Morley Safer - Correspondent:  In _ 1944 _ , the trolleys had begun to disappear . It was n't progress , and it was n't suicide ... it was murder by conspiracy . That was the conclusion of a federal jury , upheld on appeal . The way it worked was that General Motors , Firestone Tire and Standard Oil of California and some other companies , depending on the location of the target , would arrange financing for an outfit called National City Lines which cozied up to city councils and county commissioners and bought up transit systems like LA 's . Then they would junk or sell the electric cars and pry up the rails for scrap , and beautiful modern buses would be substituted - buses made by General Motors and running on Firestone Tires and burning Standard 's gas .