Interesting article - cars displaced and interfered with streetcar traffic, the service was provided by private companies, and fares didn’t move with inflation.

As much as I like transit, I do think running trains in the middle of a street of traffic was a dead concept as soon as the automobile became available to most people. A dedicated lane with signal priority becomes necessary for safety and for capacity/speed. That, or they need to have right of way in the curbside lanes. Horses and pedestrians are a very different traffic problem.

By the 1950s, virtually all streetcar companies were in terrible shape. Some were taken over by new municipal bus companies, while a total of 46 transit networks were bought up by National City Lines — the holding company linked to GM, as well as oil and tire companies, that’s at the center of all the conspiracy theories.

While it’s true that National City continued ripping up lines and replacing them with buses — and that, long-term, GM benefited from the decline of mass transit — it’s very hard to argue that National City killed the streetcar on its own. Streetcar systems went bankrupt and were dismantled in virtually every metro area in the United States, and National City was only involved in about 10 percentof cases.

So, there is merit to this claim that auto manufacturers were involved. Interesting to read about the financial history as well… pre-1920s bankruptcies… does feel like a failure of government to see the value here. Interesting read, ty!

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the third Chinatown film.

I’m gonna read this but first I’m preparing myself to be sad

Sad photo in the article:

Decommissioned streetcars awaiting destruction in Los Angeles, 1956. (Los Angeles Times photographic archive)