Ever hear of “The Seven Sisters,” as they have often been called? They are Standard Oil of New Jersey, (Esso), Mobil, Gulf, Texaco, Chevron, Royal Dutch, and British Petroleum (BP), several of which have been consolidated into each other. It is they which control oil prices, not OPEC. Los Angeles freeways are almost all on the former routes of the Pacific Electric lines, which ran hundreds of quiet, non polluting, fast electric cars on over a thousand miles of track, all over Southern California. Electric transit lines don’t use oil, and electric cars don’t either. In the 1950’s a consortium of the Seven Sisters, plus GM and Firestone conspired to buy up dozens of electric trolley lines in major cities, including Los Angeles, scrap them, and substitute smelly busses. In Los Angeles they bought the rights of way for a song and sold them at huge profits to build so called “freeways.” If you have seen the film “Who killed the electric car,” you know that there are batteries now, which will let an electric, silent, non polluting car travel 250 miles without a charge, and at high speeds as well. I built an electric car myself in the 1950’s out of a little three wheel Isetta, and drove it everywhere. Check out the web site teslamotors.com. Their cars are expensive versions of what could be done with an ordinary car.
The air is so filthy now, traffic so heavy, and oil coming to a depleted state, that in spite of the Seven Sisters, electric transit is making a small comeback. Very small, because the freeways are in place, and America has grown so accustomed to driving everywhere, that it isn’t likely that oil consumption will decline, or the air get better any time soon. They have had their way. If the air is any better at all, it is because of expensive pollution controls which have to be installed on cars. St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Denver, Washington D.C. etc, all had efficient trolley lines, which are needlessly long gone. Washington D.C. had a superb system with no overhead wires and streamlined silent cars which covered the entire city. No more. Hundreds of billions of gallons of gasoline and diesel have been used needlessly because the Seven Sisters had such an incredible influence…to keep profits up. London had trolley lines with hundreds of miles of trackage, which were abandoned in 1951, even though the system was in excellent condition and profitable.
Washington D.C. has built an underground subway system at a taxpayer cost of hundreds of billions of dollars which doesn’t even come close to breaking even. Denver has four electric lines, the third and fourth just entering service, which hopes to carry 40,000 passengers per day, which translating into half that if you figure going to and from work counting two rides. Interstate 25, which it parallels, probably has 40,000 cars on it in fifteen minutes, if not more.
The Seven Sisters all had intermingling boards of directors with tire and auto and bus manufacturers, which allowed them to tear up street railways. “60 Minutes” did an expose of the matter many years ago, and National City Lines was found guilty. They were fined $5,000. I have the “60 Minutes” piece on video tape. Having grown up in D.C. I watched helplessly as marvelous streetcar tracks were unceremoniously ripped up and modern “PCC” cars cut into pieces. The same type PCC cars have been restored and now run on Philadelphia’s #15 line with no pollution and no noise. All of D.C.’s lines are gone, but fortunately a few of Philly’s remain. None are left in other cities. Interurban high speed lines used to connect distant cities, and in Chicago today, one can still ride from South Bend, Indiana to Downtown Chicago at 90 miles an hour on the Chicago, South Shore and South Bend. Only a small portion of the old Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee remain, but I rode that line at close to 100 miles an hour in the 1950’s. Isn’t it amazing how history repeats itself? “Light Rail” is the new term for a trolley car, and they are beginning to sprout up all over America, and some even in the style of the old cars, long destroyed. The Gomaco Company in Ida Grove, Iowa makes brand new cars in the old style. See their web site at gomacotrolley.com.
Still, it will never be the same. I used to ride to Glen Echo amusement park outside D.C. on the trolley which ran through the woods above the Potomac River on railroad tracks. It’s long gone and so is Glen Echo. Memories are so fine when one gets to be ancient, as I am. I had a marvelous childhood. Just think: In a few years, no one will know what a carburetor, distributor, vacuum tube, steam locomotive, or manually operated elevator is.