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General Motors stops the trollies by Jeff Hyslop | Issue #19 If you cant beat the competition, buy them out. That was General Motors post-Depression strategy for stimulating bus sales, an effort that led to the destruction of the U.S. streetcar system and, ultimately, a criminal conviction.
When GM formed the holding company National City Lines (NCL) in 1936, Standard Oil and Firestone had already agreed privately to help fund its motorization campaign. Between 1936 and 1950, the three companies contributed $9 million to NCL, which covered the purchase, motorization, and resale of more than 100 streetcar systems in 45 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. The number of streetcars in operation over that period fell from 73,000 to 18,000, and the removal of public trollies helped make way for the automobile and suburban explosion of the 1950s. The federal government began investigating the scandal in 1946 and prosecuted the firms two years later. In 1949, they were found guilty of "conspiracy to monopolize the local transportation field" but were fined only $5,000 each (an amount roughly equal to GMs profit from the sale of one bus). Seven high-ranking executives at the companies were individually found guilty and fined the prodigious sum of one dollar. |