Railroading the streetcars? GM was accused of buying trolleys to kill them, but the systems were headed for oblivion.(SUPP)

Byline: Robert Sherefkin

The story has the ingredients for a good urban myth: conspiracy, greed, big-business hardball. The premise was that General Motors worked quietly with oil companies and tire makers to buy up and dismantle trolley lines and destroy public transportation in the United States.

But a vigorous debate continues over whether GM killed the trolley or whether it died a natural death.

According to the story, the conspirators ended 50 years of electric-powered streetcars or trolleys serving hundreds of U.S. towns and cities. Most of those systems were dismantled by the 1950s.

They were replaced by buses built by GM, and passengers were steered toward automobiles, according to testimony before the Senate in 1974 by Bradford Snell, then an assistant counsel to the U.S. Senate. Snell testified on the Industrial Reorganization Act before the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on antitrust and monopoly.

Under Alfred Sloan, GM diversified into airlines, …