earlier, Frank Sprague’s first successful trolley installation in Richmond, Va., heralded a new era of electric transportation for our cities and towns.

    But even as electric transit technology evolved and overspread the nation, the infant auto industry was producing the antique ancestors of the vehicle that was to indelibly alter, and, many would say, ruin, the American style of living.

    The electric railway industry grew rapidly and peaked early. During the era preceding World War I changes in the physical structure of the industry mainly took the form of adjustments. New service was instituted for new markets, as trimming of marginal lines marked areas where promoters’ ambitions exceeded patronage potential.

    After the “World War” a new and disturbing element made itself felt in the urban picture as the introduction of advanced assembly techniques began to turn a rich man’s toy into a transportation alternative for many amidst the prosperity of the '20s.

    Trolleys and autos got in each other’s way as they fought for the same street space and a contemporary observer might not have believed which mode would eventually prevail.

    As auto development and marketing progressed, the street railway industry didn’t stagnate. Differing approaches to transit needs produced a variety of ideas and inventions, but it was not until 1936 that the efforts of the Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) produced the fist batch of 100 modern streetcars, which represented the greatest single advance ever made in electric rail transportation. More than a mere cosmetic facelift of old equipment, or a series of minor improvements in previous technology, the PCC car set a new standard of comfort, performance and patron acceptance through technical innovations still used in the design and manufacture of rapid transit and light railway equipment throughout the world.

      Yet, just 20 years after that huge forward step, the street railway had all but disappeared from the American scene. Why?

    A casual observer might well ask whether that question has more than historical significance in today’s auto-dominated world. His answer would be a definite yes. We have reached a crossroads in national transportation policy, where our future way of life may well depend upon decisions which may be better understood in the context of recent transit history.

    Against this background, American Ground Transport, a new report prepared by Bradford C. Snell and financed by the Stern Fund of New York, ties together many of the loose ends of years of transportation transition to present a picture of public policy goals influenced by private business considerations. The report was submitted in February [1974] to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Committee on the Judiciary. Mr. Snell is presently assistant counsel to the sub-committee, which is chaired by Sen. Philip A. Hart of Michigan.

    “This is a study of the social consequences of monopoly,” the report begins. What follows reveals, among other things. the anatomy of changes which altered the American landscape.

    While emphasizing that “[t]his is not a study of malevolent or rapacious executives. . .” and that many of the corporate actions portrayed in the report can be viewed as reasonable from the point of view of the interests of stockholders, the Snell report reveals the extent to which General Motors and other industry decisions influenced the course of apparently objective planning decisions.

    When, in the 1920’s, the nation’s auto market seemed to be approaching saturation, GM diversified into the mass transit market, producing city and intercity buses. Thus GM first moved toward the potential of spanning all phases of surface transportation.

    “After its successful experience with intercity buses, General Motors diversified into city bus and rail operations. At first, its procedure consisted of directly acquiring and scrapping local electric transit systems in favor of GM buses. In this fashion, it created a market for its city buses. On June 29, 1932, the GM-bus executive committee formally resolved that ‘to develop motorized transportation, our company should initiate a program of this nature and authorize the incorporation of a holding company with a capital of $300,000.’ Thus was formed United Cities Motor Transit (UCMT) as a subsidiary of GM’s bus division. Its sole function was to acquire electric street-car companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell the properties to local concerns which agreed to purchase GM bus replacements. ‘In each case,’ [GM General Counsel] Hogan stated, GM 'successfully motorized the city, turned the management over to other interests and liquidated its investment.’ The program ceased, however, in 1935 when GM was censured by the American Transit Association (ATA) for its self-serving role, as a bus manufacturer, in apparently attempting to motorize Portland’s electric streetcar system.”

    Smaller companies proved only a beginning, however, as GM influence extended to the nation’s largest cities: “The massive conversion within a period of only 18 months of the New York system, then the world’s largest streetcar network, has been recognized subsequently as the turning point in the electric railway industry.”

    In 1936, GM caused its officers and employees to form National City Lines, Inc. (NCL) the report alleges, and continues: “During the following 14 years General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and two other suppliers of bus-related products, contributed more than $9 million to this holding company for the purpose of converting electric transit systems in 16 states to GM bus operations. The method of operation was basically the same as that which GM employed successfully in its United Cities Motor Transit program: acquisition, motorization, resale. By having NCL resell the properties after conversion was completed, GM and its allied companies were assured that this capital was continuously reinvested in the motorization of additional systems. . .

    “By 1949, General Motors had been involved in the replacement of more than 100 electric transit systems with GM buses in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. In April of that year, a Chicago Federal jury convicted GM of having criminally conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others to replace electric transportation with gas- or diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transportation companies throughout the country. The court imposed a sanction of $5,000 on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of Pacific City Lines when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1.

    “Despite its criminal conviction, General Motors continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit properties through September of 1955. By then, approximately 88 percent of the nation’s electric streetcar network had been eliminated. In 1936, when GM organized National City Lines, 40,000 streetcars were operating in the United States; at the end of 1965, only 5,000 remained. In December of that year, GM bus chief Roger M. Kyes correctly observed: ‘The motor coach has supplanted the interurban systems and has for all practical purposes eliminated the trolley (street-car)’ . . .

    “Electric street railways and electric trolley buses were eliminated without regard to their relative merit as a mode of transport. Their displacement by oil-powered buses maximized the earnings of GM stockholders; but it deprived the riding public of a competing method of travel,” the report asserts, and quotes urban transit expert George M. Smerk as saying that " ‘Street railways and trolley bus operations, even if better suited to traffic needs and the public interest, were doomed in favor of the vehicles and material produced by the conspirators.’ "

    Progressing from the conversion of rail systems to bus transportation, new market temptations appear on the transportation scene:

    “General Motors’ gross revenues are 10 times greater if it sells cars rather than buses. In theory, therefore, GM has every economic incentive to discourage bus ridership. In fact, its bus dieselization program may have generated that effect. Engineering studies strongly suggest that conversion from electric transit to diesel buses results in higher operating costs, loss of patronage, and eventual bankruptcy. They demonstrate, for example, that diesel buses have 28 percent shorter economic lives, 40 percent higher operating costs, and 9 percent lower productivity than electric buses. They also conclude that the diesel’s foul smoke, ear-splitting noise, and slow acceleration may discourage ridership. In short, by increasing the costs, reducing the revenues, and contributing to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems, GM’s dieselization program may have had the long-term effect of selling GM cars.”

    But the last chapter of mass transit history has not been written and the Snell report views the present and anticipates the future as it looks at “the political restraint of rail transit” by the continuing efforts of auto makers. “[The auto industry] has used [its revenues from auto sales] to finance political activities which, in the absence of effective countervailing activities by competing ground transport industries, induced government bodies to promote their product (automobiles) over other alternatives, particularly rail rapid transit.

    "On June 28, 1932, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., president of General Motors, organized the National Highway Users Conference [whose] announced objectives were dedication of highway taxes solely to highway purposes, and development of a continuing program of highway construction.

    “During the succeeding 40 years, the National Highway Users Conference [now Highway Users Federation for Safety and Mobility (HUFSAM)] has compiled an impressive record of accomplishments. Its effect, if not purpose, has been to direct public funds away from rail construction and into highway building. At the State level, its 2,800 lobbying groups have been instrumental in persuading 44 of the Nation’s 50 legislatures to adopt and preserve measures which dedicated State and local gasoline tax revenues exclusively to highway construction. By promoting these highway ‘trust funds,’ it has discouraged governors and mayors from attempting to build anything other than high- ways for urban transportation. Subways and rail transit proposals have had to compete with hospi- tals, schools and other governmental responsibilities for funding.. Prom 1945 through 1970, States and localities spent more than $156 billion constructing hundreds of thousands of miles of roads. During that same period, only 16 miles of subway were constructed in the entire country.”

    Comparing the highway lobby’s strength with transit organization muscle, Snell notes that “the three leading transit lobby group; are financially weak and torn by the conflicting interests of their membership. The American Transit Association, the largest element of the transit lobby, operates on an annual budget of about $700,000 which must be apportioned between the conflicting political needs of its bus and rail transit manufacturing members. . The third and smallest element of the transit body, the Institute for Rapid Transit, operates on a meager budget of about $200,000 a year. In short, HUFSAM and [the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association] alone outspend the three principal transit organizations by more than 10 to 1."

    And, ironically, the GM presence extends even to these promoters of transit—“Due to its position as the Nation’s largest producer of bus and rail vehicles, it is a major financial contributor to both the American Transit Association and the Railway Progress Institute. It is also an influential member of the Institute for Rapid Transit.”

    Viewing future prospects, the Snell report sees the auto industry attempting to thwart the kind of mass transit development which could provide the impetus for continuing growth: ". . . General Motors is engaged in a continuing effort to divert Government funds from rapid rail transit, which seriously threatens the use of cars in metropolitan areas, to GM buses, which fail consistently to persuade people to abandon their autos. In place of regional electric rail systems, for instance, it promotes diesel-powered “bus trains” of as many as 1,400 unite, each spaced 80 feet apart. Instead of urban electric rail, it advocates the use of dual-mode gas/electric vehicles which would be adapted from GM’s minimotor homes. In sum, the auto-makers embrace transit in order to prevent it from competing effectively with their sales of automobiles.”

    The Snell report’s objective, as stated in its introduction and summary, is to promote the reorganization of the nation’s auto industry into smaller, more competitive units which would broaden opportunities for future transportation diversity. “By proposing to reorganize these firms . . . [the report] does not pretend to offer a blueprint for better transportation. Rather, it seeks to eliminate an otherwise insuperable obstacle to that end.”

 

END

 

 

More than 20 years ago, Harpers Magazine ran a story by Jonathan Kwitney, titled "The Great Transportation Conspiracy." The story went into quite a lot of detail about how GM used National City Lines as a front to take over and dismantle rail-based transit systems. Someplace I have a copy of it, but I haven't been able to turn it up lately.

 

Not only did National City Lines acquire and dismantle rail systems and replace them with buses; then, they gerrymandered schedules to sabotage coordinated transfers and make urban travel by public transit increasingly inconvenient, uncomfortable and time-consuming.

 

The early buses were coach bodies on heavy truck frames. Compared with streetcars, at least on formerly well-maintained systems, the ride was rough, noisy and smelly. Come to think of it, the tradition continues on Chicago's CTA buses.

Harper's has their entire archive online for subscribers. It's a great magazine.

 

Here's the article if you care to subscribe:

 

http://harpers.org/archive/1981/02/0024497

 

National City Lines came to my mind immediately. What I want to know is, why a mere slap on the wrist for destroying almost every streetcar system in cities all over the country?

 

As far as Columbus goes, my theory is that those high rises killed the city. With our streetcar system ripped out and an inferior bus system in its place + the subsidization of suburbia/car culture - a people culture = current state of downtown: tons of surface lots and garages for all of the suburban employees for those new high rises. What I don't get is why we, less industrial than Cincinnati or Cleveland with fewer high-rises, ended up with the most decimated downtown by far in Ohio. Did people just flee those cities for the most part whereas in Columbus our historic buildings were knocked down and replaced with tall office buildings for a large number of suburban workers?

National City Lines came to my mind immediately. What I want to know is, why a mere slap on the wrist for destroying almost every streetcar system in cities all over the country?

 

A $5,000 fine for corporate conspirators and $1 for individual conspirators was the maximum penalty under the law. I believe the Justice Department prosecuted the National City Lines case under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I am quite certain the conspirators were well aware of those meaningless penalties when they started. Even if all concerned didn't end up earning billions by changing America's urban/transportation landscape, the maximum penalties were a pittance.

 

So why did GM et al bother fighting the case rather than take a plea and a settlement? There was concern by the conspirators that the Justice Department would use the case as a prerequisite to break up the companies into smaller units to weaken their monopoly power. That concern re-emerged in 1974, during the first oil crisis, when Congress held hearings on the National City Lines case. And, of course, there was PR value in fighting the case.

National City Lines came to my mind immediately. What I want to know is, why a mere slap on the wrist for destroying almost every streetcar system in cities all over the country?

 

As far as Columbus goes, my theory is that those high rises killed the city. With our streetcar system ripped out and an inferior bus system in its place + the subsidization of suburbia/car culture - a people culture = current state of downtown: tons of surface lots and garages for all of the suburban employees for those new high rises. What I don't get is why we, less industrial than Cincinnati or Cleveland with fewer high-rises, ended up with the most decimated downtown by far in Ohio. Did people just flee those cities for the most part whereas in Columbus our historic buildings were knocked down and replaced with tall office buildings for a large number of suburban workers?

 

Downtowns at their zenith in the early 20th century were full of highrises.  What about Chicago, NY, or any of the other cities with highrises and still strong downtowns?  Of all the things that killed Downtowns, highrises are about the last thing we should be worried about.

I read an article in Trains magazine a couple of years ago about the whole GM-Firestone-Standard Oil streetcar conspiracy.  The author made the argument that GM bought up the streetcar companies more because they wanted a bigger piece of the transportation pie than they wanted (at least initially) to destroy the streetcar companies.  I didn't really buy the argument.  It's all too coincidental that GM benefited enormously from selling more buses once the streetcar lines were demolished.  The author didn't really say much about the role of Firestone and Standard Oil either. 

^^Chicago and New York continued to value their urban culture and we didn't. The only high-rises we added were offices, it was not at all balanced. That and we totally ditched mass-transit for highways cutting through several neighborhoods making downtown an island. We tore down a 1/3 of German Village in the process, for one example. With so many people owning their own car, companies provided parking by tearing down homes and blocks of what was once continuous, historic  series of buildings. Not sure what Cincinnati and Cleveland did to minimize that, but whatever it was we didn't.

^^Chicago and New York continued to value their urban culture and we didn't. The only high-rises we added were offices, it was not at all balanced. That and we totally ditched mass-transit for highways cutting through several neighborhoods making downtown an island. We tore down a 1/3 of German Village in the process, for one example. With so many people owning their own car, companies provided parking by tearing down homes and blocks of what was once continuous, historic  series of buildings. Not sure what Cincinnati and Cleveland did to minimize that, but whatever it was we didn't.

 

I think we are all forgetting what wastelands New York and Chicago were in the 70s and 80s.  If you look at the highways that penetrate those cities, the same thing happened to those places that happened to Columbus, Cincinnati, etc.

 

As despicable as the National City case is, I doubt it had much effect beyond generating more orders for buses for GM, and even that might be debatable (and GM probably would have been better off keeping ownership of the lines and instead adding a streetcar manufacturing business to their corporation).  All these cities are still around- where will GM be in twenty years?

^

 

Agreed. Nearly all US cities were cesspools by the early 1970's, even Portland OR. St. Louis, where I come from was dying and we ended up with Pruitt-Igoe, one of the most infamous urban renewal projects ever concieved. Most whites fled the city and what was left was nearly destroyed by urban freeways and parking lots. That in turn, destroyed the city tax base. Not a pretty picture.

 

I remember also coming to Columbus in the 1970's-80's...more of the same. The Short North was a slum, complete with rundown buildings and porn stores. German Village was nearly lost to a redevelopment scheme. Downtown closed at 5 pm. No one was there at all. I remember the futility of trying to find a restaurant that was open after 5. Things are much better now, even if we still have a long way to go.

 

I don't know if I agree about Lincoln-Kennedy's assessment of what GM did. Don't forget they propagandized us into thinking the auto was the way of the future, that they trained highway engineers, had huge influence in the halls of Congress, local governments, etc, etc, etc. In essence, they made our transportation decisions for us and what we have today is the result of their corporate greed. Now we have to make things right.

I don't know if I agree about Lincoln-Kennedy's assessment of what GM did. Don't forget they propagandized us into thinking the auto was the way of the future, that they trained highway engineers, had huge influence in the halls of Congress, local governments, etc, etc, etc. In essence, they made our transportation decisions for us and what we have today is the result of their corporate greed. Now we have to make things right.

 

But the auto was the way of the future, wasn't it?  At least it was for 50 some odd years.  Really road-building has had broad support since the 1920s, and road-building has always had its strongest support and motivation in the Statehouse, not Congress.  The whole reason so many of those interstate highways smashed their way through cities was to access the all-important downtown.  As much as the interstate highway system has done to foster sprawl, the only way sprawl works is if you have the local water, power and street systems connected to the off-highway developments.

 

This isn't an apology for the actions of any auto manufacturer or oil company.  Clearly putting planning for issues of national importance into the hands of private-sector corporations is a huge mistake.  All I'm saying is that what looks like a brilliant evil move may turn out to be a really knuckle-headed one five years down the road, or even more shockingly to the entrepreneurial knight-errant, one that the all-knowing CEO didn't even really make, but circumstances did.  They hate that idea even more than a mistake.

Keep in mind that interstates weren't supposed to penetrate the cities. The original plan was to have them do what the Autobahns did -- converge on the outskirts of cities and then build beltways around the cities. Eisenhower supported this concept to avoid the kind of neighborhood demolition and economic dislocation which utlimately resulted. Several Congressman in the roadbuilders' pockets sneaked a provision into the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 that created the National Interstate and Defense Highways System. The provision allowed for interstates to be built into the cities, with the rationale being that they would enable citizens to flee cities in the event of a nuclear attack by the Russians. In the book "Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century", Stephen Goddard wrote that, in the years after the highway bill was passed, President Eisenhower was traveling through Washington D.C. in his limousine when he saw a large gash of demolished buildings. He inquired to aid who replied "that's your interstate highway system, sir." Eisenhower reportedly wasn't happy to see highways coming into the cities.

 

I have no doubts that, had GM et al not done what they had done to America's transit companies, that we'd have more people driving today than we did before they started buying out the transit companies and making them attractive. But would we have had hyper-suburbanization, near total reliance on cars as we have seen?

 

Might we have been closer to Europe and especially the UK in terms of our preservation of cities, continuing of extensive urban and regional transit systems, lack of immense/extensive highway building and modest growth of driving?

 

It's amazing to see in the UK, even in smaller cities, how much people walk, how vibrant their downtowns are, and how many people take transit. Their suburbs, for the most part, look like the ones we built in the U.S. in the 1920s. Yes, their rail system is extensive, but their city-to-city bus system is remarkable. Their main roads are narrow, twisting, hilly and with no shoulders. In the U.S., those same roads would have been straightened, leveled and extra-wide, regardless of what historic sites were in the way. It's symptomatic of how much money we've devoted to road building in the U.S. versus in the U.K. There were also few Motorways (Interstates) in the U.K.

 

Yes, more people are driving now in the U.K. than ever, but it pales in comparison to how utterly reliant on cars we are in the U.S. Oh, and by the way, yes I also looked at some of the historical sites while in Europe when I wasn't comparing and contrasting the results of their land use and transportation policies.....hehe

^

 

Agreed. Nearly all US cities were cesspools by the early 1970's, even Portland OR. St. Louis, where I come from was dying and we ended up with Pruitt-Igoe, one of the most infamous urban renewal projects ever concieved. Most whites fled the city and what was left was nearly destroyed by urban freeways and parking lots. That in turn, destroyed the city tax base. Not a pretty picture.

 

I remember also coming to Columbus in the 1970's-80's...more of the same. The Short North was a slum, complete with rundown buildings and porn stores. German Village was nearly lost to a redevelopment scheme. Downtown closed at 5 pm. No one was there at all. I remember the futility of trying to find a restaurant that was open after 5. Things are much better now, even if we still have a long way to go.

 

I don't know if I agree about Lincoln-Kennedy's assessment of what GM did. Don't forget they propagandized us into thinking the auto was the way of the future, that they trained highway engineers, had huge influence in the halls of Congress, local governments, etc, etc, etc. In essence, they made our transportation decisions for us and what we have today is the result of their corporate greed. Now we have to make things right.

 

Yeah about how cities were. I'm not sure the causes can be placed so directly on the backs of the big corporations. It was far more multi-faceted and the best historical research has not supported the more conspiracy-oriented explanations.

 

I'd agree that 20s era suburbs seem have gotten the balance between suburbs and city about right with space for cars and public transit in balance. Read some Sinclair Lewis and see the high levels of corruption that often accompanied mass transit -deals between developers and transit companies - Toledo was bad on this and Cincinnati wasn't much better.

 

Corruption follows all government. It was there for mass transit and then it was there for roads.

 

English and  Scottish cities experienced much of the same decline and miserable urban renewal as the US. It just happened in the north of England and in Scotland more than in the area around London.

^^Chicago and New York continued to value their urban culture and we didn't. The only high-rises we added were offices, it was not at all balanced. That and we totally ditched mass-transit for highways cutting through several neighborhoods making downtown an island. We tore down a 1/3 of German Village in the process, for one example. With so many people owning their own car, companies provided parking by tearing down homes and blocks of what was once continuous, historic  series of buildings. Not sure what Cincinnati and Cleveland did to minimize that, but whatever it was we didn't.

 

It seems to me that you've pinpointed many of the real problems here.  Highrises don't by themselves really make or destroy a city.