A Lesson in How Corporate Greed and Collusion Impacts Quality of Life in Our Cities

In the early 1920s, Los Angeles had the largest and most effective trolley car system in the United States, the Pacific City Lines. I rode the electric “red cars” as a kid growing up in LA during the late Thirties and the Forties. The demise of this popular system had little to do with consumer preference for buses, or even automobiles (which few people could afford). It was the result of collusion between the producers of oil, rubber, buses, and, ultimately, automobiles.

Pacific Electric Red Cars on Terminal Island awaiting destruction

With financing from these special interests, over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego were purchased and converted into bus operation. Several of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce. For this conspiracy, each of the companies was fined $5,000. The bargain gained Los Angeles and other cities victimized by the scheme choking smog and other forms of air pollution. Today, America’s dismal record on implementing mass transit and controlling air pollution can be traced directly back to collusion on the part of Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and Rubber, General Motors, and other business operations interested in putting the "rubber to the road."

Los Angeles From the air