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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
The places you mentioned aren't necessary for anyone on a daily basis. Transport, on the other hand, is.
Yes there is. You eject them from the vehicle.
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.
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.
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.
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...