GM and the Red Cars
The claim is often made that a conspiracy of General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone
Tires, et al killed off a thriving rail mass-transit system in Los Angeles.
This is a myth.
A brief version of why this is a myth is contained in a letter to the editor I wrote that was
published in the Los Angeles Times. Read on for the full story.
The current incarnation of this story dates to 1974, when Bradford Snell, a government
attorney, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that General Motors and others
had conspired to buy up and dismantle streetcar systems throughout the United States. He
even claimed that they were convicted of "criminal conspiracy to monopolize ground
transportation" in case No. 186 F2d 562, 1949. As we shall see, there was in fact such a
court case, and GM, et al were convicted on one of the two counts in the case, but the bit
about monopolizing transportation is a myth.
This story got another big boost in 1988, when it formed part of the story in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" In this
telling, the evil character Doom reveals that he bought the Red Car system so that he could dismantle it to force people to
drive on his new freeway.
Another telling of this story was in a 1996 independent film titled "Taken For a Ride", which was shown on the PBS series
"POV". This film made extensive use of Bradford Snell, and basically presented his opinion as established truth.
This story has become so entrenched that it is accepted as fact by many people in Los Angeles. Problem is, it's just not true.
There is a grain of truth contained in it: National City Lines, a subsidiary of General Motors, did buy the Los Angeles
Railway [LARY] in 1944. They did replace some streetcar lines with buses, but the introduction of buses in the LARY had
begun in 1930. But the real genesis of the myth was the above-mentioned court case in 1947. General Motors and its
subsidiary, National City Lines, along with seven other corporations were indicted on two counts under the Sherman
Antitrust Act. They were charged with:
Conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monpoly;
Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines.
The defendents were aquitted on the first count. General Motors was convicted on the second count: "to monopolize the sale
of supplies used by the local transportation companies controlled by the City Lines defendants." Which is to say, they were
convicted of conspiring to have the GM-owned transit companies only buy GM buses. While this may be ethically
questionable, it's pretty understandable, and it's nowhere near "criminal conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation."
Note that nowhere in this case was there any mention of a conspiracy to replace streetcars
with buses. Nor was there `conspiracy to monopolize ground transportation.' The first count
comes close to this, but they were aquitted on this one. The replacement of streetcars with
buses had actually been under way for several years. At the time, buses were seen as being
more `modern' than streetcars, as well as being cheaper to run, quieter, and safer. Also,
since buses do not run on fixed tracks, routes can be adjusted at will, and can be easily
extended into new developments, which was a major concern in a rapidly-growing city like
Los Angeles. The main point of this is that the streetcar companies were converting to buses
anyway, and GM just wanted to make sure they bought GM buses.
It was this case that Bradford Snell fundamentally misunderstood, and formed the basis for
his Conspiracy Theory. As Sy Adler, a professor of urban studies who has researched this
story says, "Everything Bradford Snell wrote...about transit in Los Angeles was wrong."
The actual facts in the matter are that ridership on the Pacific Electric and LARY peaked in
1920. After that, ridership fell consistently over the years, with the only increase coming during the early 1940s, when
wartime gasoline rationing forced people out of their cars. At the same time, the people of Los Angeles were becoming
increasingly dissatisfied with the poor service and overcrowding on the streetcars, which led to the Major Street Traffic
Plan of 1924. This was approved by the voters, and provided for money to widen and improve the main streets thoughout the
city. This was a popular measure because the automobile was seen as a way for ordinary people to have an alternative to the
streetcars.
Another inconvenient fact for the conspiracy theorists is that the Pacific Electric (Red Cars) was never owned by National
City Lines. It was owned by the Southern Pacific Railroad until 1953, when it was sold to Metropolitan Coach Lines. In
1957, it was sold to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, which presided over the final dismantling of the line in
1961.
This story persists largely because of the natural human tendency to yearn for `the good old
days', which are largely a figment of our collective imaginations. There are a lot of people
who think that the dismantling of the old rail systems was a mistake, and it is much more
comfortable to believe that some monolithic `they' did it, rather than to face the fact that it
was the result of the individual decisions of thousands of people who chose to use their
cars.
Last updated: 19 August, 2000
cosmo.pasadena.ca.us
_________
Also see
Conspiracy theory doesn't match up to reality Truth about streetcar decline more prosaic, complex than commonly held
By the mid-1920s, the private
streetcar system began to experience
severe financial difficulty in part
because the PE unleashed the growth
of a low-density, decentralized
urban environment whose
inhabitants' travel needs were better
served by the increasingly
affordable automobile. Also,
because PE was not allowed to raise
fares to compensate for dwindling
farebox receipts caused by declining
ridership, it could not maintain and
upgrade the physical stock over
time. As ridership continued to fall,
farebox receipts declined, and the
quality, frequency and reliability of
service fell. Between 1910 and
1930, the financial health of PE
worsened as this cycle of distress
continued.
In a desperate attempt to stop this
financial hemorrhaging, PE began to
replace its least profitable routes
with diesel buses. This process
began 15 years before GM-backed
National City Lines Corporation
even came on the scene. To those
involved, substituting buses was
believed to be one alternative
strategy that might turn the industry
around. It didn't, and the industry
continued to decline until the last
Red Car ran in 1961.
dailybruin.ucla.edu
________________________
General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars
In February 1974, Bradford Snell, a young government attorney, helped create the myth that
General Motors caused the demise of America's streetcar system and that without GM's
interference streetcars would be alive and well today. GM may have conspired with others to
sell more of their automotive products to transportation companies, but that is irrelevant to his
contention that GM helped replace streetcars with economically inferior buses. That they had
done—just as they had earlier sought to replace the horse and buggy with the automobile.
The issue is whether or not the buses that replaced the electric streetcars were economically
superior. Without GM's interference would the United States today have a viable streetcar
system? This article makes the case that, GM or not, under a less onerous regulatory
environment, buses would have replaced streetcars even earlier than they actually did.
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