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Who killed the US street car system?
Stephen Talbot

In this excerpt from Stephen Talbot's "Heartbeat of America" (1993), Christopher Snell explains how GM conspired with oil & tire companies to kill streetcars in cities all across America in order to create an inferior bus system that would guarantee the sale of tires, gas, and bus parts for an eternity.

As Snell explains, "They would go in, buy a street railway system. They'd convert it to General Motors Buses. The General Motors busses would run on Firestone tires. And they'd be fueled by, in the east, Phillips, and in the west, Standard Oil California."

In 1947, according to Snell, the Federal Government charged GM and its partners with criminal conspiracy. The result was that GM was fined $5,000 and its top official was fined a single dollar. Compare this to the over 150 billion dollar project currently in the works of trying to build a railway system for Los Angeles today.

General Motors at work

You know, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if General Motors did go out of business.

What has the destruction of the nation's street car system cost the country? A trillion dollars? Ten trillion dollars?

You'd have to add up all the oil consumed that didn't have to be, all the environmental diseases that didn't need to happen, and all the economic constraints on poor and low income people that didn't need to be. Then there are the quality of life issues which are incalculable.

Go to super-prosperous cities like Basel and Zurich in Switzerland and you'll see they excellent street car systems - just like we used to have in the US.