Disaster or not, what was the alternative? As I said before, the tracks were by and large in place in the streets before cars; as soon as someone could afford a car, they ditched public transport for all the usual reasons (poor service, freedom, privacy, independence, status), reducing revenue. There is simply no way, even if it had occurred to the owners of the PE and LARy, to relocate all the tracks to run along the curb, which is the only alternative I can think of--impractical and cost-prohibitive. Anyone who looked at the exponential growth of car registrations through the '20s could see that streetcars, as they were laid out originally, were doomed.