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I realize everyone wants to see this as some conspiracy run by a big business in Detroit. They were certainly part of it. But I think it's important to realize

I realize everyone wants to see this as some conspiracy run by a big business in Detroit. They were certainly part of it. But I think it's important to realize that all of the consumers were making their own choices and their choices were usually to buy their own personal transportation machine, aka car. Public transportation believers hate to admit it but systems like the streetcar are just slower and more inconvenient. Unless you're lucky enough to live near a stop, they don't go to your doorstep. They're much slower because they're always stopping to pick up or drop off someone else. I realize that some cities are now so dense that public transport may be the only choice. The roads can't handle too many individual cars. But when this so-called conspiracy went down, many people embraced the idea of owning their own car. It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke-filled backroom.

Retric 4y ago
If you track population growth and the number of people without cars you find street cars died out way too soon in any kind of car transition to be the root cause. Instead they where largely replaced with busses which where initially more expensive, but also more flexible.
- dr-detroit 4y ago
  The busses ran a few times a day the trolley was every 5-10 minutes. GM had to buy the trolley lines and force them to use their buses in order to sell their unpopular buses.
  - Retric 4y ago
    I think that’s overly critical of busses. You could use the same number of busses at the same frequency as a trolly network, but they are optimized differently. Trolley’s had fewer routes because laying track was expensive, busses on the other hand ended up with vastly more routes but fewer busses on most routes. This meant that even with significantly more total busses people would on average wait longer but conversely they walk less. The biggest downside to complex bus routs is they tend to be more difficult to understand and use efficiently. However, apps can really pick up the slack and let people leverage complex systems.
johannes1234321 4y ago
It is true, that it's not only due to a car make conspiracy and it is also true, that contemporary structure of American cities isn't good for public transport. However where city structure is built around public transport and public transport is operated well, I claim you get a way better quality of live. (Less noise, more efficient transport, city structure with reachable shops, ability to use commuting times for rest or reading or something, ... especially, but not only, for the younger, elder or others who can't drive on their own)
- sitkack 4y ago
  > structure of American cities isn't good for public transport. You might be suffering from circular logic. If this new city is designed for the car, then ... Cities were previously very well suited for mass transportation and people centered design. https://washingtonsqpark.org/news/2017/03/07/jane-jacobs-and-the-fight-for-washington-square-park/ https://washingtonsqpark.org/news/2017/03/07/jane-jacobs-and... Planned, car centered cities are atrocious. Dubai is a Joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I New Egyptian Replacement Capitol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUK0K5mdQ_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUK0K5mdQ_s Brasilia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz7TrRCO_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz7TrRCO_E
- Retric 4y ago
  Far more busses operated in Chicago/NYC etc in 1970 than streetcars in 1920. What happened is busses took over and street traffic increased. On otherwise empty streets a buss network could be far more convenient than subways, but that’s not the world we live in. It’s mostly stoplights and the need for them that makes streetcars and busses suck relative to subways.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Subways will always tend to be faster, just because they don't have cross traffic enforced by cycling traffic lights. Traffic lights are just a reality of street-based transportation, because the light length needs to be long enough that someone like a grandma with mobility issues needs enough time to cross the street.
sitkack 4y ago
This isn't the take away from the page nor the documentary linked below. > It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke-filled backroom. It was literally this. GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. Macroscale effects are systemic, projecting individual choice into is mostly always a smoke screen. It is the same tactic that the plastics industry used to shift blame onto the individual "litter bug" and not the prevalence of single use plastic packaging. Your comment history is littered with similar reinforcing tropes.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. No. They colluded to monopolize supply of buses--this is what the court case that involved the conspiracy held. The streetcars were already failing when they were acquired.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    Then why were the streetcar lines being bought by what effectively was a shell company owned by the corporations that would profit the most from the sale of those buses?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  It was real, but it's not sufficient to explain the mass movement away from streetcars in general. They didn't even purchase a majority of streetcars in the US, and this movement away from streetcars happened in most of the Western world. US streetcars had real systemic disadvantages mostly stemming from when they showed up in our society; at the turn of the century in uncongested roads when the dollar was strongly tied to gold. This had a couple effects: * they showed up at the turn of the century, so just in the '40s and '50s as investment started in highways they needed expensive lifecycle replacement. Buses were seen as more flexible and could use this new infrastructure being built with no additional work, so many municipalities willingly switched to buses to take advantage. * they showed up at the turn of the century, when having a paved road in a city was not a norm, and so contracts allowing for the construction of streetcar lines also expected the streetcar companies to pay maintenance on the paving. Gas taxes usually only pay for major interstate and state roads, but streetcars paid for local streets. Undoing this was not popular since it would require cities to raise new taxes, and would relieve evil streetcar monopolies of a burden. * they showed up when roads were not terribly congested, so they weren't built with the expectation of needing to be separated from heavy traffic. Cars changed this equation, but dedicating road space to streetcars was just either not on the radar or seen as a giveaway to evil companies. * they showed up when the dollar was very strong and tied to gold. Laws authorizing streetcar operation also usually involved explicitly tying their operation to a specified flat fare (usually a nickel). This fare was not tied to inflation, and raising the fare or eliminating limits on fares was politically DOA, a tax on the working man and a giveaway to the evil streetcar monopolies.
LeanderK 4y ago
> Public transportation believers hate to admit it but systems like the streetcar are just slower and more inconvenient. Car lovers hate to admit that public transportation is the not fiction but preferred by many all over the world. This sentence is completely impossible for me to relate to. I even don't have a drivers license! My girlfriend and many of my friends also. I want to live urban and don't want to drive or own a car, I consider it inconvenient. I am also not a "public transportation believer", it's not something I care much about, I just use it. I live in a small student-city in germany, nobody uses a car (I literally know nobody driving to university and I know a lot of people here!). I would say more people bike to university than take the car, by far. Nearly my friends from where I grew up (munich, city of 1.5 million people) also don't drive, many don't own a car and many also don't have a drivers license. The only few I know that use a car live quite suburban, bordering rural. Many may prefer a car, but that doesn't mean that streetcars are only used because you are forced to.
- abawany 4y ago
  I live in a city/state where public transportation is actively inconvenient and even then I made a considerable effort to take it and avoid driving when I could. The waste of time and brain capacity sitting behind a steering wheel like a frikking dummy is insane - I was able to get so much reading and work done on a train/bus while the best I could do while driving was listen to an audiobook, assuming it didn't take away too much attention from the waste of time that was driving.
  - antonymy 4y ago
    I see this as a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Your time is being held hostage by your commute, so you cope with ways to use that time. I was the same way. At first, I was stuck commuting for 75+ minutes to and from work on public transit. Most of this was spent walking, because it was actually faster to bee-line on foot for the office downtown than trying to jump between inner city transit options. I read books on the train or did crosswords when able, but the train ride altogether was maybe 20 minutes long, with maybe 5 minutes spent waiting at the stop (if it wasn't late). So about 25 minutes I could spend "productively" by reading on the way in, and another 25 on the way back. Assuming the train wasn't jam packed by the time it arrived, leaving me hardly any room to even hold a handrail let alone do anything else, which was not a rare occurrence. Then my employer finally got me a free parking pass for the building (there was a waiting list) and I said goodbye to public transport. My 75+ minute commute became a 25 minute drive, saving me 100 minutes a day I could spend on leisure instead of commuting. What undercuts this happy turn of events is that Covid came in a few months later and my prized parking pass became irrelevant as I was working from home. And this made me realize enjoying ANY kind of commute is essentially Stockholm syndrome. What's better than a short drive OR reading on the train? Reading at home, in my big comfy chair with a cup of coffee, right up until it's time to start work, never having to take off my slippers.

Retric 4y ago

If you track population growth and the number of people without cars you find street cars died out way too soon in any kind of car transition to be the root cause. Instead they where largely replaced with busses which where initially more expensive, but also more flexible.

dr-detroit 4y ago
The busses ran a few times a day the trolley was every 5-10 minutes. GM had to buy the trolley lines and force them to use their buses in order to sell their unpopular buses.
- Retric 4y ago
  I think that’s overly critical of busses. You could use the same number of busses at the same frequency as a trolly network, but they are optimized differently. Trolley’s had fewer routes because laying track was expensive, busses on the other hand ended up with vastly more routes but fewer busses on most routes. This meant that even with significantly more total busses people would on average wait longer but conversely they walk less. The biggest downside to complex bus routs is they tend to be more difficult to understand and use efficiently. However, apps can really pick up the slack and let people leverage complex systems.

johannes1234321 4y ago

It is true, that it's not only due to a car make conspiracy and it is also true, that contemporary structure of American cities isn't good for public transport. However where city structure is built around public transport and public transport is operated well, I claim you get a way better quality of live. (Less noise, more efficient transport, city structure with reachable shops, ability to use commuting times for rest or reading or something, ... especially, but not only, for the younger, elder or others who can't drive on their own)

sitkack 4y ago
> structure of American cities isn't good for public transport. You might be suffering from circular logic. If this new city is designed for the car, then ... Cities were previously very well suited for mass transportation and people centered design. https://washingtonsqpark.org/news/2017/03/07/jane-jacobs-and-the-fight-for-washington-square-park/ https://washingtonsqpark.org/news/2017/03/07/jane-jacobs-and... Planned, car centered cities are atrocious. Dubai is a Joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I New Egyptian Replacement Capitol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUK0K5mdQ_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUK0K5mdQ_s Brasilia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz7TrRCO_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz7TrRCO_E
Retric 4y ago
Far more busses operated in Chicago/NYC etc in 1970 than streetcars in 1920. What happened is busses took over and street traffic increased. On otherwise empty streets a buss network could be far more convenient than subways, but that’s not the world we live in. It’s mostly stoplights and the need for them that makes streetcars and busses suck relative to subways.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Subways will always tend to be faster, just because they don't have cross traffic enforced by cycling traffic lights. Traffic lights are just a reality of street-based transportation, because the light length needs to be long enough that someone like a grandma with mobility issues needs enough time to cross the street.

sitkack 4y ago

This isn't the take away from the page nor the documentary linked below. > It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke-filled backroom. It was literally this. GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. Macroscale effects are systemic, projecting individual choice into is mostly always a smoke screen. It is the same tactic that the plastics industry used to shift blame onto the individual "litter bug" and not the prevalence of single use plastic packaging. Your comment history is littered with similar reinforcing tropes.

jcranmer 4y ago
> GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. No. They colluded to monopolize supply of buses--this is what the court case that involved the conspiracy held. The streetcars were already failing when they were acquired.
- sitkack 4y ago
  Then why were the streetcar lines being bought by what effectively was a shell company owned by the corporations that would profit the most from the sale of those buses?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bobthepanda 4y ago
It was real, but it's not sufficient to explain the mass movement away from streetcars in general. They didn't even purchase a majority of streetcars in the US, and this movement away from streetcars happened in most of the Western world. US streetcars had real systemic disadvantages mostly stemming from when they showed up in our society; at the turn of the century in uncongested roads when the dollar was strongly tied to gold. This had a couple effects: * they showed up at the turn of the century, so just in the '40s and '50s as investment started in highways they needed expensive lifecycle replacement. Buses were seen as more flexible and could use this new infrastructure being built with no additional work, so many municipalities willingly switched to buses to take advantage. * they showed up at the turn of the century, when having a paved road in a city was not a norm, and so contracts allowing for the construction of streetcar lines also expected the streetcar companies to pay maintenance on the paving. Gas taxes usually only pay for major interstate and state roads, but streetcars paid for local streets. Undoing this was not popular since it would require cities to raise new taxes, and would relieve evil streetcar monopolies of a burden. * they showed up when roads were not terribly congested, so they weren't built with the expectation of needing to be separated from heavy traffic. Cars changed this equation, but dedicating road space to streetcars was just either not on the radar or seen as a giveaway to evil companies. * they showed up when the dollar was very strong and tied to gold. Laws authorizing streetcar operation also usually involved explicitly tying their operation to a specified flat fare (usually a nickel). This fare was not tied to inflation, and raising the fare or eliminating limits on fares was politically DOA, a tax on the working man and a giveaway to the evil streetcar monopolies.

LeanderK 4y ago

> Public transportation believers hate to admit it but systems like the streetcar are just slower and more inconvenient. Car lovers hate to admit that public transportation is the not fiction but preferred by many all over the world. This sentence is completely impossible for me to relate to. I even don't have a drivers license! My girlfriend and many of my friends also. I want to live urban and don't want to drive or own a car, I consider it inconvenient. I am also not a "public transportation believer", it's not something I care much about, I just use it. I live in a small student-city in germany, nobody uses a car (I literally know nobody driving to university and I know a lot of people here!). I would say more people bike to university than take the car, by far. Nearly my friends from where I grew up (munich, city of 1.5 million people) also don't drive, many don't own a car and many also don't have a drivers license. The only few I know that use a car live quite suburban, bordering rural. Many may prefer a car, but that doesn't mean that streetcars are only used because you are forced to.

abawany 4y ago
I live in a city/state where public transportation is actively inconvenient and even then I made a considerable effort to take it and avoid driving when I could. The waste of time and brain capacity sitting behind a steering wheel like a frikking dummy is insane - I was able to get so much reading and work done on a train/bus while the best I could do while driving was listen to an audiobook, assuming it didn't take away too much attention from the waste of time that was driving.
- antonymy 4y ago
  I see this as a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Your time is being held hostage by your commute, so you cope with ways to use that time. I was the same way. At first, I was stuck commuting for 75+ minutes to and from work on public transit. Most of this was spent walking, because it was actually faster to bee-line on foot for the office downtown than trying to jump between inner city transit options. I read books on the train or did crosswords when able, but the train ride altogether was maybe 20 minutes long, with maybe 5 minutes spent waiting at the stop (if it wasn't late). So about 25 minutes I could spend "productively" by reading on the way in, and another 25 on the way back. Assuming the train wasn't jam packed by the time it arrived, leaving me hardly any room to even hold a handrail let alone do anything else, which was not a rare occurrence. Then my employer finally got me a free parking pass for the building (there was a waiting list) and I said goodbye to public transport. My 75+ minute commute became a 25 minute drive, saving me 100 minutes a day I could spend on leisure instead of commuting. What undercuts this happy turn of events is that Covid came in a few months later and my prized parking pass became irrelevant as I was working from home. And this made me realize enjoying ANY kind of commute is essentially Stockholm syndrome. What's better than a short drive OR reading on the train? Reading at home, in my big comfy chair with a cup of coffee, right up until it's time to start work, never having to take off my slippers.