[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Also, as far as I can tell, wikipedia says the DC streetcar was still privately operated in the 50's. Since you actually rode on it when you were a baby maybe you can point out where I'm going wrong here.

In 1933, all streetcars were brought under one company, Capital Transit. The streetcars began to scale back with the rising popularity of the automobile and pressure to switch to buses. After a strike in 1955, the company changed ownership and became DC Transit, with explicit instructions to switch to buses. The system was dismantled in the early 1960s and the last streetcar ran on January 28, 1962 . . . .

In January 1955 the Capital Transit Company, then consisting of 750 buses and 450 streetcars, sought permission for a fare increase, but was denied. So that spring, when employees asked for a raise, there was no money available and the company refused to increase pay. Frustrated, employees went on strike on July 1, 1955. The strike, only the third in D.C. history and the first since a three-day strike in 1945, lasted for seven weeks. Commuters were forced to hitch rides and walk in the brutal summer heat.

On July 18, 1956, after Wolfson dared the Senate to revoke his franchise claiming no other entrepreneur would take the company on, the Congress did just that. Months later, the franchise was sold to O. Roy Chalk, a New York financier who owned controlling interest in Trans Caribbean Airways, for $13.5 million. The company's name was then changed to DC Transit.

As part of the deal selling Capital Transit to O. Roy Chalk, he was required to replace the system with buses by 1963. Chalk fought the retirement of the streetcars but was unsuccessful, and the final abandonment of the streetcar system began on September 7, 1958

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street...ashington,_D.C.

So I was wrong--it was still private. But I was right about the fundamental issue: It was not abandoned because it was outdated. The new owner, who clearly thought he could make money, wanted to keep the streetcars but was forced to replace them with busses by Congress (DC then didn't have "home rule"). This was the era when it was said (with a straight face), "What's good for General Motors is good for the USA". Much of Congress believed that and listened intently to their lobbyists.