What were the public reactions to local street car lines being replaced by buses? Was it widely known that car companies were buying up lines to replace them with buses and did they notice a lack of quality of service?

There were, of course, railfans disappointed to see the streetcars retired, but contemporary accounts mostly acclaimed the new rubber-tired buses as smoother riding, smoother accelerating, easier to maneuver in traffic, less disruptive to street traffic, and safer for passengers to board (from the curb rather than in the middle of the street). Buses were also substantially cheaper to operate, and were used for that reason as early as the 1920s as feeder lines or to replace low-ridership routes. A 1950 book from the Public Administration Service called Transit Modernization And Street Traffic Control is extremely thorough in explaining why virtually all streetcar systems should be converted to buses.

Today we imagine the contrast between a silent electric vehicle gliding along smooth new tracks with a smelly, jerky bus. But at the time, patrons were comparing new smooth-riding buses that had padded seats and pneumatic tires with rattletrap streetcars rocking and screeching along dangerously uneven tracks. Cliff Slater, in "General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars," Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 51. No. 3 (Summer 1997), notes that when 10 New York Railway System routes were converted to buses, ridership increased by 62% the first year. Writes Slater: "Ridership increased by 50% on the old Second Avenue Railway routes. Riders nearly doubled on the Madison Avenue line with riders finding speed the greatest advantage of the new buses. Noise at the curb was reduced from 90 to 65 decibels and the quieter streets allowed the renting of rooms formerly considered undesirable. Riders agreed the buses were much faster and more comfortable. And this all took place just before GM became involved." (citations omitted; this article is online )

Particularly in smaller cities, motorization was seen as the only salvation for transit systems in the late 1930s-early 1940s—remember this is many decades before the advent of government aid to public transit. From Prof. George Hilton's testimony before the Senate Subcommittee* in 1974: “In each of the three cities [that Snell lists in "American Ground Transport"], the electric street railway companies themselves had already applied for permission to convert from streetcars to buses before GM was on the scene, but there were no funds available. In Kalamazoo, the existing company had given notice that it could not survive as a streetcar company and itself suggested bus service...[Kalamazoo Gazette, June 14, 1932; June 10, 1933]...In Saginaw, Mich., the local transit company, which operated both streetcars and buses, was actually in receivership. It was unsuccessful in obtaining approval to operate buses exclusively and was directed by the Federal court in bankruptcy to suspend operations. A bus service was commenced by a new company which at the time had no connection with GM...[Saginaw Daily News, Oct. 9, 10, 1931]...In Springfield, Ohio, the streetcar company had been in receivership for five years. The receiver himself had asked for permission to substitute buses for streetcars...[Springfield Daily News, Aug. 1, Aug. 30, 1933]."

^(*U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The Industrial Reorganization Act: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly on S. 1167. Part 4A. 93rd Cong., 2d sess., 1974)