That doesn’t really add up. Like many things, wartime deferred maintenance and demand shifts disrupted capital intensive businesses like streetcars and trolleys.
The thing that you’re missing is the multi-trillion dollar investment in free road infrastructure. Streetcars and passenger trains were replaced because you can’t make money selling tickets when your competitors benefit from the unlimited purchasing power of the US government.
The only places that were spared were urban areas like NYC and Boston, but even there the cities were almost destroyed by that massive investment.
I think calling this a conspiracy theory is a way to marginalize and revise reality. It was a strategy that maximized employment and drove a half century of US industrial dominance and prosperity. But it had a cost and fundamental inefficiency that remains difficult to measure.
The thing that you’re missing is the multi-trillion dollar investment in free road infrastructure. Streetcars and passenger trains were replaced because you can’t make money selling tickets when your competitors benefit from the unlimited purchasing power of the US government.
The only places that were spared were urban areas like NYC and Boston, but even there the cities were almost destroyed by that massive investment.
I think calling this a conspiracy theory is a way to marginalize and revise reality. It was a strategy that maximized employment and drove a half century of US industrial dominance and prosperity. But it had a cost and fundamental inefficiency that remains difficult to measure.