Taken for a Ride1996

Bradford Snell:
At that time Alfred P. Sloan said "Wait a minute. This is a great opportunity. We've got ninety percent of the market out there that we can somehow turn into automobile usage. If we can somehow eliminate the rail alternative, then we will create a new market for our cars. If we don't, then General Motors' sales are gonna be level." They had to get rid of the streetcars. They wanted the space that the streetcars used for automobiles. They had to find something that they could put in place of the streetcars. Sloan at the time thought that he wanted to somehow motorize all the major cities of the country and then replacing all the street railways with buses, and ultimately thinking that no one would want to ride the buses and therefore they'd buy General Motors automobiles.