My short version. The systems that survived the depression were given a second wind in World War II. Following WWII these systems were fairly worn out. The rapid rise in private auto use after the War contributed to a decline in ridership. Since most systems were privately held there was little economic sense to reinvest in the street railway infrastructure. With the exception of municipally owned properties like Shaker Heights, Boston MTA, TTC, and a few others, the end came in the early 1960s as the PCCs were fully depreciated.

Its simple business concept, privately owned, can't make the money off the ticket ride, yer outa business. For it to survive, you have to look at the bigger picture and who's riding the cars, where are they going, they are going to work, they are going shopping, and today's clogged highways, it eases the traffic, publicly supported makes the right sense because its the bigger picture because of the streetcar, business, rider. Light rail/streetcars have shown a slow comeback, and I see it to slowly grow some more.

There are a couple of things to think about...

Street cars and interurbans were invented about 10 years before the automobile... and reached their peak as the auto was being popularized. It was competition with the auto (and trucks) more than any conspiracy that eliminated may systems, particularly the interurbans.

WWI changed wage rates... and during the war the US government oversaw the design of modern trucks using the Liberty engine (designed under supervision of the War Department). As a result many of the marginal lines were abandoned in the early 1920's.

The depression of the 1930's claimed more lines...

I would add that there has been a significant change in the political business model...

Before WWII they were mostly private businesses and expected to make a profit (including on the capital investment)

Today's streetcars (aka LRV's) generally have operations subsidized (the farebox return is hopefully around 80% but many don't reach that threshold) and capital costs are entirely subsidized. We tend to forget that when we ride a streetcar and put $2.00 in the fare box that someone else put a buck in for us... There are exceptions like San Diego, but generally someone else is putting in money... and your fare (and subsidy) doesn't pay for the track or the street car itself, only the operating costs including daily maintenance, staff costs, electricity...

The great "die off" of trolleys, after WWII came before the political model changed... GM and others were not killing streetcars as much as they were taking advantage of a dieing business model. The vast majority of the street car lines that survived in 1970 were municipally owned.

Randy

Also not discussed, but part of the broader picture, is the shift of business away from downtown, both for work and other commerce.

Cities like the "company town" of Washington DC have kept people forced into streaming downtown on the Metro, but for most other cities we're into the third generation of people abandoning downtown, commuting from one exit of the Beltway to the other, and driving to a suburban shopping mall/center, where no transit option typically exists. (This was best highlighted by an ex-girlfriend of mine whose commute was five minutes and three miles from one exit of the Baltimore Beltway to the other; when her car was wrecked and went to the body shop, she found that walking--not on the Beltway--was quicker than the bus to another bus to another bus to the final half-mile walk of about 1.5 hours. She had me fix up her bicycle.)

And when shoppers go to a mall it doesn't really matter if transit is available, since they typically buy much more stuff than they can carry back on mass transit. Very few businesses offer home delivery anymore.

One thing that seems to be missed in this discussion so far:



This is still a problem now. Your gasoline taxes only pay about half of the cost of the road system. That's based on cash-flow accounting; full cost accounting is even worse.

Yet a railroad is expected to pay a profit (and pay taxes on its property).

We even have the double standard in the heritage railroad field; think of how a railroad is criticized even for the more modest use of public money for track maintenance vs. the more expensive conversion and maintenance of a trail (Adirondack Scenic), or even that the rent paid by a railroad isn't worth anything compared to the "benefits" of a trail (Catskill Mountain).

I think if we held the highway system and trails to the standard we demand of a railroad that things would change rather quickly.

Various first generation diesels (including NKP Bluebirds), 2-8-4s, but go to about 13:30 for some interesting commentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElyERLwsV0c

Here is a great promotional film by General Electric: "Going Places" which makes the point we'll never be successful as long as we try to move automobiles instead of people.

Wesley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6dltiZMlaU

This interesting post on the Market Street Railway, which also links to the Vox article, amplifies the point.
http://www.streetcar.org/gm-conspiracy-kill-streetcars/

This is an interesting but incomplete article because, as others have mentioned it doesn't get into the labor issues. I was also hoping that the author would cite the work of John Diers who also tackled this issue in January 2006 article in Trains magazine and the epilogue in "Twin Cities by Trolley," a book he co-wrote. Diers explains who was responsible for the demise of the streetcars: "everyone who bought an automobile between 1920 and 1950...along with US automakers, the banks and financial institutions that profited from auto loans, and the state, local and federal governments that paved highways."

There were numerous economic, political and societal causes for the trend away from streetcars, and non-NCL systems around the world were also affected. This subject deserves book-length treatment.

The problem is that a proper, accurate, scholarly book that accurately covers all the issues involved, without invoking controversy or conspiracy, will sell a couple thousand books at best, while a book (or documentary or the like) promoting the controversy or conspiracy will sell in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions.

I can show you this cycle repeated over and over again with other books on controversial subjects such as UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the Bermuda Triangle, the Loch Ness Monster (I have 20 books on "Nessie" on my shelf; exactly two take a skeptical approach), etc.

On the other hand, there's Albert Churella's From Steam to Diesel . . .

Try the book Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Road and Rail in the American Century by Stephen Goddard.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books ... 26177.html

Great little movie indeed!

Too bad we didn't have the sense to listen back in 1952 (copyright date on the film).

At Orange Empire we have an example of nearly every type of streetcar that Los Angeles Railway/LA Transit Lines/LAMTA ran on the narrow gauge system. One of the things I learned many years ago from chatting with a retired asset manager for the Huntington Estate was that in the 1940s, they adopted a policy of selling off "operating properties" and holding "gilt edged securities". So when NCL formed LA Transit Lines, the Huntington interests were willing sellers. One of the great surprises to many transit observers was when LATL bought 40 all-electric PCCs for the "P" line. They also bought a lot of buses, but many of these replaced old wooden cars from before World War 1.

Some more factors: In Chicago, San Francisco and possibly other cities, streetcars were required to have a two-person crew. It would seem illogical that a bus driver, who also had to steer the bus, could get by without a conductor, but the motorman couldn't. SF Muni finally got this ordinance repealed, at least for PCC cars, but by then, most of the streetcar lines had been "bustituted", although many were wired up for trolley bus operation, using the cheap hydroelectric power from the City's Hetch Hetchy system.

In New York City, Mayor LaGuardia had a great dislike of streetcars, and even after he left office, the city made life difficult for the street railway operators.

In many parts of the country, streetcar operations that survived into the 1950s had another development that sapped their passenger loadings, especially the desirable "off peak" business. Television! Families stayed home to watch Uncle Miltie, the Ed Sullivan Show, wrestling, etc. rather than taking the trolley downtown for a movie.

Long before GM got into the bus manufacturing business, they did two things that hurt the street railways and interurbans. They formed GMAC, for installment financing of car purchases. These "easy-payment" plans made buying a car less painful than waiting until you had the whole price in hand. GM also pioneered the idea of a full-line of cars with annual model changes, encouraging car owners to "trade in and trade up". This resulted in an ever widening stream of used cars, at prices many more people could afford. Model T Fords, which had owned the roads from 1914 to 1925, showed up on the second-hand market, eventually getting down to the $20 range. Why wait for the trolley if you can crank up the "Flivver"? As late as 1970, one could buy a usable car for $100 and fill it with 25 cents a gallon gas; by then the battle was lost as far as streetcars, and even public transit was concerned.

Occam's Razor applies.

If I'm doing good trade selling goat cheese, and suddenly the gov't starts giving free cow milk to anyone willing to make cheese, I am going out of business. Period.

If the gov't had stayed out of the road business, streetcars would still be here, and we would have avoided some very, very expensive money sinks. Because the road tax isn't just what the government pays. It's also what YOU pay to keep a car.

It's between $7000 and $10,000 for most people, so says AAA. Most people, in their haste to deny this, will overlook many of their car expenses. A proper accounting will show this to be true. Also, time - it's amazing how much time I spend futzing with cars, that I got back in my carless days.

And your cash being diverted into road and car maintenance does not make the economy stronger (only Keynesians think that). It is disposable income you would have spent on something else you enjoyed. As a result, we have less arts and culture.

There are highly industrialized nations with higher HDI than us, where very few people have cars. Sometimes wages are lower (Poland) and sometimes they're higher (Germany, UK). There is no free lunch - people have to move somehow - but it's a much cheaper lunch when people mostly move on transit and move less far. (commuting 40 miles to work is a tragically American thing). So exactly that happens - they have a richer life, evidenced in their arts and culture.


> must commute suburb to suburb, where transit is imposible

No. That's where you choose to live and work. Even if you chose the default handed down by parents, it's still a choice. People spend their whole lives doubling down on that choice at every decision point, and then they whine about how transit doesn't work for them. Sheesh. I hope Sandy's friend spent her long walks thinking about that! Probably not.

You have to hunt down the places where transit works, but they are findable. That is also true in Europe: if you threw a dart at a map, most likely you'll hit a place you need a car. It's just that Europeans seek out transitable places, and Americans do not.

I chose different. So can you.


> can't get delivery anymore

Delivery did bottom out... but now it's actually better than ever, thanks to delivery sites which operate on the "Uber.com" model. (A smart system dispatching irregular citizen workers). That's how Amazon's "same day delivery" works. It doesn't even require the business' cooperation; I can order items through the service and they send a driver.

So far, this model works in the urban and suburban areas which are relevant to our streetcar discussion. The haven't rolled out Uberish services to the country, but I see no reason they can't. It's an ideal model for low demand irregular service like you have in the country.