Response to “Guilty as Hell; GM and the Death of the American Streetcar.”

David E. Wohlwill, Pittsburgh, PA

The December 4, 2008 edition of PenTrans Update has a link to an article titled “Guilty as Hell; GM and the Death of the American Streetcar.” The author, Al Mankoff, like many others, overstated the role of National City Lines (NCL) and its corporate partners, General Motors, Standard Oil, and Firestone in the decline of transit. The article’s details about the formation of National City Lines and its acquisition of electric urban and interurban rail properties overlook other factors which were major contributors to the decline in urban transportation during the twentieth century.

The decline of electric rail transportation was already underway by the time NCL was organized in 1936. America’s network of electric interurban lines reached their zenith by 1908 and entered into their period of decline in 1915 – 1920 as more roads were built and automobiles became increasingly affordable to the American public.

Although Mankoff claims the electric rail systems were profitable, many were financially marginal and went out of business during the Depression. The electric railway industry’s financial difficulties were exacerbated when Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 which required most electric utility companies to divest themselves of public transportation operations thus depriving many transit providers of a major source of capital.

In 1905, long before NCL was formed, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company began the nation’s first bus operation in New York City. With technological improvements, other transit operators saw them as operationally less expensive than streetcars because they did not require maintenance of overhead wires or street trackage. In 1922, 320 buses were operated by street railway companies and by 1932, 15,000 buses were in transit service. In 1933, San Antonio, Texas became the first large all-bus city. The trend toward replacing rail service with buses was aided by local governments also pressured transit operators into replacing streetcars with motor coaches. The trolleys with their in-street tracks and passenger platforms were seen as impediments to efficient traffic flow. Buses were perceived to be more flexible and compatible with traffic engineers’ desires for increased traffic efficiency. Additionally, local governments and much of the public felt that buses were more modern and logical technological successors to streetcars.

As automobile usage increased, new residential and commercial developments were built in areas away from existing rail lines. While this is popularly viewed as a post-World War II phenomenon, such developments occurred before the War. The first shopping center designed around automobile access, Country Club Plaza, opened in Kansas City in 1923.

Mankoff overlooks the many cities whose transit systems were not acquired by National City Lines such as Pittsburgh. Although Pittsburgh’s extensive rail transit system was in place well after many other cities got rid of their rail lines, Pittsburgh’s transit trends mirrored those of other cities. Large-scale conversion of streetcar and trolley routes to bus service was begun by the Pittsburgh Railways in the late 1950s when the Fort Pitt Bridge, an interstate facility, replaced a bridge previously used by Pittsburgh Railways’ West End routes to access the Golden Triangle.

Mankoff makes the statement “the once profitable system of privately-held independent electric-powered urban transit was destroyed, giving cities the choice between government-subsidized transit or no service at all.” This comment fails to account for the several private rail rapid elevated and subway systems in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago which continued to operate and subsequently all became publicly operated systems. It doesn’t acknowledge that all three cities were also served by electric commuter railroads operated by private railroads all of which eventually found such services unprofitable and ultimately transferred their assets and operations to public authorities.

Finally, the streetcar conspiracy approach to transit history ignores the adoption of an interim technology, the electric trolleybus (also known as trackless trolleys) which was an electrically-powered rubber-tired bus which received electricity from parallel overhead wires and a pairs of trolley poles mounted on the roof. Electric trolleybuses were used in 49 American cities, including three in Pennsylvania: Johnstown, Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre. As the growth of electric trolley bus systems occurred approximately the same time that National City Lines expanded its acquisition of street railway properties, it must be considered as a concurrent trend in retention of electrically-powered transit.

NCL’s acquisition of electric railway properties and subsequent conversion to private bus operation is well-documented. However, to attribute the decline of transit in the United States to NCL’s actions is a reductionist view which fails to consider other factors which were as important, if not more important, in causing the decline of transit prior to 1960.