>Could you be clearer about what kind of time frame and locality you're talking about here?
I'm thinking of the "A century ago" period, in concert with what the article starts off with. My perspective is primarily european cities of 200'000+ [1] inhabitants during the early XX century, as that's what I'm most familiar with.
Going by the two cities I spent my formative years in, the local mass transportation networks - tram and bus - were built out to great effect as part of, and thanks to, the general city rebuild spurred by the improving car availability and use in early (pre-war) XX century.
>GM's "streetcar conspiracy"
Salient point, however that happened decades after both the automobile traffic, and the modern mass transport were built out, established, and went through decades of use.
[1] back then that was a sizeable city
> tram and bus - exploded in range and popularity thanks to the availability of cheap technologies popularized by the car.
A lot of people would argue the opposite, see e.g. the alleged GM "streetcar conspiracy". That was in the postwar timeframe when personal car ownership and transitless suburbs took off.