But the explosion of car traffic in the postwar years persuaded the New South Wales government that urban freeways were the way of the future (the first in Australia, the Cahill Expressway, opened in 1958), and trams were an impediment to that vision.

Sydney’s decision to dismantle its original, world-class tram network in the late 1950s—the last tram ran in 1961—was driven by the post-war obsession with the private motor car and the bus. City planners at the time viewed trams as "inflexible" and a major cause of traffic congestion in the narrow streets of the CBD. The rise of the internal combustion engine made buses seem like a more modern, cost-effective solution that didn't require expensive track maintenance or overhead wires. Political pressure from the "rubber lobby" and a desire to "modernize" the city’s image led the government to favor asphalt over rails. By the 1950s, the system was suffering from decades of underinvestment, making it appear loud and antiquated to a public eager for the freedom of individual car ownership. Ironically, the massive traffic problems that followed led Sydney to spend billions in the 2010s and 2020s to reintroduce light rail (trams) along many of the same routes that were ripped up sixty years earlier.