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Comment by washbrain | Hacker News Reader

Many cities had "streetcar suburbs", developments on the fringes of town serviced by street cars that took people to work.

Sadly, they were largely decommissioned and replaced with buses or nothing.

We badly need to get more trains moving through American cities. I'd prefer grade separated, but honestly even if we had streetcars running in from all the suburbs that'd be pretty great.

It's also worth mentioning the General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...

There's pretty good incentive to see streetcars removed if you are a car company...

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This always comes up, but is not accurate. Streetcars were never greatly loved. They were boiling hot in the summer, freezing in winter, the ride was jarring, and they were crowded with all manner of people. During the war maintenance was deferred to the point that at the end of the war most such lines needed to be rebuilt in order to stay in operation. Ripping them out to build roads for cars was not a conspiracy but a popular transition which at that time had few visible downsides.

If only there had been solutions to heating and cooling, or ride comfort. Sadly, we as a species never got around to inventing heat pumps, springs, or cushioned seating. LOL.

Cars were popular post war, so were suburbs. But surely GM had no incentive to make them so.

I'm not saying they personally went out and sabotaged the streetcars, but they absolutely put their thumb on every scale they could.

AC came to public transportation pretty late, mostly due to reliability issues; a broken AC in a car is a personal problem, but a broken AC in public transit is the operator's problem.

It also didn't really help that the US made a "standard" streetcar that was such a lemon that they were starting to get scrapped only 11 years after entering service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Standard_Light_Rail_Vehicle

Most of our modern improvements to modern light rail vehicles came from manufacturing designs either straight from or derivatives of successful European ones. But that wasn't an option in the less globalized mid-century.

> that wasn't an option in the less globalized mid-century.

Oh it wasn’t less global, the Republican administration forced government entities to buy (or in this case build) American instead of European in an attempt to fight inflation.

> Oh it wasn’t less global,

Yes, it was; trade globalization progressively advanced under the GATT regime shortly after Ww2 through the formation of (and further after and by expansion of both the membership and scope of rules of) the WTO to replace the GATT in 1997.

> the Republican administration forced government entities to buy (or in this case build) American instead of European in an attempt to fight inflation.

The Buy America Act was not a unilateral partisan or executive actions, but was a bipartisan law passed by a Democratic-majority House and Republican-majority Senate under a lame-duck Republican Administration, and it was more motivated by stimulating the domestic economy during the Depression (it was signed on the last day of the Hoover Administration) than fighting inflation, which had been negative and getting more negative for the three years preceding the passage of the bill.

They still do. Just now it's European and Japanese companies with American factories.

> If only there had been solutions to heating and cooling, or ride comfort.

Effectiveness of heating and cooling is considerably diminished when a vehicle opens all its doors every few minutes.

The transport authority of the city I grew up in tried to solve this problem by setting the temperature to a cool 18°C - you could catch a cold from taking a longer trip via tram in the middle of summer.

As for ride comfort: there isn't much you can do against people drinking alcohol, having their phone on speaker or just urinating in the middle.

> there isn't much you can do against people drinking alcohol, having their phone on speaker or just urinating in the middle.

What? Nothing about public transit is different from libraries, restaurants, cabs, or any other public space. You wouldn't say, "well, you can't go book shopping because you know book stores - people just urinating in the middle!"

Chief difference is that you generally get a much broader spectrum of people in public transport.

The places you mentioned aren't necessary for anyone on a daily basis. Transport, on the other hand, is.

> there isn't much you can do against people drinking alcohol, having their phone on speaker or just urinating in the middle

Yes there is. You eject them from the vehicle.

the modern ones work well in toronto mixed with the other transportation modes which is probably a better point of reference for american cities than the various EU/Asian examples people bring up

My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch of neighborhoods. Nearly all of those iconic neighborhoods are along the historic street car routes, that were dismantled in the 30s and 40s.

I won't claim the street cars were perfect, but there is a lot of merit to the idea that they were replaced by an inferior solution due to the prevailing winds of the moment. What I find more interesting is the street car lines had such a dramatic impact that now 100 years later they're still defining the shape of the city.

> My town is famous for being a city that feels like a bunch of neighborhoods.

Ha, I think everywhere I've lived has described itself like this.

Maybe it's less common in the US because you don't have cities swallowing up villages.

Yeah, US city planning is unfortunately pretty dismal.

My town has a reputation for being better than most, but truth is we've grown so fast the last 2 decades our transit system is overwhelmed now too.

Most US cities are dominated by suburban sprawl, and where there's pretty much nothing like a walkable neighborhood high street.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0

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