There oc­curred a sneaky move in the de­vel­op­ment of pub­lic trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture in the United States around 1940–50, one that set us back con­sid­er­ably. But of course, at the time, those in­volved truly be­lieved they were look­ing out for Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, doing their part to im­prove our qual­ity of life, and es­pe­cially theirs. Could you en­vi­sion a rail-ori­ented struc­ture in our larger cities? How about a Los An­ge­les or De­troit that moves more like San Fran­cisco? It is safe to say there was no sin­gle cause in US his­tory that ma­nip­u­lated our sys­tem to be so auto-de­pen­dent; the rea­sons are var­ied and nu­mer­ous. How­ever, there is one event in par­tic­u­lar which could be ar­gued to be the cat­a­lyst of the au­to­mo­bile trend while help­ing erase the pos­si­bil­ity of pub­lic rail tran­sit as a vi­able form of trans­porta­tion.

The Great Amer­i­can Street­car Scan­dal was ex­e­cuted with such a swift and dex­ter­ous hand that even the US Supreme Court even­tu­ally no­ticed. The list of play­ers is im­pres­sive: Na­tional City Lines, Amer­i­can City Lines, Pa­cific City Lines, Stan­dard Oil, Fed­eral En­gi­neer­ing Corp, Phillips Pe­tro­leum, Gen­eral Mo­tors, Fire­stone Tire, and Rub­ber and Mack Man­u­fac­tur­ing. Their ul­ti­mate goal, which they ac­com­plished, was to buy out all of the street­car com­pa­nies in major US cities and dis­man­tle the in­fra­struc­ture, clear­ing the pub­lic trans­porta­tion slate and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a sys­tem re­liant al­most en­tirely on com­bus­tion en­gine mo­bil­ity. It was clear they were in ca­hoots and were all con­victed of crim­i­nal con­spir­acy in 1950. Forty-five cities that all had sys­tems com­pa­ra­ble to San Fran­cisco were af­fected, in­clud­ing: Bal­ti­more, Cleve­land, De­troit, Los An­ge­les, New York City, Oak­land, Philadel­phia, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Tulsa.

This event pre­cip­i­tated the no­to­ri­ous pat­tern of de­vel­op­ment that dis­tin­guishes the US from all other de­vel­oped coun­tries in the world and played a huge part in our re­source-con­sum­ing lifestyle: sprawl­ing sub­di­vi­sions, count­less miles of im­pres­sively en­gi­neered free­ways, acres of park­ing lots, and drive-through restau­rants; a world molded by the needs of the car. What is im­por­tant to note is that this oc­curred so early in our de­vel­op­ment as a na­tion (mid 1940s) that we don’t re­ally have a col­lec­tive mem­ory of an es­tab­lished sys­tem ex­ist­ing be­fore the au­to­mo­bile; there is noth­ing to miss nor any ro­man­tic yearn­ing for how things used to be. And the street­cars of San Fran­cisco seem to us a taste of Eu­ro­pean cul­ture, an ex­otic nov­elty that is ap­pre­ci­ated, but no doubt out of place in our idea of Amer­i­can cul­ture.

Though this event is, for the most part, lost in our so­ci­ety’s col­lec­tive mem­ory, there is a clas­sic 1988 movie that clev­erly de­liv­ers the story: Who Framed Roger Rab­bit. For those of you who have seen it, there is no for­get­ting Judge Doom, the movie’s main an­tag­o­nist. He plots to de­stroy Toon­town, a car­toon world rem­i­nis­cent of Amer­ica’s ro­man­ti­cized “Main Street”, with DIP, a deadly com­bi­na­tion of paint thin­ners. In its place he en­vi­sions a free­way, and the par­al­lels be­tween Judge Doom and GM (with Fire­stone and Stan­dard Oil) are un­mis­tak­ably clear. Doom says, “… I see a place where peo­ple get on and off the free­way. On and off, off and on all day, all night. Soon, where Toon­town once stood will be a string of gas sta­tions, in­ex­pen­sive mo­tels, restau­rants that serve rapidly pre­pared food. Tire sa­lons, au­to­mo­bile deal­er­ships and won­der­ful bill­boards reach­ing as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beau­ti­ful!” Eddie, one of the pro­tag­o­nists, is a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor hired to find out who killed the owner of Toon­town. When he hears of Judge Doom’s plans, he re­sponds, “No­body’s gonna drive this lousy free­way when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.” The “Red Car” being Los An­ge­les’ prof­itable and re­li­able pub­lic rail sys­tem be­fore GM gained own­er­ship and dis­man­tled it. By the end of the movie, the good guys pre­vail, as one would ex­pect in Hol­ly­wood; Judge Doom is de­stroyed, the free­way never gets built, and Toon­town and its res­i­dents live hap­pily ever after. Un­for­tu­nately, in the real world, the bad guys got away with a nom­i­nal fee after being con­victed of con­spir­acy and still got to build their free­ways.

To all those who make con­scious choices to aban­don the ve­hi­cle when not ab­solutely nec­es­sary, we are un­plug­ging, lit­tle by lit­tle, from the pow­er­ful reign of the auto in­dus­try. But the more im­por­tant mes­sage here is that we are plug­ging back in to the idea of Toon­town; of a bustling com­mu­nity where peo­ple bump into each other on the street, where strangers share their per­sonal space with the world around them. In­stead: car­pool, take the bus, take the train, ride your bike, roller skate! When and where pos­si­ble, re­move the bar­rier that iso­lates you from your sur­round­ings and be open to meet­ing a stranger and hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that seems to be just the right ex­change at just the right mo­ment.