Public Transportation: in favor? disapprove?

[Protronie]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

I question the premise that if GM et al had not bought out the streetcar companies, they would still be here today. The streetcars were replaced with buses. Those private bus companies mostly failed, resulting in the cities or regional authorities having to take them over to have any public transportation. The same thing would have happened to street railways if the public chose not to ride.

What really killed public transportation was the freeways and cheap gas prices. It was made easy to drive, so people did so.

In most communities when the power companies came to town they built and operated the electric street cars as a way to promote good will and their electricity. Some communities even made starting a public transport service as a condition to allowing the power companies to string lines and place poles. Later they replaced the streetcars with buses...some using a electric bus that took its power from overhead power lines.
But as the ridership went down and cost went up many talked the local cities into taking over the operations.
Here in Greensboro Duke Energy (then known as Duke Power) actually ran the buses till about 1990 when they finally convinced the city to take over the mis-managed mess to be done with all the public complaints.

-p