Dear “Earth Talk”: Did the car companies
really conspire to kill the trolleys and streetcars of bygone days to force
us to become dependent on automobiles instead? — Taylor Howe, San
Francisco
Indeed, in the 1920s automaker General Motors began a
covert campaign to undermine the popular rail-based public-transit systems
that were ubiquitous in and around the country’s bustling urban
areas. At the time, only one in 10 Americans owned a car, and most people
traveled by trolley and streetcar. Within three decades, GM, with help from Standard
Oil, Firestone Tire, Mack Truck and Phillips Petroleum, succeeded in
decimating the nation’s trolley systems while seeing to the creation
of the federal highway system and the ensuing dominance of the automobile
as America’s preferred mode of transport. GM began by funding a company called National City
Lines, which by 1946 controlled streetcar operations in 80 American cities.
“Despite public opinion polls that showed 88 percent of the public
favoring expansion of the rail lines after World War II, NCL systematically
closed its streetcars down until, by 1955, only a few remained,”
writes author Jim Motavalli in his 2001 book Forward
Drive. 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 Lines. Sloan predicted that the
jolting rides of buses would soon lead people to not want them and to buy
GM’s cars instead. GM was later instrumental in the creation of the
National Highway Users Conference, which became the most powerful lobby in
Washington. Highway lobbyists worked directly with lawmakers to craft
highway-friendly legislation, and GM’s promotional films showcased
America’s burgeoning interstate highway system as the realization of
the so-called American dream of freedom on wheels. When GM president
Charles Wilson became secretary of defense in 1953, he worked with Congress
to craft the $25 billion Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. Referred to at
the time as the greatest public works project in the history of the world,
the federally funded race to build roads from coast to coast was on. Meanwhile, many eco-advocates and urban planners
alike yearn for a rebirth of public transit. In the face of nightmarish
traffic tie-ups nationwide, widespread urban sprawl, loss of open space,
and the global warming we owe largely to automobiles, will we ever see a
return to mass transit as the dominant mode for moving people? According to
the Public Transportation Partnership for Tomorrow, mass-transit ridership
has grown by 21 percent since 1995 — faster than both vehicle and
airline passenger miles logged over the same period. “Public
transportation is a . . . means of helping our environment and conserving
energy,” says the group’s Web site. “If one in 10
Americans used public transportation regularly, U.S. reliance on foreign
oil could be cut by more than 40 percent — the amount we import from
Saudi Arabia each year.”
For more information: “Revisiting the American
Streetcar Scandal,” www.njtpa.org/public_affairs/intrans/scandal.html; Transportation Partnership for Tomorrow,
www.publictransportation.org/pt2/.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2006.
