why streetcar lines went away

It wasn't GM ..

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So whatever happened to all those streetcars?

"There's this widespread conspiracy theory that the streetcars were bought up by a company National City Lines, which was effectively controlled by GM, so that they could be torn up and converted into bus lines," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

But that's not actually the full story, he says. "By the time National City Lines was buying up these streetcar companies, they were already in bankruptcy."

Surprisingly, though, streetcars didn't solely go bankrupt because people chose cars over rail. The real reasons for the streetcar's demise are much less nefarious than a GM-driven conspiracy — they include gridlock and city rules that kept fares artificially low — but they're fascinating in their own right, and if you're a transit fan, they're even more frustrating.

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