Why some U.S.A. cityes didn't quyt streetcars?

[CNJGP40P]

The old Public Service trolley system is still alive and kicking in New Jersey in a small way.  The Newark Subway is the last remnant of the extensive old PS system.  Calling it a subway is a bit of a stretch as the system is primarily above ground in the bed of an old canal.  I have not looked at the signs on the new LRVs they are running (I still ride the system occationally) but when they were still running PCCs (I was on the last ride) the cars still carried the sign "7 Newark Subway", the route designation from the old trolley days.

It is kind of sad that the old trolley system was torn apart, especially considering that they are now rebuilding it of sorts.  The Hudson-Bergen light Rail, Camden's Light rail service and the expansion of the Newark subway line is an example of what-was-old-is-new-again.

[al-in-chgo]

All depends on the perspective you're looking at it from.  One could regard oneself as benefiting from the highways, so long as you aren't stuck on them when traffic isn't moving.  From my perspective, it's not a choice to me; therefore, I've been forced to use the only mode now available (but at the same time, the other modes used to be quite prevalent).

As far as cities go, it's not cheaper to use buses.  Buses last 20 years if you're lucky (average age is about 15 years, longer for trackless version, longer still for rail vehicles); most buses are internal-combustion; and within the city, it's a canard when one mentions the flexibility in terms of altering routes, since most city routes have remained unaltered for decades upon decades.  (AFAICS, most cities didn't convert from trolley to trackless, that not being National City Lines' goal; the two technologies, trackless and tracked, grew up alongside each other, besides.)  Pity that the statute of limitations ran out to reopen the NCL case; but seeing the current state of the Big Three, the chickens are already coming home to roost there.

Note other countries that also have "highways" (the interstate wasn't invented here) that for a long time have known that it's not enough to have it as the dominant, and often sole, land transportation mode for passengers.  They're way ahead of the USA, who has stagnated.

Oh, I absolutely agree with you.  Busses are not cheaper to run, which is why it took GM to advocate for them.  Just allowing natural Depression-era economics (which wasn't about ripping out old systems for the heck of it), trolleys would probably have had more of a stay without GM's help -- in some cities at least -- and there would probably be more extant trolley systems.  Note that the most effective resister of the rip-up-the-tracks philosophy is not in the USA at all (Toronto, ON).  Some American cities have held onto scraps of what once was there:  San Francisco's Muni Metro, Philadelphia's trolleys and of course New Orleans come to mind. 

Here in Chicago, most bus lines turn around at the old trolley turn-arounds of 50-plus years ago.  Perhaps the "flexible" bus system SHOULD be pioneering new routes -- Elston Avenue, which teems with franchises and new stores like Target and Home Depot, could really use bus service but it never had it and thus doesn't now.  So even in the one instance busses have an advantage, it isn't used as such.  The CTA's mission is to operate equipment; they pay lip service to "providing transportation services" but really it's all about keeping the machinery moving (which they did fairly well until recently).

And a big part of the reason so many of use use rural interstate highways is that frequently there is no substitute for them.  In 1965 you could take a train from Nashville to Atlanta; that option doesn't exist now.  There is little and poor bus service.  Today you either drive or fly.  I would make the point that after 2,000-miles plus of driving Interestates in the southeastern US last winter, the rural parts seemed to flow fairly well and were in good repair (not that fixing them was cheap).  The urban ones are totally a mess, mostly because the original beltways were allowed to be swamped by growing suburbia.  One factor that not everyone mentions is that in Europen and Japanese cities, there simply aren't enough potato fields and truck gardens that suburbia could spread willy-nilly as it did in the US ca. 1950-1980.  Land use and zoning are much, much stricter than in most parts of the USA.  So the "ring roads" in Europe that I know of in Germany still serve as traffic conduits around the city, not a way to get from one suburb to another (there is one exception I can think of:  Berlin, whose ring autobahn is an urban affair and now that both east and west parts of the city have been united so long, it's really a busy, overcrowded stall on the ring Autobahn).

So, yes we have a fundamentally unbalanced system and I am one of those people who drove the Interstates and suffered hour-long delays getting thru Nashville and Atlanta because it was either drive or fly -- and I don't have to go into how frustrating post-9/11 flying can be.   The rural part of driving the Interstates worked well for us, though.  I certainly do agree with you that this seeming advantage doesn't make interstate POV travel the best option -- but sometimes it's the only one. 

PS:  It isn't ALWAYS the case that streetcar and trolleybus grew up together and were made obsolete at about the same time by diesel bus.  In Lynchburg, VA in the early days, streetcar was synonymous with the power company:  their old "LT&L" tokens stood for "Lynchburg Traction and Light."  They were replaced with trolleybuses (along the same routes) after World War II; then in turn the trolleybuses gave way to the GM norm in ca. 1955-56.  Some diesel-bus routes have been extended and some eliminated, but the modern bus destination signs:  "Peakland", "Fort Hill", "West End" and so on are remarkably unchanged since the Twenties.