The car companies bought the already failed transit lines, sold them for scrap, and then sold new busses. The city was already transitioning to busses and the trams needed replacement regardless. One could say that the auto companies hastened their demise, but it wasn't by very long.
They failed because the car companies worked with (i.e. paid) local town councils to restrict track placement, restrict time-of-day allowed for transit traffic, and generally strangle their service model. Tightened the noose until they failed.
That's a myth. Streetcars were never profitable, and were built as a way to get to new development that the streetcar owners were building. Once there was no land left to develop in Southern California, the streetcars became a cost center. Once the interstate highway system was built with taxpayer money and the great depression ended giving everybody enough money to buy their own cars, it was simply a matter of time.
Some research shows they (GM etc) were convicted of conspiracy to fix prices in the bus-transit industry. The streetcar conspiracy was tried and dismissed(?)
They were convicted of trying to monopolize the supply of buses to transit agencies, not of trying to take over the streetcars.
While it's true that the main bus transit company in question (NCL) did acquire the LA streetcar systems and replace them with buses, many other cities voluntarily replaced their streetcar systems with buses in roughly the same era.
I'm not saying that GM wasn't up to some sketchy shit, they almost certainly were. However it's not as if there would be a comprehensive red car system in 2020 if not for GM. The government did more to kill public transportation in the US than GM could have ever dreamed of.
Nobody had to lobby. I don’t think transit advocates realize how amazing car travel was back in the day. When I first moved to DC in 1989, there was no traffic. You could zip from Vienna to Foggy Bottom in 25 minutes. Even if you live in one of the apartments by the Vienna metro, it was almost an hour by Metro. If you had to take a bus, it was well over an hour.
Super fast, point to point trips are amazing. It’s still that way in much of the country.
The idea that transport policy wasn't shaped by any lobbying is ludicrous.
> I don’t think transit advocates realize how amazing car travel was back in the day.
That doesn't mean the shape of policy that leveraged that popularity wasn't shaped by lobbying by those with a concentrated interest that the legislation would advance leveraging the general popularity of car travel. In fact, having something naturally popular (whether it's “car travel” or “not dying in a terrorist attack”) to leverage as a basis increases, rather thank reduces, the intensity of lobbying to gain private benefit by exploiting that sentiment.
