General Motors had it coming

Tomorrow morning, General Motors, the former automotive powerhouse, will finally be humbled. Most of the articles I've read about the "tragic turn" discuss the cost to the nation (est. $50B as our government holds their hand) and the lost jobs (about 20,000 maybe lost in U.S. and 1,000s more in Europe), but I have not read one article about the biggest lost opportunity in the history of the truly American corporation: the street car.

In The Geography of Nowhere, Kunstler writes that GM didn't have to limit itself to the auto industry and he notes that cars, for the most part, were not always the most favored form of transportation as they are now. Richmonder Frank Julian Sprague actually installed the first practical streetcar system in Downtown Richmond and by 1900, 90 percent of all streetcar systems used his patents. Unfortunately, the streetcar companies usually operated separate of the city governments and were not nearly as subsidized as the auto industry. As early as 1916, the Federal government began spending money ($75M) for roads. Then, during the roaring twenties, the automobile lobby gained significant influence after Ford's model T made driving cars a much more attainable dream for the less affluent. There was an evil plan hatched during this time and it's object was the the American streetcar system.

In 1925, General Motors purchased the Yellow Coach company and thus began the demise of streetcars. In the following decades, GM (or a close partner) would systematically purchase financially unstable electric streetcar companies and replace them with bus systems. In 1935 GM partnered with Omnibus Corp. (whose Chairman was also head of Yellow Coach), purchased and replaced New York's streetcar system in what Kunstler writes was "an eighteen-month period despite a hue and cry among its riders" (Geography 91). The next year GM parts suppliers joined Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tires and Rubber to form a new company that proceeded to purchase and ruin streetcar systems in San Jose, Stocton and Fresno, Ca. Besides a $5,000 speed bump of a fine in LA for criminal conspiracy, the company was relatively unimpeded as it replaced an additional 100 electric streetcar lines with gas powered buses. Wikipedia tells us that the year 1949 was the year the streetcar service (pictured above) ended in Richmond. It is even more sobering to know that during the same year the local leadership decided to build what is now I-64, I-95 and the Downtown expressway (demolition pictured below) through the most prominent Black neighborhoods (keeping in mind segregation was still stiffly enforced) and the working poor White (Twentieth Century Richmond). While one generation of public transportation was ushered out, another was paraded in as the savior of "urban blight," White commute and eventually the solution to racist segregation post-civil rights.

The story of the streetcar in America is a story of corporate greed and nearsighted city planning. By the time the US Senate's subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly began a full investigation (1974) of the business practices of GM in the first half of the century it was far too late to rectify the wrongs. In the way of transportation, what was once dependable, public and cheap became isolationist, expensive and exploitative. Our oil consumption increased, our sprawl increased unhindered by transportation limitations and our nation became the monster we see today. I have no remorse for the current demise of General Motors because this corporation lost its best opportunity for diversification. Rather than become a successful streetcar and auto company, GM, GM parts suppliers and Firestone shrewdly decided that there was one way to fast money: Privately owned and managed automobiles.

Today in Richmond, there are leaders like Bill Pantele that desperately want to return to the streetcar system. I applaud the way Pantele brings streetcars back to the forefront of public discourse, but without the support of some serious cash (held by someone who probably doesn't live in the city) I can't see us going back. Recently, I've been given the opportunity to watch two of the leaders at GRTC, Larry Hagan and John Lewis, present their vision of public transportation in Richmond and streetcars are in the plan. First they hope to simulate the streetcar service with a bus system called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) that operates on the same circuit logic. If profitable, a transition into streetcars would certainly be logical. As we all know, logical is not the most fitting adjective to describe Richmond city leadership, but with a new mayor, a soon-to-be new governor, stimulus funding and the green revolution we might just find our way back to the days of Sprague and his streetcar. The progress that came with cars, it seems, is not as liberating as we might have thought and America needs a bit of a history lesson.


*P.86 in Geography of Nowhere starts the section about streetcars
*This link from Christian Science Monitor (among countless others) talks about GM bankruptcy:
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/05/29/can-government-be-trusted-to-steer-a-gm-bankruptcy/