The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to the conviction of General Motors (GM) and other companies to monopolize bus and supply sales to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and for allegations that this is part of a deliberate to buy and dismantle the tram system in many cities in the United States in an attempt to monopolize surface transport.
Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines - with investments from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California through subsidiaries, Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum and Mack Trucks - gained control of the transit system additionally around 25 cities. Systems including St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCLs often transformed the tram into bus operations during that period, although the electrical attraction was maintained or expanded in several locations. Other systems, such as San Diego, are converted by the results of the City Line. Most of the involved companies were convicted in 1949 of a conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in bus, fuel and supply sales to NCL subsidiaries, but were freed from a conspiracy to monopolize the transit industry.
The story as an urban legend has been written by Martha Bianco, Scott Bottles, Sy Adler, Jonathan Richmond, and Robert Post. It has been explored several times in print, film and more, especially in Who Framed Roger Rabbit , Taken for Ride , Internal Burning , and < i> The End of Suburbia.
Only a handful of US cities still survive the old tram-based urban rail system, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Newark, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Boston, although their systems are much smaller than before. Other cities re-introduce tram. In some cases, the tram does not actually go up in the street. Boston had all the central city lines elevated, or buried, in the mid-1920s, and most of the line that survived in the classroom operated in their own way. However, the San Francisco and Philadelphia lines have a large part of the route going up the road as well as using the tunnel.
Video General Motors streetcar conspiracy
History
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In the second half of the 19th century, the transit system was generally a railroad, the horse-drawn carriage first horse, and then an electric-powered car and cable car. Trains are more comfortable and have less rolling resistance than road traffic on granite blocks or macadam and horse drawn carriages are generally a step up from horsebus: faster, cleaner, and less costly to run; more electric traction, at cost, excreta, epizootic risk, and removal of the horse carcass are completely removed. The obsolete barges are then seen as a traffic barrier, but for almost 20 years they have the highest power-to-weight ratio of anything normally found on the road, and the lowest rolling resistance.
Streetcars pay business and property taxes, but also pay franchise fees, maintain at least shared roads, and provide road and snow clearance. They are also required to maintain a minimum level of service. Many franchise fees are set or based on gross (v. Net); Such arrangements, when combined with fixed costs, create unlikely financial stress. The early electric cars generally had a two-man crew, a relic of the horsecar period, which created financial problems in the following years when salaries exceeded revenues.
Many power lines - especially in the West - are tied to real estate companies or other transportation. Pacific Electric and Los Angeles Railway in particular are so, basically the loss leaders for property development and long haul.
In 1918, half of US streetcar mileage was in bankruptcy.
Initial years
Conspiracy theories connect the Hertz bus companies in New York and Chicago with alleged larger conspiracies. John D. Hertz, more remembered for his car rental business, was also an early motor manufacturer and operator. He founded the Chicago Motor Coach Company in 1917 which operated the bus in Chicago and the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company in 1923, a bus factory. He then formed The Omnibus Corporation in 1926 with a "plan that included an extension of motorcycle trainer operations for urban and rural communities in every part of the United States" which later purchased Fifth Avenue Coach Company in New York. That same year, Fifth Avenue Coach Company bought most of the shares in New York Railways Corporation (which had been bankrupt and reorganized at least twice). In 1927, General Motors acquired the controlling stake of the Yellow Coach Manufacturing Company and appointed Hertz as its chief executive. However, the Hertz bus line does not compete directly with the tram, and its core business is "motor coach" at a higher price.
By 1930 most of the tram systems were aging and losing money. Services to the public suffer; The Great Depression worsened this. Yellow Coach tries to persuade transit companies to replace cars by bus, but can not convince power companies that have tram operations to ride motorcycles. GM decided to form a new subsidiary - United Cities Motor Transport (UCMT) - to finance the conversion of the tram system to buses in small towns. The new subsidiary is investing in small transit systems, in Kalamazoo and Saginaw, Michigan and in Springfield, Ohio where they succeed in converting to buses. UCMT then approached the Portland, Oregon system with a similar proposal. It was denounced by the American Transit Association and dissolved in 1935.
New York Railways Corporation began switching to the bus in 1935, with a new bus service operated by Omnibus Corporation of New York City, which shares management with The Omnibus Corporation. During this period GM in collaboration with Public Service Transportation in New Jersey to develop "Multipurpose Vehicles", the bus is also able to work as an unlicensed trolley, enabling the collection of off-wire passengers in too few populated areas to pay for wire infrastructure.
Opposition to traction interest and its influence on politicians continues to increase. For example, in 1922, New York High Court Judge John Ford supported William Randolph Hearst, an important newspaper figure, for the mayor of New York, who complained that Al Smith was too close to 'traction interests'. In 1925, Hearst complained about Smith in the same way. In the 1941 film Citizen Kane , the main character, loosely based on Hearst and Samuel Insull, complained about the influence of 'traction interest'.
The 1935 Public Utility Utility Act, which made it illegal for a private business to provide public transport and supply power to other parties, caused great difficulties for tram operators who are also often power plants.
National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, American City Lines
In 1936 the National City Lines (NCL), beginning in 1920 as a small bus operation by E. Roy Fitzgerald and his brother, was reorganized "for the purpose of taking over the controlling interests of certain operating companies involved in the transport of city buses and ground buses" with loans from suppliers and manufacturers. In 1939 Roy Fitzgerald, president of NCL, approached Yellow Coach Manufacturing, requested additional financing for expansion, and in the 1940s, raised funds for the expansion of Firestone Tire, Federal Engineering, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California (now Chevron Corporation) Phillips Petroleum (Now part of ConocoPhillips), GM, Mack Trucks (now a subsidiary of Volvo). Pacific City Lines (PCL) was also formed as a subsidiary of NCL in 1938, is to buy a tram system in the western United States. PCL joined the NCL in 1948. American City Lines (ACL) have been organized to acquire local transport systems in larger metropolitan areas in different parts of the country in 1943, combined with NCL in 1946. The federal government investigates several aspects of financial arrangements NCL in 1941 (which questioned the mythical conspiracy mythology of Quinby's letter of 1946.) In 1947, NCL owns or controls 46 systems in 45 cities across 16 states.
From 1939 to 1940, NCL or PCL sought a cruel takeover of the Lock System, which operates electric trains and trams in Oakland, California. The effort was temporarily blocked by the Lock System insiders syndicate, with controlled interest secured on January 8, 1941. In 1946, PCL had acquired a 64% stake in the Lock System that operates electric trains and trams in Oakland, California.
NCL acquired the Los Angeles Railway (aka "Yellow Car") in 1945, which has been in financial trouble for some time. The new owners slowed down the closure of tram lines and converted others to the trackless trolley, some originally intended for Oakland, others purchased specifically in 1948. LATL also bought a new PCC which was one of the last major purchases of the new tram.
Edwin J. Quinby
In 1946, Edwin Jenyss Quinby, an active reserve commander, founder of the Electric Railway Association in 1934 (who lobbied on behalf of users and train services), a former North Jersey Rapid Transit (operating in New York) employee issued a 24-page 'expose' ownership of National City Lines directed to "The Mayors; The City Manager; The City Transit Engineer; members of the Mass Transportation Committee and the Taxpayers and Drivers of Your Community". It begins, "This is an urgent warning for each and every one of you that there is a cautious campaign, deliberately planned to trick you out of your most important and valuable public utility-your Electric Railway System." Its activism may have caused Federal authorities to try GM and other companies.
He also questioned who was behind the 1935 Public Utility Utility Law Act, which had caused difficulties for tram operations, He then wrote the history of the North Jersey Rapid Transit.
Court cases, convictions, and fines
On April 9, 1947, nine companies and seven people (certain officers and directors of the defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on a count of "conspiring to gain control over a number of transit companies, establishing monopoly transportation" and "conspiring to monopolize sales buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines "that have been illegally made by the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1948, the venue was changed from the Southern California District Court to the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois after an appeal to the United States Supreme Court (in USA v. National City Lines Inc.) who felt that there is evidence of conspiracy to monopolize the supply of buses and supplies.
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 transport companies controlled by NCL; they were acquitted of conspiracy to monopolize the ownership of these companies. The verdict was upheld in appeal in 1951. GM was fined $ 5,000 and treasurer of GM H.C. Grossman was fined $ 1. The court judge said, "I am very frank to admit that after a thorough review of all the transcripts in this case, and from the evidence offered and accepted as evidence, I may not come to the same conclusion as the jury came for me to try this case without a jury, "explicitly noted that he may not have himself been convicted in court.
The San Diego Electric Railway is sold to the Western Transit Company, which is in turn owned by J. L. Haugh in 1948 for $ 5.5 million. Haugh was also president of the Key System, and later involved in the purchase of Metropolitan Coach Line over passenger operations from Pacific Electric Railway. San Diego's last streets were converted into buses in 1949. Haugh sold the San Diego-based bus system to the city in 1966.
The Baltimore Streetcar system was purchased by NCL in 1948 and began to turn the system into a bus. The busy Pacific Electric Railway passenger operation was purchased by Metropolitan Coach Lines in 1953 and brought into public ownership in 1958 after the last route was transformed into a bus operation.
Urban Mass Transport Law and the 1974 Anti-trust hearing
The Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 (UMTA) created the Urban Mass Movement Administration with the aim of "preserving and improving values ​​in existing urban areas" and noting that "our national welfare requires the provision of good urban transport, with equally well-balanced use private vehicles and modern mass transit to help shape and serve urban growth. "Funding for transit was enhanced by the Urban Mass Transport Law 1970 and subsequently extended by the National Mass Transportation Assistance Act (1974) allowing funds to support operating costs transit and capital development costs.
In 1970, Harvard Law student Robert Eldridge Hicks began working on Ralph Nader's Research Group Report on Land Use in California, alleging a wider conspiracy to dismantle the US tram system, first published in Soil Politics: Ralph Study Group Report Nader on Land Use in California .
In 1972, Senator Philip Hart introduced in the 'Industrial Reorganization Act' congress, with a view to restructuring the US economy to restore competition and overcome antitrust concerns.
During 1973 Bradford Snell, a lawyer with Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro and briefly a former scholar with the Brookings Institution prepared a controversial and debatable paper, entitled "American ground transportation: proposals for restructuring the automobile, truck, bus and rail industry" funded by The Stern Fund was later described as the center of the hearing. In it Snell says that General Motors is a 'sovereign economic country' and says that the company plays a major role in the transport of trains and buses by bus and truck. "
The paper is distributed in the binding Senate along with its accompanying statements in February 1974, which implies that this content is regarded as a Senate view. The committee chairman later apologized for this error. Adding to the confusion, Snell has joined the Senate Honorary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly as a staff member.
At a hearing in April 1974, the Mayor of San Francisco and antitrust lawyer Joseph Alioto testified that "General Motors and the automotive industry in general showed a kind of crime monopoly," adding that GM "has consensus deliberate actions with oil companies and companies tires... for the purpose of destroying the vital forms of competition, that is, fast electric transport ". Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley also testified, saying that GM - through its subsidiary (PCL) "eliminated the Pacific Electric and Los Angeles tram systems that caused the railway system to be completely destroyed." Both the mayor, as well as Snell himself, point out that the two cities were major parties in the lawsuit against GM that Snell himself had "played a role in bringing"; all have direct or indirect financial interests. (The lawsuit was eventually canceled, the plaintiffs admitted that they had no chance of winning.)
However, George Hilton, a professor of economics at UCLA and noted transit scholar dismissed Snell's view, stating, "I would argue that this [Snell's] interpretation is incorrect, and, furthermore, that they can not be true, since the main conversion in character society this - from rail to wheel-free city transportation, and from steam railway to diesel - is a kind of conversion that can occur only as a result of public preference, technological change, relative abundance of natural resources, and other impersonal phenomena or influences , rather than monopoly machinations. "
GM published a rebuttal in the same year entitled "The Truth About American Ground Transport." The Senate Subcommittee prints GM's work together with Snell's as an attachment to a hearing transcript. GM does not explicitly address specific sub-judicial allegations .
Declining role of streetcars
Some say that this plays a key role in the reduction of public transit in cities across the United States - notably Edwin J. Quinby, who drew attention to NCL's ownership structure in 1946, with mixed results, and then Bradford C. Snell, a assistant lawyer for the US Senate anti-trust subcommittee, whose testimony of the subcommittee in 1974 brought the matter briefly to national consciousness. Quinby and Snell claim that the destruction of the horse carriage system is an integral part of a larger strategy to push the United States into car dependence. Most transit scholars disagree, pointing out that transit system changes are caused by other factors; economic, social and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed costs during inflation, changes in paving and automotive technology, the Great Depression, anti-trust measures, the 1935 Public Utility Holding Law, labor unrest, market forces including industry decreased 'difficulties in attracting capital, rapid traffic congestion, Good Road Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies that support private vehicle ownership, fixed infrastructure taxation, franchise repair costs for on-site properties, wide diffusion of driving skills, automatic transmission buses, and general enthusiasm for cars.
The 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit , broadcast the folklore about Pacific Electric's slump. Scriptwriter Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman explain: " Red Car plot, suburb expansion, urban and political corruption actually happened.In Los Angeles, during the 1940s, car and tire companies teamed up against the Train system The Pacific Electric Fire and buy them out of business where the highway running in Los Angeles is where the red car used to be. "The story was told again in 1996 at Taken for a Ride and then in 2004 in The movie End of Suburbia.
The accuracy of significant elements of Snell's testimony in 1974 was challenged in an article published in One-fourth Transport in 1997 by Cliff Slater.
A recent journalistic review questioned the idea that GM had a significant impact on the decline of street cars, which showed that they were preparing to take advantage of the decline when it happened. Guy Span suggests that Snell and others fall into a simple conspiracy theorist's mind, bordering on paranoid delusions stating,
Clearly, GM waged a war on electric traction. It's an all-out attack, but it does not mean one reason for a quick transit failure. Also, it is equally clear that the actions and lack of action by the government make a significant contribution to the elimination of electric traction. "
In 2010, Mark Henricks from CBS reported:
There is no doubt that GM-controlled entities called National City Lines have purchased a number of city trolley car systems. And no doubt that, before so many years, the street car operations were closed. It is also true that GM was found guilty in post-war trials for conspiring to monopolize the market for transport equipment and supplies sold to local bus companies. What is not true is that the explanation for this event is an evil plot to trade the profits of private companies for viable public transport.
Maps General Motors streetcar conspiracy
Other factors
Other factors have been cited as a reason for the decline of tram and public transport generally in the United States. Robert Post notes that the final range of GM's alleged conspiracy expanded only about 10% of the American transit system. Guy Span says that action and inaction by the government is one of many factors that contribute to the elimination of electric traction. Cliff Slater suggested that the regulatory framework in the US really protects the electric tram for longer than it should have been if there were few rules.
Some rules and regulatory changes have been linked directly to street tram decline:
- Hard labor relations, and strict tariff, route, and schedule arrangements have an impact on the city's tram system.
- The Public Utility Utility Act of 1935 prohibited the use of regulated electricity from unregulated business operations, which covered most tram lines. It also places restrictions on services that operate across countries. Many parent companies operate both tram and electric utilities in several states; those who have both types of businesses are forced to sell one. Declining streetcar businesses are often somewhat less valuable than the growing consumer electricity business, resulting in many tram systems being sold. The independent path, no longer associated with the parent company, had to buy electricity at full price from their former parents, increasingly shaved their already thin margins. The Great Depression then left many tram operators lacking funds for maintenance and capital raising.
- Double contracts, signed by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation of the New York City Subway, limit their ability to increase ticket prices at high inflation, allow cities to take over them, or to operate subsidized transits compete.
Different funding models have also been highlighted:
- Tram lines are built using funds from private investors and are required to pay a lot of taxes and dividends. In contrast, new roads are built and maintained by the government from tax revenues.
- In 1916, street trains across the country were quicker to use their equipment than to replace it. While operating costs are generally recovered, the money for long-term investments is generally diverted to other places.
- The US government responded to the Great Depression with massive subsidies for road construction.
- Later the construction of the Interstate Toll Road system was adopted by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 which approved the expenditure of $ 25 billion in public money for the formation of a new 41,000-mile (66,000 km) interstate highway network. Tram operators are sometimes asked to return their lanes after the construction of toll roads.
- The federal fuel tax, introduced in 1956, was paid to a new Highway Trust Fund that could only fund the construction of the highway (until 1983 when about 10% was transferred into the new Mass Transit Account).
Other issues that make it more difficult to operate a decent tram service include:
- Suburbanization and urban sprawl, aggravated in the US by white flights, create low-density land-use patterns that are not easily serviced by tram, or even by public transport, to this day.
- Increased traffic congestion often reduces the speed of the service and thereby increases their operational costs and makes the service less attractive to the remaining users.
- It has recently been suggested that the provision of free parking facilities at the destination and in the city center includes all users with the cost of facilities enjoyed only by motorists, creating additional traffic congestion and significantly affecting the feasibility of other modes of transportation.
Counterarguments
Some specific allegations that have been disputed over the years include:
- According to the testimony of Snell, New York, New Haven & amp; Hartford Railroad (NH) in New York and Connecticut are profitable until acquired and converted to diesel trains. Little NH is converted into diesel, and remains in power operations under Metro-North Railroad and Amtrak. In reality, the line was in financial trouble for many years and filed for bankruptcy in 1935.
- "GM kills New York street car". In fact, the New York Railways Company entered the curator in 1919, six years before being bought by the New York Railways Corporation.
- "GM Killed Red Car in Los Angeles". The Pacific Electric Railway (which operates a 'red car') is a route of bleeding as traffic congestion deteriorates with the increasing level of car ownership after the end of World War II.
- The Salt Lake City system is mentioned in court letters of 1949. However, the city system was purchased by National City Lines in 1944 when all but one route was withdrawn, and the final drawdown was approved three years earlier.
See also
- Federal Aid Road Act of 1916
- Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921 (Phipps Act)
- Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956
- Highway Trust Fund
- Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (Company "recaptured" by city government under the terms of Double Contract)
- Chicago Motor Coach Company Bus transit company founded by John Hertz in Chicago in 1917
- The Double Contract contract between New York City and the subway operator that limits tariffs, imposes profit sharing and allows the city to "reclaim" and operate the path
- Transport in Detroit metropolitan (Details of publicly owned system)
- The Toronto tram system, which receives a lot of rolling stock from affected systems
- List of tram systems in the United States
- List of electric bus systems in the United States
References
Note
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
- "The Great GM Conspiracy Legend: GM and Red Car", Stan Schwarz
- "Competitor Transport Conflict", Akos Szoboszlay
- "Did General Motors destroy LA's mass transit system?", The Straight Dope, 10-Jan-1986
- "Taken Up", Jim Klein and Martha Olson - the first 55 minutes of the show on PBS in August 1996
- United States v. National City Lines, Inc. , 186 F.2d 562 (1951)
- Yellow Coach - 1923-1943 - GMC Truck & amp; Coach Division, General Motors Corp. - 1943-present - Detroit, Michigan
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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