Originally Posted by
RI_Swamp_Yankee
Yeah, GM and the oil companies did some seriously shady things to kill the streetcars and light rail. GM wasn't interested in selling busses, they wanted to sell cars. They knew the trolleys were way more efficient than busses in terms of both energy and moving people around on time...
It's also instructive to note Rudolph Diesel was found dead under mysterious circumstances when he began pushing peanut oil as the ideal fuel for his engine... he claimed petrochemical fuel oil was too inefficient and dirty.
It's hard to know how much of a conspiracy there really was. I'm sure that plenty of people at GM simply viewed rail as a relic of the past and that it was both good business and good sense to switch to buses. Even today there's a huge debate over which is really better. It seems that most people would prefer to ride a train/trolley vs a bus, but 50 years ago maybe not.