What Happened to San Diego's Streetcars?

The turbulent story behind San Diego's recently expanded trolley network, the railroad tycoon who owned it, and the automotive companies who helped destroy it.
Check out the depot museum!
www.sdera.org/

[@KevinFields777]

This was a good video into you dived into the General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy. It would be good to read some of your sources, which concluded, "There is no question that a GM-controlled entity called National City Lines did buy a number of municipal trolley car systems. And it's beyond doubt that, before too many years went by, those street car operations were closed down. It's also true that GM was convicted in a post-war trial of conspiring to monopolize the market for transportation equipment and supplies sold to local bus companies. What's not true is that the explanation for these events is a nefarious plot to trade private corporate profits for viable public transportation." The story in San Diego was the same story across the US. Streetcars were expensive to maintain. Before the Great Depression many systems were ran at a loss by private companies who usually also owned the local electric utility or had real estate investments that benefitted from the streetcar. These companies were broken up by many states and the streetcars were forced to be solely dependent on fairbox revenue. As more people owned cars, fewer people used public transit. And as more people owned cars, they could move away from the city and the transit lines. Many of these systems eventually fell into the hands of the city or state, who did not have the fairbox revenue and couldn't raise taxes to subsidize them. After World War II, streetcars were easily replaced with cheaper trolley buses, and in 20 years those were replaced by even cheaper to operate diesel buses. Streetcars are making a comeback largely because cities can now obtain federal funds to help build and maintain them, something that wasn't available until the Dept. of Transportation was revamped in the 1970s after the oil crisis. And where streetcar lines are being built you're often seeing new real estate development happening, which excites people. This is the same boom that happened over a century ago with the streetcar. People want to live in places where things are new, trendy and interesting.

[@intercityrailpal]

GM derailed the WORLD. The are a international dirty corporation that has put this spin out on social media to defend and question facts of what they did. Don't fall for it. Plus the leading factor also was by the oil companies. They destroyed the national rail system by getting the government to remove mail and packages from the cross country trains. Which finally bankrupted the private system in Oct 1967. Over night there was a emergency to shut down the last lines, resulting in underfunded Amtrak May 1971 . Which the highway lobby and airlines like Southworse lobby against.

[@spd_bird]

For the "boom," I think it's also more than just being "trendy" and "interesting" that attracts people. These areas with good public transit are also relatively walkable and designed for people- something that makes the area actually enjoyable and safe to be in compared to the alternative

[@_DeathDreams_]

Man I would love to see an alternate version of San Diego where they didn't ram massive highways and parking lots everywhere, and actually kept the streetcar lines

[@KRYMauL]

Pretty much every country thought that the automobile was the future, but they definitely needed to modernize.

[@InfraWatch_FRM]

I _really_ enjoy your style! Would be great to see this kind of content for more cities and transport systems!

[@MrSquareart]

Great video!!!!! Nice to watch!

[@MrSquareart]

@@blini224 I have been trying to follow and watch as many SD trolley videos! Kind of rare to find good videos!

[@kiti8804]

I agree that 25 years license for streetcar infrastructure was pretty bad, probably no private company can make a sound ROI from it. I appreciate the video and pretty entraining.

[@joshuanishanthchristian5217]

This JD Spreckles is one heck of a character to read about!

[@intercityrailpal]

When millionaires were smart and worked to better our county.

[@TommyDoog]

My dad was a motorman on the SDERy from the late 1930s through their closing in 1949. He stayed on with SD Transit until the early 70s. I was a Train Operator on the current SD Trolley system in the 1990s and recently retired from the company after 27 years. It’s a shame you weren’t able to show the current vintage streetcar Silver Line that operates PCC cars similar to the one at the museum. Also of note, is the vast difference in the SDERy streetcar system and the modern SD Trolley light rail. The light rail system operates on city streets only in downtown, and never shares the streets with cars. The majority of the system is on private right-of-way and the newer segments are 100% grade separated. The streetcars operated as single units with a modest capacity. SD light rail trains operate much larger 80’ long cars that can run with up to four cars per train. That’s capacity for as many as 650 passengers on a single train. Getting 65 passengers on an old streetcar would have been difficult. Great video. I enjoyed it very much.

[@TommyDoog]

Here’s a short video I put together that helps visualize the rider capacity issue i mentioned. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eYPbiGd9YtCAjbM

[@erickescalante3289]

I visited Depot

[@karencontestabile6064]

Narration is too fast and sounds like AI.

[@mojazzinthe619]

Nice story!