image from http://latimespast.tumblr.com/post/96562548684/the-planned-downtown-l-a-streetcar-is-back-in-the
the federal government sued the consortium of General Motors, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Truck Manufacturing Co. for conspiring to deep-six the region's streetcars.
Most historians agree that GM and the other mega-companies only helped to speed the end of the railway, which already was deep into red ink.
World War II's shortages of gasoline and rubber crippled bus service. By the end of the war, the trolley lines were decrepit, obsolete and deep in the red. Some Angelenos purchased the trolleys from scrap dealers, moved them to vacant lots and began living in them during the city's housing shortage.
In 1945, American City Lines, a subsidiary of National City Lines, a Chicago-based company whose investors included General Motors and other big oil and rubber interests, bought the remaining electric streetcar line in LA.
National City Lines soon controlled 46 transit networks in the Midwest and West. The company began scrapping these electric systems and replacing them with diesel buses that -- surprise -- used fuel and rubber.
By 1946, the Justice Department had caught on. It filed an antitrust suit against National City Lines for conspiracy to monopolize the transit industry. But before the suit came to trial in Chicago, the consortium of big companies bailed out, selling their holdings in National City Lines. That essentially left it as an empty corporation.
In 1949, the case finally came to trial. The verdict was mixed, with acquittals and convictions. Although they no longer owned National City Lines, the companies in the consortium were fined wrist-slapping amounts of $5,000 each, while individual company officials were fined $1 each, for a total of $37,007. By then, the far-flung suburbs were crisscrossed by cars, highways and a few freeways, and the so-called conspiracy plot simply applied the coup de grace to a dying system.
http://www.latimes.com/me-2003-los-angeles-streetcar-history-story.html#page=1
LA, 1943 http://latimespast.tumblr.com/post/81704529173/downtown-los-angeles-70-years-ago-this-is-the
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