The GM Streetcar Conspiracy - and Why I've Stopped Caring

Anyone who enters the world of transit advocacy has likely heard of the GM Streetcar Conspiracy; it's a familiar tale that those who study transit will hear multiple times, and I'm sure most of my readers are familiar with it. In case you haven't heard it however (in which case I ask, how the heck did you pull that off?), here's the basic gist of it:

In the 1930s and 40s, several auto and gas companies (General Motors, Standard Oil, and Firestone Tires, among others) got together and acquired local streetcar systems (remember, back then mass transportation was largely a privately-run endeavor) in order to tear them out and replace them with buses.

That so much is the facts, but transit advocates often take it the larger levels. Many of them point to this event as the moment in which we became overly dependent on automobiles; that the dismantling of streetcar systems was part of a larger plan to reduce the overall quality of mass transit in the United States, forcing everyone to take up driving.

It's a compelling tale and one I've heard all too often, to the point that now I've gotten rather sick of hearing it. Every once in a while it'll pop up, just to remind us who's really at fault for all our current transit ills.

Firstly, let me say that I do not deny this event had a significant impact on mass transportation in the country, and an understanding of this event is recommended if you want to know the history of urban transportation systems in this nation. But I think too many people overblow its importance.

Let me start with the idea that a switch to buses was part of a grander scheme to get everyone in cars. The main problem I have with this idea is that it assumes buses have always had the stigma people place on them today (at least in the United States). I have trouble with this one; in the 30s and 40s buses were still very much a new technology, and there was a lot of excitement surrounding them - they were sleek, they were fast, and they were cheaper to install. I don't think the general public at the time had the romantic notions of streetcars that we have today - mainly because they the streetcars hadn't been removed yet. The stigma that many people attach with buses today would come later.

And the idea that GM had this stigma in mind when they replaced streetcar systems with buses is a far reach for me. Somehow the following scenario doesn't quite sound right...

(In the top floor of an Art Deco skyscraper in Detroit...)

CEO: Gentlemen, I have a most brilliant idea! You know all those streetcars out there, on our streets? Well imagine if you will, buses instead of streetcars! Yes, stinky, slow, filthy buses! We'll destroy the nation's public transportation system, and force everyone to buy GM cars! Muhuhawhawhawhaw!!!

Board members: Muhuhawhawhawhaw!!!

Come on, people are rarely that good at predicting the future - I think the GM of today serves as a fine example of that. Now certainly there was profit motivation involved in dismantling the nation's streetcar systems, but I don't think it was part of some larger overall plan - I think GM and these other companies simply wanted to get in to a market they had been excluded from.

Then there's this notion that this event is somehow responsible for our over dependence on automobiles today. As cars became more affordable and more attractive with new suburban development through the 40s, 50s, and onward, mass transportation systems began a long decline, and I think this is the moment when mass transit began to have a stigma placed on it. Now, to blame this on GM's actions is to suggest that if only we had kept our streetcars, everything would have been fine and our mass transit system would still be hunky-dory. But can we honestly believe that streetcars would not have been subject to the same decline as buses in such a scenario? It might be easy to believe that streetcars would have survived based on our current romantic notions of them, but then we make the mistake of looking at the past through the lens of the present.

Recently, I saw a public screening of Beyond the Motor City at the UNM Architecture building, which was followed by a discussion. The movie deals with the history of Detroit transit and its plans to build a light rail system and the impact of such a system. But to my surprise (and thankfulness) it didn't mention the GM Streetcar Conspiracy. But of course, during the discussion someone from the audience had to bring it up. Here's what she said:

Now, I want to remind everyone that GM destroyed our mass transit system. And now we've just given them a huge bailout. So I have to ask, does it really make sense to build a light rail system in Detroit?

For those of you whose heads are exploding and whose first reaction is "WTF?", yes it's an incredibly illogical statement on several levels. But I ask you to ignore that last sentence (GM and the City of Detroit are not the same thing, I think we're all clear on that) and direct your attention to the first two sentences. Here she attempts to connect the GM Streetcar Conspiracy with the recent auto bailout, two things that have nothing to do with each other. And here I come to my final point regarding the GM Streetcar Conspiracy: its continued use as a tool for laying blame.

The above example shows how the GM Streetcar Conspiracy is often used to point the finger at GM, even when the players involved have long since died and the entity no longer exists in its same form. The GM that destroyed our streetcar systems and the GM that went bankrupt last year are two completely different entities, living in different eras and under different circumstances. And yet, people keep bringing up the GM Streetcar Conspiracy, as if the players responsible are still out there, having yet to face justice.

And this, I think, is why people love talking about the GM Streetcar Conspiracy. It's convenient to have someone to blame, to tell this story of corporate greed, then sigh and say "if only..."

Perhaps the real lesson behind this whole story is that you don't know what you have until it's gone. It's certainly easier to lay the blame at someone else's feet than to accept all the complex circumstances, and it's certainly easier than looking oneself in the mirror and asking if we as a people had something to do with this.