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Oak Cliff Welcomes Back Streetcars -- After A Nearly 60-Year Absence
http://keranews.org/post/oak-cliff-welcomes-back-streetcars-after-nearly-60-year-absence?__utma=164821157.1971756751.1415036490.1428693505.1428935008.324&__utmb=164821157.18.10.1428935011&__utmc=164821157&__utmx=-&__utmz=164821157.1428502992.318.29.utmcsr%3Dgoogle%7Cutmccn%3D%28organic%29%7Cutmcmd%3Dorganic%7Cutmctr%3D%28not+provided%29&__utmv=-&__utmk=132565134
Two $4.5 million modern, air conditioned streetcars make the 1.7-mile trip from Union Station in downtown Dallas, across the Houston Street Bridge, to Methodist Hospital at Colorado and Beckley Avenues. They are the first battery powered streetcars built in the US. The batteries get them over the river. Elsewhere, they use overhead electrical wires.
Bringing streetcars back to Oak Cliff after a nearly 60 year absence was a dream of neighborhood activist Jason Roberts.
“Back on 2006 we created an advocacy organization which is a faux authority called the Oak Cliff Transit Authority," Roberts said. "We developed this hair brained idea to bring the streetcar back to Oak Cliff.”
The city owns the line. DART operates it. And getting the streetcars rolling again is expensive, about $50 million dollars. A federal stimulus grant of $23 million jump started the project, with other regional transportation funds to follow.
Bringing streetcars back to Oak Cliff after a nearly 60 year absence was a dream of neighborhood activist Jason Roberts.
“Back on 2006 we created an advocacy organization which is a faux authority called the Oak Cliff Transit Authority," Roberts said. "We developed this hair brained idea to bring the streetcar back to Oak Cliff.”
The city owns the line. DART operates it. And getting the streetcars rolling again is expensive, about $50 million dollars. A federal stimulus grant of $23 million jump started the project, with other regional transportation funds to follow.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy (also known as the Great American streetcar scandal[dubious – discuss]) refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies for monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation, and to urban legends and other folklore inspired by these events.
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.[3] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to subsidiary companies, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.
Some claim this played a key role in the decline 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 later Bradford C. Snell, an assistant attorney for the United States Senate's anti-trust subcommittee, whose 1974 subcommittee testimony brought the issue briefly to national awareness. Quinby and Snell argued that destruction of streetcars systems was an integral part of a larger strategy to push the United States into automobile dependency. Most transit scholars disagree, suggesting that transit system changes were brought about by other factors; economic, social, and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed fares during inflation, changes in paving and automotive technology, the Great Depression, anti-trust action, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, market forces including declining industries' difficulty attracting capital, rapidly increasing traffic congestion, the Good Roads Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies favoring private vehicle ownership, taxation of fixed infrastructure, franchise repair costs for co-located property, wide diffusion of driving skills, automatic transmission buses, and general enthusiasm for the automobile.
Recent popular studies[dubious – discuss] question the argument that the alleged conspirators had a significant impact on the decline of the streetcar system, suggesting rather that they were setting themselves up to take advantage of the decline as it occurred. Guy Span suggested that Snell and others fell into simplistic conspiracy theory thinking, bordering on paranoid delusions[5] stating:
Clearly, GM waged a war on electric traction. It was indeed an all out assault, but by no means the single reason for the failure of rapid transit. Also, it is just as clear that actions and inactions by government contributed significantly to the elimination of electric traction."
In 2010 CBS's Mark Henricks reported:
The story as an urban legend has been studied extensively by Martha Bianco, Scott Bottles, Sy Adler, Robert Post, and Jonathan Richmond. It has been explored several times in print, film and other media, notably in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taken for a Ride and The End of Suburbia.
Only a handful of U.S. cities have surviving effective rail-based urban transport systems based on streetcars or trams, including Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Boston; others are re-introducing them. In many of these cases, the vehicles in question do not actually ride on the street. Boston had all of its downtown lines elevated, or buried, by the mid- '20s, and most of the surviving lines at grade operate on their own right of way. San Francisco and Newark similarly use tunnels.
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy (also known as the Great American streetcar scandal[dubious – discuss]) refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies for monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation, and to urban legends and other folklore inspired by these events.
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.[3] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to subsidiary companies, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.
Some claim this played a key role in the decline 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 later Bradford C. Snell, an assistant attorney for the United States Senate's anti-trust subcommittee, whose 1974 subcommittee testimony brought the issue briefly to national awareness. Quinby and Snell argued that destruction of streetcars systems was an integral part of a larger strategy to push the United States into automobile dependency. Most transit scholars disagree, suggesting that transit system changes were brought about by other factors; economic, social, and political factors such as unrealistic capitalization, fixed fares during inflation, changes in paving and automotive technology, the Great Depression, anti-trust action, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, market forces including declining industries' difficulty attracting capital, rapidly increasing traffic congestion, the Good Roads Movement, urban sprawl, tax policies favoring private vehicle ownership, taxation of fixed infrastructure, franchise repair costs for co-located property, wide diffusion of driving skills, automatic transmission buses, and general enthusiasm for the automobile.
Recent popular studies[dubious – discuss] question the argument that the alleged conspirators had a significant impact on the decline of the streetcar system, suggesting rather that they were setting themselves up to take advantage of the decline as it occurred. Guy Span suggested that Snell and others fell into simplistic conspiracy theory thinking, bordering on paranoid delusions[5] stating:
Clearly, GM waged a war on electric traction. It was indeed an all out assault, but by no means the single reason for the failure of rapid transit. Also, it is just as clear that actions and inactions by government contributed significantly to the elimination of electric traction."
In 2010 CBS's Mark Henricks reported:
There is no question that a GM-controlled entity called National City Lines did buy a number of municipal trolley car systems. And it's beyond doubt that, before too many years went by, those street car operations were closed down. It's also true that GM was convicted in a post-war trial of conspiring to monopolize the market for transportation equipment and supplies sold to local bus companies. What's not true is that the explanation for these events is a nefarious plot to trade private corporate profits for viable public transportation.
The story as an urban legend has been studied extensively by Martha Bianco, Scott Bottles, Sy Adler, Robert Post, and Jonathan Richmond. It has been explored several times in print, film and other media, notably in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taken for a Ride and The End of Suburbia.
Only a handful of U.S. cities have surviving effective rail-based urban transport systems based on streetcars or trams, including Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Boston; others are re-introducing them. In many of these cases, the vehicles in question do not actually ride on the street. Boston had all of its downtown lines elevated, or buried, by the mid- '20s, and most of the surviving lines at grade operate on their own right of way. San Francisco and Newark similarly use tunnels.
