[csours]

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM.

GM was definitely involved in shutting down streetcars[W], but it's not entirely correct to say that GM was the cause of shutting down streetcars.

In addition to whatever GM did, look at the expansion of cities in this time period (1920s to 1950s). Paved streets could be added much more quickly than streetcar lines[0]. The automobile was there to use them by this time. Buses can also use paved streets.

Paved streets have a much larger network effect than streetcar lines due to the time and cost to add the streetcar rails. (Think switched network vs old AT&T system)

Faced with the growth of paved streets and the cost of operating parallel transit systems (bus and streetcar lines), many operators stopped operating streetcars - you can replace streetcars with buses, but you can't replace buses with streetcars.

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[0] There's a parallel debate to be had here about density, but at the time it was much easier and cost effective[1] to grow the suburbs than the city center. A huge amount of american purchasing power was unlocked because people could afford to buy their own reasonably priced homes in the suburbs[1].

1. Again, plenty of room for debate on this.

[W] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

[rmason]

It's a fact that GM set up a shadow corporation to buy up a lot of cities streetcar lines with the stated intention of selling more automobiles.

Apologists will say the street cars were doomed both by cars and the popularity of buses. In fact a CBS report stated exactly that.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-gm-trolley-conspiracy-what-r...

Detroit's street car line however was profitable and wildly popular with the city's citizens. Less than two years later with its new secret owner it was reporting losses and was shut down.

Why would GM hide the fact it was buying the street car lines with a shadow corporation. Why would GM deny that it was the real owner of National City Corporation for over fifty years? That Wikipedia article reads like it was written by the GM publicity department. Why after all these years doesn't the company simply fess up that they did something wrong?

[Gravityloss]

> Paved streets could be added much more quickly than streetcar lines

Streetcars tracks can be put on the ... street. The hint is in the name, kind of. :) . They're also much lighter than railroad or metro tracks. You can have level crossings and tight corners.

I don't see them as especially hard to build. Cars probably require a lot more space, when you add all the multiple lanes, intersections, overpasses etc, when you take into account their low density.

So I wouldn't see it as obviously going either way.

[Retric]

The problem is not street cars vs busses it's busses vs cars. If you let cars onto the same lanes as busses then they become worse than cars. Effectively you can have a high bandwidth street level public transit or congestion because cars don't scale at street level.

The core problem is a single lane of dedicated public transit can move more than 10x as many people as a single lane of roads. In minimal traffic areas you can mix busses and cars, but as soon as roads reach there minimal limits near a city you need to segregate traffic.

PS: Cars do with in low density areas and Extreme levels of congestion pricing are one way around this. If it costs 50$ / day to park in the city you get less traffic, but passing such regulations are incredibly difficult.