History of Streetcars Timeline

The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 made it illegal for a single private business to both provide public transport and supply electricity to other parties, forcing electricity generator companies to divest from trolley, streetcar, electric suburban, and interurban transit operators that they used to cross-subsidize.

Image source: Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935

Federal fuel taxes, introduced in 1956, were paid into a new Highway Trust Fund which could only fund highway construction until 1983, when some 10% was diverted into a new Mass Transit Account, disadvantaging public transit funding for decades.

Image source: Highway Trust Fund

Later construction of the Interstate Highway System was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which approved the expenditure of $25 billion of public money for a new 41,000-mile interstate road network, encouraging automobile travel over transit.

Image source: Interstate Highway System

The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 created the Urban Mass Transportation Administration with a remit to 'conserve and enhance values in existing urban areas', noting that national welfare requires good urban transportation balancing private vehicles and modern mass transport.

Funding for transit was increased with the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1970, expanding federal support for mass transportation beyond the modest levels established in 1964.

In 1970, Harvard Law student Robert Eldridge Hicks began working on the Ralph Nader Study Group Report on Land Use in California, alleging a wider conspiracy to dismantle U.S. streetcar systems.

During 1973, Bradford Snell, an attorney with Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro, prepared a controversial and disputed paper titled 'American ground transport: a proposal for restructuring the automobile, truck, bus, and rail industries.' The paper, funded by the Stern Fund, was later described as the centerpiece of the hearings.

Most transit scholars disagree with conspiracy claims, suggesting transit changes resulted from economic, social, and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed fares during inflation, the Great Depression, antitrust action, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, declining capital attraction, traffic congestion, the Good Roads Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies favoring private vehicles, consumerism, and enthusiasm for the automobile.

Snell's paper was distributed in Senate binding together with an accompanying statement in February 1974, implying that the contents were the considered views of the Senate.

At the hearings in April 1974, San Francisco mayor and antitrust attorney Joseph Alioto testified that 'General Motors and the automobile industry generally exhibit a kind of monopoly evil', adding that GM had carried on deliberate concerted action with oil and tire companies to destroy electric rapid transit.

The accuracy of significant elements of Snell's 1974 testimony was challenged in an article published in Transportation Quarterly in 1997 by Cliff Slater, reigniting debate over the causes of the streetcar's demise.

A significant rebuttal to Slater's article was published about one year later in the 1998 Transportation Quarterly finding that, without GM and other companies' efforts, the streetcar would not 'have been driven to the verge of extinction by 1968'.

In 1936, National City Lines (NCL), which had been started in 1920 as a minor bus operation by E. Roy Fitzgerald and his brother, was reorganized and began acquiring and converting streetcar systems across the country.

Image source: National City Lines

Pacific City Lines (PCL), formed as a subsidiary of NCL in 1938, was to purchase streetcar systems in the western United States as part of the expanding program of acquiring and converting transit operations.

Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.

In 1939, Roy Fitzgerald, president of NCL, approached Yellow Coach Manufacturing, requesting additional financing for expansion of the company's transit acquisitions and bus conversions.

From 1939 through 1940, NCL or PCL attempted a hostile takeover of the Key System, which operated electric trains and streetcars in Oakland, California.

Image source: Key System

In 1940, PCL acquired Pacific Electric's operations in Glendale, Burbank, and Pasadena, beginning the dismantling of portions of the Los Angeles area's electric railway network.

The hostile takeover attempt was temporarily blocked by a syndicate of Key System insiders, with controlling interest secured on January 8, 1941, delaying but not preventing eventual NCL influence over the Oakland system.

The Salt Lake City system is mentioned in the 1949 court papers; however, the city's system was purchased by National City Lines in 1944 when all but one route had already been withdrawn, and withdrawal of this last line had been approved three years earlier.

By 1946, PCL had acquired 64% of the stock in the Key System, giving the NCL-affiliated company significant control over Oakland's electric transit network.

American City Lines (ACL), which had been organized in 1943 to acquire local transportation systems in larger metropolitan areas, was merged with NCL in 1946.

By 1947, NCL owned or controlled 46 systems in 45 cities in 16 states, representing the peak of the holding company's reach over American local transit.

Pacific City Lines merged with National City Lines in 1948, consolidating the western acquisitions under the parent company.

The federal government investigated some aspects of NCL's financial arrangements in 1941, which calls into question the conspiracy myths' centrality of Quinby's 1946 letter as the first sign of official concern.

In 1946, Edwin J. Quinby, founder of the Electric Railroaders' Association and former employee of North Jersey Rapid Transit, published a 24-page 'expose' on the ownership of National City Lines addressed to mayors, city managers, transit engineers, committees on mass transportation, and citizens. He also questioned who was behind the creation of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.

On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals were indicted in Federal District Court of Southern California on counts of 'conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly' and 'conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines'.

In 1948, the venue was changed from the Federal District Court of Southern California to the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois following an appeal to the United States Supreme Court in United States v. National City Lines.

In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM, and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL; they were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies.

The verdicts convicting the companies of conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies were upheld on appeal in 1951, cementing the legal record of the case.