Aside from the problems Riain and Marathag respectively mentioned the Great Depression massively knocked ridership numbers and also government finances so that it was a struggle to survive never mind expand in the 1930s, by the end of that decade you were moving into WWII which maybe saw a bit of a pick-up - presumably due to a combination of increasing jobs and no new cars being manufactured, and then after that you had the move to private cars.
Chicago carried out a study in 1923 about expanding their "L" network which resulted in the 1923 Kelker Plan. Here's a map of what they wanted to do
Some of the proposed new lines are rather interesting in that they roughly mirror lines, or parts of line, that exist today, others that are lateral or run north-south are quite a departure from the present-day hub and spoke model. I'm not wholly convinced on several of them though as even back then the reasoning looks a little iffy. It would have certainly seen the city develop differently, although I don't know enough about Chicago to say what the effect would be.
The problem though was that they came up with this shiny plan only two years before the Great Depression which killed it stone dead, just look at what it did for ridership numbers.
Chicago carried out a study in 1923 about expanding their "L" network which resulted in the 1923 Kelker Plan. Here's a map of what they wanted to do
Some of the proposed new lines are rather interesting in that they roughly mirror lines, or parts of line, that exist today, others that are lateral or run north-south are quite a departure from the present-day hub and spoke model. I'm not wholly convinced on several of them though as even back then the reasoning looks a little iffy. It would have certainly seen the city develop differently, although I don't know enough about Chicago to say what the effect would be.
The problem though was that they came up with this shiny plan only two years before the Great Depression which killed it stone dead, just look at what it did for ridership numbers.
So that's a no on the whole evidence thing, but it agrees with your prejudices and a children's animated cartoon film's plot referenced it so you might as well believe it. I'm chalking this one up as a conspiracy theory.I know it sounds that way, but I'm inclined to believe that (while it may not've been national) it did happen, at least in some cities (Who Framed Roger Rabbit was loosely based on what actually happened in L.A. from what I've heard).