California’s Wildcat Sedans: 1917–42 Challenging Transportation Regulated Monopoly

Abstract

During the interwar period, illegal shared ride sedans (known as ‘wildcat sedans’) appealed to a significant fraction of travellers between Los Angeles and San Francisco, defying California’s ethos of regulated rail and bus monopolies. Several historians documented the urban jitney phenomenon, but none examined California’s wildcat sedans. This paper attempts to fill that void. It examines how private automobiles posed a challenge to corporate interests in the intercity public transportation, investigating the structure and economics of the wildcatters, how wildcatters exploited the legal ambiguities of private motor vehicles to challenge those corporations, and the public welfare consequences of this defiance of the regulatory state.