[HN Gopher] General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy ___________________________________________________________________ General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy Author : mmastrac Score : 144 points Date : 2022-07-20 14:23 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org) (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org) | Theodores wrote: | It is a conspiracy story that tells itself. There is good and | bad. | | However, I think the demise of streetcars needs to be seen in the | light of the demise of trams in the UK. We got rid of trams in | the UK but General Motors were not to blame. However, the costs | of rails in the road instead of rubber wheels and then diesel | sealed the deal. The trams went to trolleybus services and they | became bus services, that were not necessarily as frequent but | had route flexibility that the trams and trolleybus never had. | | People overwhelmingly chose the car over the tram in the UK, | regardless of lobbying, people worked out that they wanted a car. | The outcome was inevitable. | | But would the outcome have been inevitable in the US where towns | developed along streetcar routes? Would American towns have kept | the streetcars where British cities, with wiggly roads, would opt | for the trolleybus? | | The conspiracy never gave us a chance to find out. | panick21_ wrote: | The outcome was not inevitable. If the same level of spending | on federal and local level was invested in improved street cars | the outcome could have been quite difference. | | Its not like this would have been a zero car world, but a more | even split of investment would have yielded better results. | legitster wrote: | Streetcars were pretty awful though. It should not be a | conspiracy that they needed to be modernized and replaced with | buses. | | They were slow, had very low capacity numbers, costly to | maintain, and were fairly dangerous. | | I know people want to draw a direct comparison to modern light | rail, but even today surface streetcars have proven to be | expensive and inflexible larks for most cities that have | developed them. | | (I get that whether the automotive special interests should have | be the ones to do it is its own issue). | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | You are quite mistaken. | | I live in Portland, a city famous for having more of a | neighborhood feel than similar cities its size. There are a | variety of highly desirable turn of the century neighborhoods. | Nearly every single one of these neighborhoods centers on one | of the old street car routes. A century after they were torn | down, these street car lines had such an impact that these | streets are among the most desirable properties on the west | coast. | | Modern light rail in the US suffers from a different | distortion: it tends to be used as a tool to force development | projects rather than being implemented in a way optimal for | transit. | legitster wrote: | I live in PDX too! You could actually ride streetcars all the | way from Milwaukee to Vancouver at the turn of the century | (if you didn't mind taking the whole day to do it). | | But ironically, MAX is a good example of the negatives of | trying to modernize the streetcar concept. The length of a | train is limited by the length of the smallest city block | served. So there are severe capacity limitations inherent in | the system. And you are still slowed down to some extent by | street traffic. It boggles my mind how slow the yellow line | is. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Eh, I hear ya but there's also multiple ripple on effects. | Like, the stop density on MAX is just too high. It needs to | be more arterial between transit centers, rather than | trying to move people 4 blocks between stops through most | of downtown. But making that workable means some sort of | more high density connector fanning out from it than our | system currently handles. Too much of the city core has | these redundant routes of multiple modes each trying to | have the same stop density. | standardUser wrote: | SF's cable car system and historic F trains both work fine as | public transit. | | And people hate buses. | ghaff wrote: | >SF's cable car system and historic F trains both work fine | as public transit. | | SF's cable car system is quaint and fun and all that but it | hardly works fine as public transit. There are often lines, | it's $8/ride, and I think you may have to pre-pay at the | popular end spots. Does any local take the cable car as day- | to-day public transit? | piperswe wrote: | Muni monthly passes include the cable car, and I would | assume many intra-SF commuters would have one of these | passes (I certainly did when I worked there) | roughly wrote: | I used to live in north beach and used the cable car for | transit a decent amount - the busses through Chinatown were | so slow and often so crowded it was almost faster to walk, | but the cable car I could usually just step on and then | step off downtown. | standardUser wrote: | Yes, people do, one line goes through a major population | corridor and ends right in the center of the financial | district. Thats't the east/west line. North/south line is | more tourist-oriented. | deepdriver wrote: | The cable cars do not function as public transit. The long | lines of tourists at the stations are notorious. Visible on | Google Street View: | | https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8069998,-122.4212914,3a,75y,. | .. | kfarr wrote: | True for Powell/Hyde street route, but the California line | is a straight shot from the tendernob to financial | district, plenty of regulars on that route going to work | legitster wrote: | I've never heard anyone express this. Both only exist as | tourist experiences. | | The cable car in particular is a bit of fancy - it can only | carry a dozen-ish people, and requires tons of training and | equipment. There's a reason it costs so much to ride such a | small distance. | | Fun, but not a good model for modern public transit. | standardUser wrote: | "Both only exist as tourist experiences." | | That's simply false. | | My point is that even shitty little streetcar systems like | the ones in SF get used and are much preferable to cars and | buses. | riffic wrote: | as awful as they were they allowed all sorts of people the | ability to get around without owning a personal car. | Interurbans[0] allowed people to get from city to city. | | All of this has been thrown out and there are all sorts of | negative externalities imposed by massive use of automobiles | and automobile-centered planning. | | [0] Interurbans were rad: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interurban | legitster wrote: | Again, this is about the replacement of streetcars with | buses. Anything streetcars did, buses did better and for more | people. | | The idea that an interurban was superior to a humble | Greyhound bus is a bit of wishful historical fiction. | | I grew up riding the bus. I still ride the bus. Buses are the | unsung hero of public transit. We don't need them reinvented | by people who refuse to ride them. | riffic wrote: | The nugget of my reply you're moving past concerns | automobile-centric planning and its extreme toll on the | built environment, and those external costs. | | https://www.planetizen.com/definition/car-centric-planning | | I don't really have time right now but I'm sure you could | dive pretty deeply into things like racial prejudices in | destroying neighborhoods to build freeways, or in how | people who live near busy roads have increased rates of | asthma or other health related issues. I really don't have | time to do this but I'll leave the convo open for others to | jump in if they'd like. | | I like buses too but I'm pretty pissed off how short-minded | planners were in the early to mid-20th century when they | decided to trash some really valuable infra. | wollsmoth wrote: | I don't see how they're better than a bus though. Both need | to travel by road. Buses are just easier to swap out and | replace as far as I can tell. Also you probably don't need a | platform to board a bus. | DickingAround wrote: | It does seem to be almost some kind of stigma or classism | with buses rather than an actual functional difference in | technology. We have electric overhead-line buses and | they're just the same as streetcars except you don't need | dedicated lanes or putting in rails in the road (which are | expensive, limit expansion, and present a real hazard to | biking). | deepdriver wrote: | Have you ridden the bus in a major US city lately? Safety | and hygiene are serious issues, depending on the city and | sometimes the specific line. Despite owning a car, I used | to ride buses whenever remotely feasible as a point of | civic pride. That stopped after a number of encounters | with other agressive, combative, smelly, and/or visibly | ill passengers. This is all tied up with homelessness, | drug abuse, and high crime in urban communities which | political polarization has prevented the US from | addressing. It's disheartening, as the economic and | environmental advantages of public transit are numerous. | | This sort of thing is the problem: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220214165552/https://www.se | att... | wollsmoth wrote: | Okay but this is as fixable on buses as it is on street | cars. Street cars may seem cleaner but I think it's | because they are generally just kind of impractical for | daily commuting and are sort of kept around as a tourist | activity in some cities. | deepdriver wrote: | Yes, I agree that the problem is fundamental to both | modes of transit. If street cars were more common, the | same stigma would apply for the same reasons. | [deleted] | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _does seem to be almost some kind of stigma or classism | with buses rather than an actual functional difference in | technology_ | | I attended a talk on the effects of new bus versus light | rail routes on property values. The fact that rail is | fixed increases them much more. The switching cost is a | feature. Nobody moves to a neighbourhood because the city | opened a new bus route to it. | | Something similar might occur with citizens' give-a-shit | factors. I get furious when my local subway station gets | messy. I have no idea which bus routes go by. If a bus | route became problematic, I imagine my neighbours would | petition to move or cancel it before considering cleaning | it up. You can't do that with laid track. | bombcar wrote: | You can look at it like this: a light rail line is a | _promise_ that transit will serve that area for decades | to come. | | And so when a light rail line comes through, the areas | around the stations begin to develop, and quite rapidly, | too. An example can be found here: | https://goo.gl/maps/kEkn615bp5nUGVmv6 - that trolley stop | was literally in the middle of an empty field when it was | built, and there wasn't much around on the nearby roads, | either. | | A bus line gets added to where people already are, and | can disappear as quickly as it came; there's no | permanency. | uoaei wrote: | The infrastructure necessary for streetcars naturally | assigns priority to them on roads, demoting motor vehicles | to waiting for streetcar signals and not the other way | around. This grants efficiency guarantees assuming no | sabotage. | smm11 wrote: | GM also had the electric EV-1 car in the mid-90s, then crushed | nearly all of them, and didn't have another electric car again | until Tesla was a thing. | | Like a lot of people and companies any more, they'd prefer it was | 1952 every day forever. | leobg wrote: | Actually one of the reasons Tesla got started. Elon has often | mentioned the EV1 "death marches" as having convinced him that | electric cars can be a superior product that customers will | love. | bonestamp2 wrote: | I worked at GM during the EV-1 timeframe. Although some of the | people who leased an EV-1 wanted to keep their car, the general | economics of mass producing cars is that you need about 50,000 | people per year that want to buy a specific car model to break | even. At that time, a time of all time low gas prices, there | weren't 50k people/year who wanted an EV. Too few people saw | the benefits and the environmental need at that time. Maybe GM | could have done a better job trying to sell it. But, it's not | like they didn't try, they even built a huge ride at EPCOT to | promote it. | | It's unfortunate that it wasn't a success, but GM didn't have | some secret agreement with the oil companies (they sued them a | couple years later). GM killed the EV-1 because they couldn't | make money selling it. The EV game is hard. Tesla has been at | it almost 20 years and they just became profitable a couple | years ago. GM wouldn't sell the left over EV-1s because if they | sold them, they would be legally required to stock parts for | years to come, which doesn't make sense when you only have a | couple hundred cars. | | The EV-1 was not a conspiracy. | google234123 wrote: | BTW, I think all prototype cars have to be crushed eventually. | It isn't legal to sell them. | bonestamp2 wrote: | They don't have to be crushed per se, but yes... that is what | is routinely done with prototypes and pilots and yes they | can't be sold (and the OEM wouldn't want to sell them due to | some other laws that would come into play if they did). | | Pilots are the vehicles that come off the line while the line | is being developed or retooled for a new model. Some of them | go back to engineering for various reasons, some go to | suppliers, but most of those eventually get crushed too. | cronix wrote: | Look at the timeline for Lithium-Ion batteries for the reason | and where they were in the 1990's. Using very heavy lead acid | batteries that you could only really use the top 50% of | capacity were not economical, which is mostly what they had | back then. It was practical in a low speed golf cart that had | very few daily miles driven and spent most of its time plugged | in and charging, but not much bigger. They also couldn't | deliver very high amps compared with what the newer cathodes in | LIon and LiFePO4 batteries can generate. Also, none of these | technologies were being built at scale in the 90's - they were | still mostly inventing the tech and changing rapidly between | '90 and 2010ish. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-ion_bat... | panick21_ wrote: | There were alternative options between Li and lead acid. And | even so, the car was liked by the people, pushing the | technology from there would have been viable in a number of | markets. | Damogran6 wrote: | As alluded to in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. | xhkkffbf wrote: | I realize everyone wants to see this as some conspiracy run by a | big business in Detroit. They were certainly part of it. But I | think it's important to realize that all of the consumers were | making their own choices and their choices were usually to buy | their own personal transportation machine, aka car. | | Public transportation believers hate to admit it but systems like | the streetcar are just slower and more inconvenient. Unless | you're lucky enough to live near a stop, they don't go to your | doorstep. They're much slower because they're always stopping to | pick up or drop off someone else. | | I realize that some cities are now so dense that public transport | may be the only choice. The roads can't handle too many | individual cars. But when this so-called conspiracy went down, | many people embraced the idea of owning their own car. It wasn't | just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs in a smoke- | filled backroom. | Retric wrote: | If you track population growth and the number of people without | cars you find street cars died out way too soon in any kind of | car transition to be the root cause. | | Instead they where largely replaced with busses which where | initially more expensive, but also more flexible. | dr-detroit wrote: | The busses ran a few times a day the trolley was every 5-10 | minutes. GM had to buy the trolley lines and force them to | use their buses in order to sell their unpopular buses. | Retric wrote: | It's not that simple. | | Trolley's had fewer routes because laying track was | expensive, busses on the other hand had vastly more routes | because adding new ones what's cheap. This meant that even | with significantly more total busses people would on | average wait longer but conversely they would walk less. | johannes1234321 wrote: | It is true, that it's not only due to a car make conspiracy and | it is also true, that contemporary structure of American cities | isn't good for public transport. However where city structure | is built around public transport and public transport is | operated well, I claim you get a way better quality of live. | (Less noise, more efficient transport, city structure with | reachable shops, ability to use commuting times for rest or | reading or something, ... especially, but not only, for the | younger, elder or others who can't drive on their own) | sitkack wrote: | > structure of American cities isn't good for public | transport. | | You might be suffering from circular logic. If this new city | is designed for the car, then ... | | Cities were previously very well suited for mass | transportation and people centered design. | | https://washingtonsqpark.org/news/2017/03/07/jane-jacobs- | and... | | Planned, car centered cities are atrocious. | | Dubai is a Joke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I | | New Egyptian Replacement Capitol | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUK0K5mdQ_s | | Brasilia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz7TrRCO_E | Retric wrote: | Far more busses operated in Chicago/NYC etc in 1970 than | streetcars in 1920. | | What happened is busses took over _and_ street traffic | increased. On otherwise empty streets a buss network could be | far more convenient than subways, but that's not the world we | live in. | | It's mostly stoplights and the need for them that makes | streetcars and busses suck relative to subways. | sitkack wrote: | > Far more busses operated in Chicago/NYC etc in 1970 than | streetcars in 1920. | | Different times, the system now evolved from a state where | streetcars were removed so they can't be compared in that | way. Chicago/NYC was a very different place than it was in | 1920, itself would change in ways _because_ of a bus system | vs streetcars. | [deleted] | bobthepanda wrote: | Subways will always tend to be faster, just because they | don't have cross traffic enforced by cycling traffic | lights. Traffic lights are just a reality of street-based | transportation, because the light length needs to be long | enough that someone like a grandma with mobility issues | needs enough time to cross the street. | johannes1234321 wrote: | Traffic lights can be tied to bus traffic - if a bus | approaches give it way (both by letting other traffic | flow away as well as keeping green till the bus crossed) | Doesn't work for all situations but can give 80% green | wave, even where bus lines cross. | | However then bus is still slower than a subway on long | distance. A subway can take a more or less straight line, | while busses have to follow roads. Also passengers | typically expect denser stops with busses. Also by being | alone on the track a subway can go faster as max speed. | | But even with subway on long distance, bus can connect | with high density to subway, so that more people can | reach the station. | johannes1234321 wrote: | > On otherwise empty streets a buss network could be far | more convenient than subways, but that's not the world we | live in. | | I live in a world with relatively good subway system for | travelling across the city and a relatively dense bus | system to solve "the last mile" thus quite a good | combination. (While the system is close to collapse due to | missing investment over also few decades and new projects | being too slow in completion) | dr-detroit wrote: | sitkack wrote: | This isn't the take away from the page nor the documentary | linked below. | | > It wasn't just some crazy scheme cooked up by a few oligarchs | in a smoke-filled backroom. | | It was literally this. | | GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up | streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to | sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. | | Macroscale effects are systemic, projecting individual choice | into is mostly always a smoke screen. It is the same tactic | that the plastics industry used to shift blame onto the | individual "litter bug" and not the prevalence of single use | plastic packaging. | | Your comment history is littered with similar reinforcing | tropes. | bobthepanda wrote: | It was real, but it's not sufficient to explain the mass | movement away from streetcars in general. They didn't even | purchase a majority of streetcars in the US, and this | movement away from streetcars happened in most of the Western | world. | | US streetcars had real systemic disadvantages mostly stemming | from when they showed up in our society; at the turn of the | century in uncongested roads when the dollar was strongly | tied to gold. This had a couple effects: | | * they showed up at the turn of the century, so just in the | '40s and '50s as investment started in highways they needed | expensive lifecycle replacement. Buses were seen as more | flexible and could use this new infrastructure being built | with no additional work, so many municipalities willingly | switched to buses to take advantage. | | * they showed up at the turn of the century, when having a | paved road in a city was not a norm, and so contracts | allowing for the construction of streetcar lines also | expected the streetcar companies to pay maintenance on the | paving. Gas taxes usually only pay for major interstate and | state roads, but streetcars paid for local streets. Undoing | this was not popular since it would require cities to raise | new taxes, and would relieve evil streetcar monopolies of a | burden. | | * they showed up when roads were not terribly congested, so | they weren't built with the expectation of needing to be | separated from heavy traffic. Cars changed this equation, but | dedicating road space to streetcars was just either not on | the radar or seen as a giveaway to evil companies. | | * they showed up when the dollar was very strong and tied to | gold. Laws authorizing streetcar operation also usually | involved explicitly tying their operation to a specified flat | fare (usually a nickel). This fare was not tied to inflation, | and raising the fare or eliminating limits on fares was | politically DOA, a tax on the working man and a giveaway to | the evil streetcar monopolies. | sitkack wrote: | I am not making any statement about streetcars in general. | You also don't have to purchase the majority of something | to then show it as a PR piece, "LA is modernizing its | transportation system with the fast and flexible bus" ... | | The commons then as now had a bunch of selfish people | pushing their own agendas and mass transportation is one of | those things that suffers under capitalism, it doesn't | extract the most profit from the system. It maximizes | efficiency, which isn't the same thing. | jcranmer wrote: | > GM, Firestone and Standard Oil literally colluded to buy up | streetcars and burn them down and then use their profits to | sell a car fueled suburban future of the good life. | | No. They colluded to monopolize supply of buses--this is what | the court case that involved the conspiracy held. The | streetcars were already failing when they were acquired. | sitkack wrote: | Then why were the streetcar lines being bought by what | effectively was a shell company owned by the corporations | that would profit the most from the sale of those buses? | [deleted] | LeanderK wrote: | > Public transportation believers hate to admit it but systems | like the streetcar are just slower and more inconvenient. | | Car lovers hate to admit that public transportation is the not | fiction but preferred by many all over the world. This sentence | is completely impossible for me to relate to. I even don't have | a drivers license! My girlfriend and many of my friends also. I | want to live urban and don't want to drive or own a car, I | consider it inconvenient. I am also not a "public | transportation believer", it's not something I care much about, | I just use it. I live in a small student-city in germany, | nobody uses a car (I literally know nobody driving to | university and I know a lot of people here!). I would say more | people bike to university than take the car, by far. Nearly my | friends from where I grew up (munich, city of 1.5 million | people) also don't drive, many don't own a car and many also | don't have a drivers license. The only few I know that use a | car live quite suburban, bordering rural. | | Many may prefer a car, but that doesn't mean that streetcars | are only used because you are forced to. | kube-system wrote: | My preferences and your preferences are irrelevant in terms | of how our cities are constructed. Many areas on this side of | the Atlantic were built after cars become common, and many | people who bought new homes in those neighborhoods during | post WWII expansion preferred driving their new cars. | | I don't get to change that now, unless we tear my entire | neighborhood down. | | I suspect the area you live in was settled prior to the | ubiquity of cars, and thus, was designed for people without | them. | abawany wrote: | I live in a city/state where public transportation is | actively inconvenient and even then I made a considerable | effort to take it and avoid driving when I could. The waste | of time and brain capacity sitting behind a steering wheel | like a frikking dummy is insane - I was able to get so much | reading and work done on a train/bus while the best I could | do while driving was listen to an audiobook, assuming it | didn't take away too much attention from the waste of time | that was driving. | antonymy wrote: | I see this as a kind of Stockholm syndrome. Your time is | being held hostage by your commute, so you cope with ways | to use that time. I was the same way. At first, I was stuck | commuting for 75+ minutes to and from work on public | transit. Most of this was spent walking, because it was | actually faster to bee-line on foot for the office downtown | than trying to jump between inner city transit options. I | read books on the train or did crosswords when able, but | the train ride altogether was maybe 20 minutes long, with | maybe 5 minutes spent waiting at the stop (if it wasn't | late). So about 25 minutes I could spend "productively" by | reading on the way in, and another 25 on the way back. | Assuming the train wasn't jam packed by the time it | arrived, leaving me hardly any room to even hold a handrail | let alone do anything else, which was not a rare | occurrence. | | Then my employer finally got me a free parking pass for the | building (there was a waiting list) and I said goodbye to | public transport. My 75+ minute commute became a 25 minute | drive, saving me 100 minutes a day I could spend on leisure | instead of commuting. What undercuts this happy turn of | events is that Covid came in a few months later and my | prized parking pass became irrelevant as I was working from | home. | | And this made me realize enjoying ANY kind of commute is | essentially Stockholm syndrome. What's better than a short | drive OR reading on the train? Reading at home, in my big | comfy chair with a cup of coffee, right up until it's time | to start work, never having to take off my slippers. | abawany wrote: | I agree with you there - commuting, especially in the | form of "everyone needs to be in the office by 9am", | which leads to gridlock on the transport mechanisms and a | completely avoidable collective waste of time, is a | pretty cruel farce imposed on the workforce. For most | jobs, a no-commute situation is pretty great and | staggered work start times would be very helpful for | those jobs that require (edited) in-office presence. | vel0city wrote: | Munich has been working on its density for 864 years, and | back then there weren't many cars. Its pretty different | comparing to a lot of the US which literally wasn't built | until after cars existed and widely available to most | families. Practically all of the city I live in was built | after 1950, easily 75% of it was built post 1970, almost half | of it built post 1985. I live in a neighborhood in a somewhat | "older" part of town, and my house was built in 1988. The | road I drive to work wasn't even really paved until the 90s. | | When you're building a city at a time when most families can | easily own a car and the average family _wants_ to own a car, | you build your cities around cars. When you build your city | >700 years before cars even exist, you design around other | concerns. I do agree building the city around the car was a | shortsighted decision, but its kind of a hard genie to put | back in the bottle. | pantalaimon wrote: | Most cities are less dense today because they got re- | modeled to be more car friendly in the 60ies and 70ies. | chrisbrandow wrote: | Ask any elder boomer who is an LA native about this, and be | prepared for a looong discussion. | | I think that as with so many things the red cars in LA both | better and worse than cars. I think they were especially better | for younger people. But I think they were inseparable from a pre- | car culture, ultimately. | uoaei wrote: | LA was not a product of a "pre-car culture", quite the | opposite. In fact everything about "car culture" could rightly | be considered in colonialist framing: immediately after | arriving as a common mode of transportation, they shut off | streets to anyone else except cars, using up the resources that | the people already there had painstakingly refined for their | needs and criminalizing their built-up patterns of behavior | (jaywalking). LA was the product of an intense need for | justification of cars-as-way-of-life by designing a city to be | bad for everything except cars. And it worked! | samatman wrote: | Los Angeles was founded in 1781. | | It helps to know such basic things about a city if you want | to make confident pronouncements about its history. | uoaei wrote: | I would advise you, Sam Atman, to review the city limits | and landscape as they changed over time, rather than | eliminating all context from trite tidbits of information | to make an underdeveloped and irrelevant point. | | City design doesn't stop the moment someone puts a flagpole | in the ground. | BitwiseFool wrote: | This response is dripping with contempt. | uoaei wrote: | I'm only responding in kind. People ought to recognize | how they come across in discourse, for the purposes of | good faith discussion all around. What better way than to | hold up a mirror? | | Or do we expect egos to be so domineering that they | cannot recognize their own behavior in the reflection? | | I don't think it's imperative to disguise contempt for | those who are obviously not engaging in good faith. | surfaceofthesun wrote: | Adding to the point: After all of that, it's not like driving | in/around LA is fun. | intrasight wrote: | Wikipedia article lists Pittsburgh as having streetcars. In the | 30 or so years that I've been here, I've never seen a streetcar. | We do have light rail, however. | TylerE wrote: | Converted to light rail in the mid 80s | greenn wrote: | The T runs mostly on a separate rail, but there are a number of | places in city limits where it runs with cars on the street. | Check out Arlington Avenue in Allentown (the Pittsburgh | neighborhood, not the city). | bombcar wrote: | The distinction between light rail and streetcars gets | confusing - is the San Diego Trolley a "street car" when it | runs down the street? Or because cars aren't supposed to drive | in its "lane" is it still light rail? | | What about when Amtrak comes rolling down the street? | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFk-yeGHn-o | | I've always taken them to be "single car trains that run in | normal lanes" but that almost covers the electric busses of | Seattle. | missedthecue wrote: | This theory conveniently ignores that streetcar companies also | have lobbying power, and lobbying to stay the status quo is much | more successful than lobbying for radical change. | bobthepanda wrote: | Streetcar companies were universally reviled (as most effective | monopolies tend to be, like US cable or power companies), and | their status quo actually was worse than what was being | introduced for cars, because they pretty much all had flat | price caps and were expected to pay maintenance for city | streets they operated on. | | It also doesn't help that a fair amount of streetcars were just | land speculation plays (let's sell all this land that's newly | accessible!). When they needed full replacement and renewal, | they no longer had anything to finance it with. | mushufasa wrote: | I wonder what the difference is compared to subway trains. | Similar local lobbying vs national auto lobbying dynamics, and | subways didn't suffer the same extinction. | | Is it just switching costs being lower for streetcars? Or maybe | the fact subways are underground means they don't battle in a | zero sum pavement game with cars, so they were more immune to | tides of public opinion and city administration? | tannedNerd wrote: | I mean you are also ignoring the externalities that had effects | on lobbying power like not being able to set their own fares, | might have effected the amount of money they had to lobby? | DiogenesKynikos wrote: | Streetcars have made a comeback in many places around the world. | | I don't know exactly what has led to this comeback, but one | factor may be low-floor trams,[0] where the floor is just a few | inches above the street level, which makes boarding much easier. | | Trams tend to have smoother rides than buses. For short distances | (a few kilometers), they're a pretty nice way to get around. | | 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-floor_tram | bombcar wrote: | Low-floor trams make a _huge_ difference, because the ADA also | attacked many potential streetcar /tram designs, since the tram | floor was higher you either needed to raise station platforms | so high as to not be a curb anymore, or you had to otherwise | add wheelchair lifts, etc - not just simple ramps. | | It _was done_ (the old San Diego high-floor trollies had them) | but it was a significant stop /delay when it had to be used. | The newer ones are barely noticed at all. | m0llusk wrote: | This is false, revisionist history. During the war maintenance | was deferred and many operators either went bankrupt or | dramatically reduced operations. By the time the war ended the | tracks and rolling stock were all in need of replacement. | | The public did not love streetcars for many reasons. The ride was | rough, they were boiling in the summer and freezing in the | winter. They forced all manner of people into close quarters with | one another. Insufficient capacity meant it was not unusual for | riders to cling to the sides of cars where that was possible. | | When freeways and buses were presented as an alternative the | public embraced building new infrastructure over rebuilding the | old. Part of that is because the downsides had not yet become | clear. | | Blaming some corporate bogeyman is always tempting but does not | change the facts. The streetcars were replaced because they fell | out of favor with the public who wanted to try the new and shiny | thing. | subpixel wrote: | > They forced all manner of people into close quarters with one | another. | | I'm convinced this is the root of all animus towards public | transport in the USA. Racism plays a huge part, but it's not | exclusively racist, it's also classist - my parents for example | would never want to be seen on a bus in their midwestern home | town. | deepdriver wrote: | This view obscures real problems with safety and hygine on | buses and trains. It isn't racist or classist to hate meth | smoke blown in your face, or teens setting off fireworks and | assaulting passengers on the subway: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220214165552/https://www.seatt. | .. | | https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/metro-transit- | po... | | These days, a much bigger problem for public transit than | racism/classism is a general lack of public safety on buses | on trains, for all passengers no matter their race or class. | Most actual public transit passengers know this. For example, | the jury that acquitted Bernie Goetz included two black | people; half the jurors had been victims of crime on the | subway themselves. A black woman who witnessed the shooting | said the teenagers "got what they deserved:" | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1987/06/17/j. | .. | jonny_eh wrote: | > It isn't racist or classist to hate meth smoke blown in | your face | | Cases of crime on public transit are a symptom of the lack | of investment in them. | deepdriver wrote: | Lack of investment in metro cops, maybe. By every other | metric, American mass transit costs more and | underperforms compared to European and Asian systems: | | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/the-u- | s-g... | autoexec wrote: | Just like with healthcare and internet service, America | often pays a lot more while getting a lot less. Just | because America paid more for its mass transit doesn't | mean they were better designed, more pleasant to ride on, | or that those system are well maintained. It could also | mean things like our public transportation had to cover | more ground, that unique challenges in geography | increased expenses, that politicians were wasting tax | payer money in exchange for kickbacks and favors (no-bid | contracts), or companies were simply overcharging | Americans for the work. | | Real, meaningful investment in infrastructure and | improvements to the environments people spend their time | in can do a hell of a lot more to prevent crime than cops | do. There is a lot of research to support this. I don't | doubt that if we invested more in making our mass transit | systems better and more enjoyable to use crime rates | would drop. | | Here's a start if you want more information on the | impacts of our environments on crime: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hKWLY1lZrs | | https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/cut-philly- | shootings-93-p... | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUAuuJ-hGPI | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zktWPAZ6Es | | https://www.manhattan-institute.org/cleaning-up-vacant- | lots-... | deepdriver wrote: | Planting trees is not a serious solution to gun violence | or mass transit safety. | | The correlation between increased, _properly-utilized_ | police presence and a decrease in crime is one of the | most well-researched, replicable, and best-understood | conclusions of social science. | autoexec wrote: | > Planting trees is not a serious solution to gun | violence or mass transit safety. | | again, lots of research would disagree with you. It | absolutely does work. On the other hand, more and more | cops doesn't always do the job. | (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/us/police-crime.html) | | I've been on mass transit in a few countries now, and I | saw more police presence in the US than anywhere else, | but it never made me feel any safer and somehow other | countries with better, cleaner, public transit systems | don't have the kinds of crime problems the US has. | | You want enough police around so that they can respond | when there is a problem, but not so much that the | environment becomes oppressive. | | I'd rather reduce crime by improving the public | transpiration system and surrounding neighborhoods than | waste tax payer money on having cops sitting around all | day on trains and subway cars. | t-3 wrote: | Counterpoint: Detroit. It's jam-packed with trees and gun | violence. Maybe planting trees where they weren't | correlates with improvement, but I seriously doubt trees | are causal to peace. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I sincerely wonder what mechanism makes planting trees | reduce crime more effectively than increased policing. If | true, that lends credence to Broken Windows Theory, no? | krallja wrote: | some plausible theories: | | * policing is broken, investing in communities works | better than destroying communities via mass incarceration | and the criminalization of existence. | | * trees provide shade, lowering air temperature. hot | people act crazier. | | * being around nature (even urban nature) improves mental | health, and increases peoples' sense of well-being, | making them less likely to do crimes. | autoexec wrote: | The main problem I have with Broken Windows Theory is | that rather than being used to improve the environments | (fixing the broken windows) it's often used to justify | flooding the streets with police and aggressively | harassing people. It identifies the source of the problem | (the run down areas of a city), but then ignores it | because overaggressive policing is an easier sell than | spending that money improving the living environments of | "the wrong kinds of people". Making those spaces into | more oppressive environments won't tend to do much to | solve the crime problem because it was an oppressive | environment that caused the problem in the first place. | | Cleaning up and maintaining the run down areas | communicates to everyone that the area and the people | living in it have value. People start to expect more from | the area and from each other. It also makes those spaces | less attractive to people looking to cause trouble and | more attractive to businesses and to people from outside | of that community. The health and mental well-being of | the community improves and so does their economy. | Shooting jaywalkers and setting up stop and frisk | checkpoints just makes everyone feel like criminals and | sure enough that's what you get. | | Broken Windows Theory isn't wrong, but Broken Windows | Policing is a problem because what these areas need | aren't just police, but rather urban developers, | landscapers, and construction crews. Cities that clean | up, improve, and maintain the run down parts of town see | crime drop. Cities that simply use run down areas to | designate "problem populations" and send in the police | harass those communities over every possible minor | infraction don't get those kinds of results. | deepdriver wrote: | Broken windows policing isn't necessarily the same as | stop-and-frisk, although they are sometimes related: | | https://www.npr.org/2016/11/01/500104506/broken-windows- | poli... | autoexec wrote: | True, stop and frisk is just one of many ways broken | windows policing can aggressively target the people, when | what's actually needed is to target the environment. | Policing has a role in cleaning up run down areas, but | it's a small one compared to the infrastructure, urban | planning, and landscaping improvements needed to reduce | crime. Too much/aggressive policing is just another | broken window that needs fixing. It signifies that the | area is a bad part of town and sets that area apart from | the nicer parts of the city. | namesbc wrote: | I ride public transit everyday. You are way safer on BART | than you are in a car on the freeway. Your fear mongering | is just not based in reality. | achenatx wrote: | kids are much safer in school than they are in a car or | at home, yet parents are incredibly fearful of school | shootings. | | What makes people afraid is driven by the media, not by | statistics. | orionion wrote: | BART fares to increase July 1, 2022 | https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2022/news20220614 | | Rich liberals choo choo train. Some of those BART routes | cost $13.00 one way? At least Rosa Parks could afford a | seat on the back of the bus. | | The Clipper Start card offers only a 20% discount on BART | to those below 200% of the Federal Poverty level. | | Why is it not a free pass? Hey Google, Facebook, Twitter, | Apple could you help foot the bill for the poor whose | data you exploit? | deepdriver wrote: | My public transit experience is mostly DC and New York. | The few times I've ridden BART, cleanliness was | nonexistent (fabric seats were not the best design | choice!) and safety was at best questionable. Some | examples from the news: | | https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/asian-woman-attacked- | on-... | | https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/drug-users-san- | fra... | | https://abc7news.com/bart-robberies-teens-rob-oakland- | train-... | | The chance of an incident on any given day is low, but | palpable. When it happens to somenone else, it happens | right in your face with no physical separation. Maybe | that's why many choose to drive instead, despite the | higher actual risk of accident per mile. That in itself | is a tragedy, but people want the perception of safety | just as much as safety by-the-numbers. Hygiene and | comfort matter too. | 7speter wrote: | >cleanliness was nonexistent (fabric seats were not the | best design choice!) | | I'm a New Yorker and before you say you think I want to | do away with cars, I think the ideal is a combination of | mass transit and private vehicle ownership if you need | it. That being said, my mind is always amazed at how | clean and well maintained the DC Metro seems to remain. | The cars have cloth seats! But the trains are always | clean! New Yorkers were so surprised in 2020 when city | subway stations got regular bleachdowns. It humors me to | no end. | deepdriver wrote: | I love the DC Metro for all the reasons you list. That's | what made its recent missteps all the more frustrating. | The Yellow Line which serves Reagan National Airport will | shut down for maintenance soon for eight (8!) months, | even after it was shut down all summer in 2019. | Meanwhile, the new 7000 series cars continue to have | serious safety problems, which are not well-understood | but may be inherent to their design. They've just | recently been brought back into service following a | serious derailment last year. | | This is to say nothing of the dysfunction and alleged | racism in the WMATA union, or public safety on the | trains, which while generally still good has lately | deteriorated. Masking was never enforced during the | height of COVID. Buses are and have always been worse. I | hate driving in the DC area, but Metro seems like they're | doing their very best to keep me on the road. | | "Unsuck DC Metro" used to be my go-to source for Metro | reporting. Sadly, the man behind that account passed away | last week: | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/07/19/matt | -hi... | gumby wrote: | I remember the NYC subways in the 1980s (which wasn't as | bad as the 1970s). BART, today's NYC subways etc are clean | and safe by comparison. I love them, where they work. | | Melbourne still has a thriving and beloved streetcar | system. | adolph wrote: | Along with public transportation there was a time when pools | closed rather than integrate. | | https://www.npr.org/2007/05/26/10407533/plunging-into- | public... | rch wrote: | Where I live the classism is reversed, in that arriving by | bus means you can afford to live by public transit. | | The same goes for showing up to a party with a salad from | your backyard garden or fresh baked bread. Having the time | and space for these is a luxury now, whereas my mother would | prefer to pick something up on the way. | jeromegv wrote: | Perhaps if you have the << choice >> for public transit. | | What we saw in toronto for example during Covid is that | ridership dropped in higher income neighborhood (especially | the ones that have access to the subway). The highest | ridership lines were bus routes in low income | neighbourhood, where people still had to go to work as some | type of essential workers and did not have a car. | | Let's not make a blanket statement that transit is for the | rich, the reality is that the rich takes it when it gets | good enough but they always have other choices. Some people | just don't have that choice and transit is their only way | to go to work, that's why it's essential to the economy. | throw0101a wrote: | So the rich people of Toronto first wanted picket fences | and built the inner-suburbs, and drove everywhere, plus | forced the elimination of transit payment zones. | | And now the rich are living more in Old Toronto and the | poor(er) folks are forced to the inner-suburbs where the | design does not condone efficient transit. | rch wrote: | I wouldn't say transit is for the wealthy... Only that | that transit should be more ubiquitous within population | centers and widespread regionally, with high enough | frequency to be a workable option for everyone. | hammock wrote: | > Where I live the classism is reversed, in that arriving | by bus means you can afford to live by public transit. | | Interesting thought, I had to think of what kind of places | these are. Maybe urbanized bedroom communities or connected | suburbs like Naperville in Illinois? Where do you live? | [deleted] | raylad wrote: | They were convicted of antitrust violations in destroying the | streetcars to monopolize transportation, but it was overturned | basically on technicalities: | | https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/334/573.html | rmason wrote: | My father frequently told me the story of mass transit in | Detroit. He was a fan of the interurbans which were street cars | that travelled between cities, some of them fifty miles from | Detroit. Cars and later freeways totally killed off the | interurbans. In fact freeways killed off passenger trains as | well. | | But streetcars still thrived in Detroit. You could get anywhere | with them and even in the car capital of the world people went | without them. But then in a flash they were gone. My father was | a life long believer in the so called conspiracy. | | He was regarded as a conspiracy theorist. As a kid I wished | he'd just stop talking about it. But then as a young adult the | proof started coming out that maybe he was right all along. But | now with a big media push it's going the other way. I know one | thing in Michigan the politicians go along with whatever GM | wants, always. | | Michigan has some of the worst roads in America while at the | same time having the largest gas taxes. Yet when billions of | dollars became available as a result of COVID what did the | governor do who ran on the slogan, 'fix the damn roads'? She | gave the money to GM for battery plants! This Wikipedia page | just looks like more spin to me. | jimkleiber wrote: | I dunno, I'm starting to see the world as more and more | complex (aka many inputs contribute to many outputs) and yet | maybe too complex for us as humans so we latch onto one input | causing one output. | | I see lots of side road construction in the northern Detroit | suburbs, the interstates have been under major construction | for at least 2-3 years, and overall, it seems as if there's | lots of construction. Is it from Whitmer? From the feds? From | local cities? I don't know, probably a combination of all | three and more. | | Same with why the street cars disappeared. I think our | anger/fear can make us think it was one and only one group or | person who made such things happen, I just think that's | probably a subjective perspective more than an objective | reality. | | Edit: also I hadn't heard of Whitmer giving money to GM, | could you share a link about that? All I can find is that she | helped GM make their own $7B investment in Michigan. | 7speter wrote: | >Yet when billions of dollars became available as a result of | COVID what did the governor do who ran on the slogan, 'fix | the damn roads'? She gave the money to GM for battery plants! | | I understand the discontent, but the logic seems to follow. | Assuming you have Michiganders working in the battery plants, | they get paid producing batteries, and then taxed by the | state. The taxes pay for the roads, and workers can buy homes | and other things while remaining in Michigan (flight seems to | be a bit of a crisis in Detroit, last I read). And the cycle, | ideally, repeats year after year. | rmason wrote: | Except the government math is kind of hazy. Google promised | 1000 jobs in Ann Arbor and the deal helped get then Gov. | Jennifer Granholm reelected, that's why politicians of both | parties do it. | | But Google only ever created 500 jobs. Yet rarely if ever | do any of these companies have to pay back part of the | money if the jobs never get created. | johnday wrote: | If we give these tax dollars to General Motors, they could | turn into anything! Even tax dollars! | actually_a_dog wrote: | It's interesting that you refer to the interurbans as | "streetcars." It has me wondering: at what point do you stop | thinking of something as a streetcar and start thinking of it | as light rail? | hnuser123456 wrote: | Michigander here, can confirm the roads are more pothole than | road in some places. The rich neighborhoods get re-paved | every 10 years. The poor ones every 20. Some places they'll | just fill them in with something that breaks up in under a | year. Some places, why even bother with that? Citycars that | assume relatively flat roads in downtown centers are | misguided here. The state highways are smoother than midtown | hubs. | bombcar wrote: | It's _literally_ the plot of _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ but | somehow people think it 's gospel. Amusing. | bogomipz wrote: | Yes Cloverleaf Industries in the movie was based on the | National City Lines. | rayiner wrote: | Even Curbed, a pro-urbanist site, has strongly called into | question this theory: | https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles- | streetc.... It notes that by the 1930s, LA's streetcar system | was falling into disrepair and running massive losses. | | What people forget is that during the mid-20th century, cars | were progressive, forward looking, and egalitarian. They were | seen as ushering in a future where ordinary people could leave | overcrowded cities and travel in speed and comfort. Faced with | the need for massive investment to bring street car systems | into good repair, cities chose to invest in what they saw as | the future: roads and highways for personal transit. (Remember | these are the same people who thought babies in drawers was | progress: https://about.kaiserpermanente.org/our-story/our- | history/bab....) | | It's also important to note that southern cities that grew | rapidly post-1950, such as Atlanta, uniformly adopted a car- | centric approach. These cities were outside the alleged scope | of the GM conspiracy, but developed on the same track because | everyone back then saw individual car ownership as the future. | TylerE wrote: | Uh, if you actually read the page you linked to it sounds | like actual progress? Popular with patients and nurses, | increased Breast feeding, cost effective using a standard | mass-produced object... | rayiner wrote: | So do cars! But many folks of the same folks who now | consider cars regressive also consider baby drawers and | bottle feeding to be regressive. | TylerE wrote: | But baby drawers were created precisely to decrease | bottle feeding and encourage breastfeeding (and did). | mmastrac wrote: | Not sure why you are being downvoted. The baby-in-a-drawer | sounds like a win for the mother, the baby, and the care | physicians. | bombcar wrote: | People aren't reading it, but it's amusing that the | solution was designed around _reducing_ the workload on | the nurses, etc (now they just leave the baby in the room | with mom in a rolling bassinet that the nurses check on | /can roll out when necessary). | TylerE wrote: | Not so surprising for the time, since things like heart | monitors and pulse/ox didn't exist, so they'd keep all | the newborns in a communal nursery with nurses literally | watching over them 24 hours a day. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Streetcars were also dangerous because you had to cross traffic | to get to one: | https://66.media.tumblr.com/36d0c242182fea08ecbac621504c2e96... | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _blaming some corporate bogeyman is always tempting but does | not change the facts_ | | The article is well written. It discusses the facts of the | antitrust case. And then it goes into detail on the "lingering | suspicions" and "urban legend" that you, rightfully, rail | against. The _Role in decline of the streetcars_ section | practically debunks the conspiracy. | Spooky23 wrote: | That doesn't really add up. Like many things, wartime deferred | maintenance and demand shifts disrupted capital intensive | businesses like streetcars and trolleys. | | The thing that you're missing is the multi-trillion dollar | investment in free road infrastructure. Streetcars and | passenger trains were replaced because you can't make money | selling tickets when your competitors benefit from the | unlimited purchasing power of the US government. | | The only places that were spared were urban areas like NYC and | Boston, but even there the cities were almost destroyed by that | massive investment. | | I think calling this a conspiracy theory is a way to | marginalize and revise reality. It was a strategy that | maximized employment and drove a half century of US industrial | dominance and prosperity. But it had a cost and fundamental | inefficiency that remains difficult to measure. | sbf501 wrote: | This is a false dichotomy. | | You are telling us how awful streetcars were, as if there was | no other choice but to tear them up and convert to a car-based | society. | | Instead of fixing the problems: fix the track, better cars, | more cars, more accessibility, like what was done all over | European cities... Instead of doing that, opponents torched it | all, invested HEAVILY in car-based infrastructure and helped | create the mess we have today. Just like today, dollars were | thrown at the car-based solution and the superior mass-transit | solutions are left to rot, so that people can make your | argument. | | Your argument is specious at best. | [deleted] | jayd16 wrote: | The paradox of 'unpopular because its overcrowded' always | cracks me up. | twoodfin wrote: | In this case it's not a paradox: These services could not | effectively scale to meet demand without sacrificing comfort. | Whatever their other problems, automobiles won out here and | continue to do so. | pantalaimon wrote: | How can you not effectively scale a streetcar system when | you can just attach more carts? | Melatonic wrote: | I have mostly seen Los Angeles as the epicenter for this | conspiracy which has pretty damn ideal streetcar weather. | Subways also went away around the same time which leads me more | toward believing the conspiracy side of things given that they | would not have a lot of these same problems. | | The way I see it street cars are a great solution to local | traffic and not very good for long distance travel. Within | downtown LA for example they would be awesome or within the | city of Santa Monica. | [deleted] | JeremyNT wrote: | > _This is false, revisionist history. During the war | maintenance was deferred and many operators either went | bankrupt or dramatically reduced operations. By the time the | war ended the tracks and rolling stock were all in need of | replacement._ | | Just to be clear, when you are stating that "This" is | "revisionist history," I believe you aren't actually referring | to the contents of the article itself, but rather the | conspiracy theory mentioned in the article. | | Note that there are two conspiracies mentioned in the article. | The first is a conspiracy that did in fact occur: conspiracy to | create a monopoly. The second is the _theory_ that this was | part of an intentional plan to dismantle public transit (which | is effectively refuted on the wikipedia article). | riffic wrote: | the war was only a period of 4 or 5 years. We've been in many | wars for far longer than the one specific war you are talking | about. | bobthepanda wrote: | The streetcars were not around for those other wars though, | and the war effort was not nearly as total. The US went | through the war unscathed, and even then most goods were | highly rationed and citizens were encouraged to make do and | use less. | | Stopping all maintenance on any kind of complex system for | four or five years will almost certainly bring it to a state | of ruin. | bogomipz wrote: | It's odd that you assert this to be "revisionist history" and | then go on to make a statement that is itself false. No other | event has shaped Los Angeles like World War II. During the war | years Los Angeles experienced a population boom as people moved | there to work in defense and aviation. These job opportunities | were plentiful in order support the war efforts. The people who | came to work in those factories depended on the Red Cars and | Yellow Cars as did the factories for getting their worker | there. In fact Red Car and Yellow Car ridership peaked during | the war years. They were most certainly not allowed to go | derelict due to lack of maintenance as they were far too | important. In fact there was rubber and fuel rationing at that | time which only served to make their operations that much more | important. | | >"The public did not love streetcars for many reasons. The ride | was rough, they were boiling in the summer and freezing in the | winter. They forced all manner of people into close quarters | with one another. Insufficient capacity meant it was not | unusual for riders to cling to the sides of cars where that was | possible" | | There's a lot wrong with this. Southern California has mild | winters and cars were also enclosed with windows that could | open and close depending on the weather. There's pictures here | which clearly document that [1]. Saying that people had to | cling to the sides of the cars is also a complete fabrication. | There was nothing on the outside of the cars to cling to. | | >"When freeways and buses were presented as an alternative the | public embraced building new infrastructure over rebuilding the | old." | | This is also untrue. The bus began competing with the electric | trolleys as early as the 1920s.[2] | | >"Blaming some corporate bogeyman is always tempting but does | not change the facts." | | And yet it's well established fact that National City Lines | bought up these mass transit assets and were sued by the DoJ on | antitrust grounds for conspiring to monopolize urban | transit(they had purchased many other cities transit assets as | well.) [3][4]. Conspiracy theory notwithstanding, I don't think | it's a stretch to say Detroit and other automotive special | interests certainly hastened the decline of the electric | trolley. | | [1] https://libraries.usc.edu/article/red-cars-and-las- | transport... | | [2] https://metroprimaryresources.info/our-grand-concourse- | histo... | | [3] | https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-02/explaini... | | [4] https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california- | re... | heliophobicdude wrote: | How can we undo these consequences and promote better public | transportation options? | | I have some ideas about zoning... | jrockway wrote: | Zoning is a big problem. Right now, there is really no place to | live but the city if you want to walk to places. In the | suburbs, municipalities demand things like cul-de-sacs, | mandatory front yard / back yard sizes, etc. This decreases | density to the point where walking simply isn't viable. It's | kind of a positive feedback loop too; nobody can walk anywhere, | so stores need giant parking lots so people can drive. The | giant parking lots make walking even more difficult, which | means that people who don't even want a car have to have one. | | The question is what will the forcing function be to make | things better here. Climate change is one option. I think | people feel a little far removed from the consequences, nobody | thinks "wow, because I drive to the grocery store twice a week, | the UK is having their hottest summer on record". So I don't | think it's really changing people's behavior. (Electric cars | are hailed as the answer to climate change, but they aren't | going to help ancillary concerns like giant roads separating | people from businesses that make walking impossible, being | stuck in traffic for an hour during rush hour, etc.) | | I think the forcing function will be running out of resources | that support the suburban lifestyle. Stores and shopping are | moving online, reducing city tax revenues. No income means that | homeowners will have to pay for parks, roads, sewers, etc. | instead of businesses. This will price some people out of their | suburban lifestyle, they won't be able to afford the things | they get by default (giant yards, living on a quiet cul-de-sac, | etc.) I have no idea where these people will go (cities are | somehow even more expensive), but at least a market of people | that want to buy something more sustainable will develop (to | save their own pocketbook, not because they hate cars or love | the Earth). | | Overall, I see it as a very slow burn, and that not much will | change in my lifetime. The incentives aren't there yet. What | makes me sad is that financial incentives hurt the most | vulnerable people first. When property taxes go up, it just | means someone has to uproot their kids, force them to make new | friends, and waste an extra hour per day commuting. When I see | gas prices go way up because of a war, my first thought is | "great, now nobody can afford to drive. RIP, cars." But these | people already can't afford to drive, now they just suffer, | best case work overtime to be able to afford both gas to get to | work and food. | | Not sure where I'm going with this but we're basically doomed. | The American suburb might be the greatest mistake we've ever | made, because it's so hard to undo. A lot of people are going | to get hurt as more dire forcing functions uproot their lives. | lumost wrote: | Changing federal funding rules for suburban infrastructure | would be a big head start. Right now, there is a permanent | pressure for local governments to "expand". The Federal | government doesn't fund maintenance, and new-urbanist | expansion is not prioritized enough. If the federal | government prioritizes funding for projects which increase | density rather than lower it, then there would be some degree | of shift. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | > Changing federal funding rules for suburban | infrastructure would be a big head start. | | That would be political suicide. The suburbs are the chief | battle ground. The big difference between 2016 and 2020 | were the suburbs. | lumost wrote: | Incentivizing dense(r) suburbs is something that could be | messaged in a few different ways. In the US, low-density | suburbs are only supported by federal funds for | infrastructure expansion. If the federal government | simply chose to not fund expansions that decreased | density then local governments might take on the | political burden of selling density increasing | investments. | WebbWeaver wrote: | The suburbs are subsidized by banks and could be wiped | out because many cant buy a house anyway. | stefantalpalaru wrote: | Excellent documentary about this: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taken_for_a_Ride | NegativeLatency wrote: | Another interesting documentary: | https://www.pbs.org/video/oregon-experience-streetcar-city/ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-20 23:01 UTC)