The Golden Age of the Streetcar

[MisterCairo]

And to this day the rule proves astute as, every once in awhile, there will be a subway or train accident cause by an inebriated operator.

Coincidentally, this was just posted on the CBC. Although not a transit operator, the TTC in Toronto has started randomly testing for drugs and alcohol, and employee number one tested, "blew" at the company's .04 limit:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ttc-worker-drug-test-1.4108340

 

[BlueTrain]

Some of those streetcars look very futuristic, a word you don't hear so much these days, unless you read Popular Mechanics. All of those mass transit or more accurately, public transit, systems have been controversial and expensive these days. I wonder what people thought of them way back in the beginning, say, a hundred years ago. The ones I mention in the beginning (of this thread) were mostly built by private companies, although the details of financing are rather obscure now. Was there a time when the public was clamoring for things like this? Was there public money involved? Or are there all sorts of issues, political, functional and financial, that existed that we just don't remember now? Time has a way of erasing the bad things, which is a Good Thing.

I also wonder if everything looked better in black & white.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Generally speaking, public transportation was a public-private partnership -- the city built and maintained the tracks and the power system, and the operation of the system was leased to a private contractor on a franchise basis, subject to city regulation. It was common for the cities to end up buying out the franchisees and running the operations on a purely public basis -- this is what happened in New York, where the IRT and the BMT were purchased in 1940 and eventually merged, along with the always-city-owned-and-operated IND line, into the city-run NYC Transit Authority. The same pattern was followed in Boston, where independent subway and trolley lines were bought out in 1947 and merged into the Metropolitan Transit Authority, ancestor of today's MBTA.

 

[MisterCairo]

Some of those streetcars look very futuristic, a word you don't hear so much these days, unless you read Popular Mechanics. All of those mass transit or more accurately, public transit, systems have been controversial and expensive these days. I wonder what people thought of them way back in the beginning, say, a hundred years ago. The ones I mention in the beginning (of this thread) were mostly built by private companies, although the details of financing are rather obscure now. Was there a time when the public was clamoring for things like this? Was there public money involved? Or are there all sorts of issues, political, functional and financial, that existed that we just don't remember now? Time has a way of erasing the bad things, which is a Good Thing.

I also wonder if everything looked better in black & white.

I know that my brother's employer in Hamilton, Ontario, HSR, was originally privately owned by a single man, later an inter-city bus line. Briefly owned by the provincial hydro authority, it is now city owned:

"From 1873 to 1889, the HSR was owned by Lyman Moore and operated as a private business. In 1889 HSR was sold to Hamilton Cataract Interests, later known as Dominion Power and Transmission Company. The HSR was later acquired by Ontario Hydro.

Provincial ownership ended in 1946 when HSR was bought by Canada Coach Lines. CCL was purchased by the city of Hamilton in 1960. Hamilton-Wentworth Region began ownership of CCL and HSR in 1977, and in 2001 regional amalgamation placed its ownership back to the city of Hamilton."

 

[Nobert]

1935 New Yorker cartoon by Robert Day showing the melee between streetcar and automobile beneath the el.

 

[AdeeC]

Where I live - Melbourne, Australia - streetcars or trams are still a thing. We boast the biggest network in the southern hemisphere. And I'm very glad that we do! If we didn't, I'd never be able to get anywhere!!

This is our current route-map:

I live in Melbourne too and am lucky to live 3 minutes walk away from 2 tram lines. I drive my car very little and share it with my wife. The roads trams travel on are full of life. Long busy pedestrian friendly strip shopping areas with plenty of cafes, shops, parks, connections, services and nearly all major attractions along them also. Roads without tram are just like everywhere else. Mostly lifeless traffic sewers with sterile malls, big car parks, concrete and no life. Just a hole to get from A to B. Where there are trams, traffic moves a little slower but life is at a leisurely people pace rather than a hurried frantic car pace and everything one needs is usually close by.

There was huge pressures to get rid of them like everywhere else in the 50's and 60's but the guy who ran the tram board was a stubborn believer in the system and could not be bought out by the car interests.

Trams are one of the attractive reasons why many people want to live in Melbourne even though property prices are now ridiculously high with an average house costing around $700,000. One could add a premium of about 20-30% to that if within walking distance of a tram line.

 

[emigran]

Growing up on the late '60s / '70s after Newark had been all-but destroyed by the riots of the late '60s, I remember my grandmother and father talking about how nice Newark use to be and that it was a place to go to shop when you couldn't - like today - just get everything everywhere. They were always sad to see what had become of Newark. I haven't been back in NJ (other than to Jersey City and riding Amtrak through it from NYC to DC) in +/- 20 years, but have read during that time about periodic attempts to revive Newark - have they had any luck?

Newark (particularly the Downtown that we referred to) has been built up beyond recognition. George Washington still sits on his steed on Broad street right where the trolley used to run... There are no more S Klein's or Bamberger's or Hahnes,,, only widened boulevards and towering buildings... no more men's shops or appliance stores with refrigerators on the sidewalks either...There are fancy Sushi lunch bars and upscale looking Taco Bell an Mc D's...Tne adjacent project dwellings have all be razed and replaced with 'row houses with window boxes ... but you can still take the 29 Bus and
reach your destination only now with a Metro card...

 

[tonyb]

The brand-new Bombardier streetcars, now multi-car mini trains really. I think the smallest collection is three cars.

They are delayed, over budget and fraught with issues. The city almost cancelled the project, but the courts were involved:

At least the money is staying in country, eh? Or has Bombardier also "offshored" production?

 

[MisterCairo]

At least the money is staying in country, eh? Or has Bombardier also "offshored" production?

Some assembly is in Mexico, shared with Thunder Bay, Ontario...

 

[tonyb]

Some assembly is in Mexico, shared with Thunder Bay, Ontario...

Please don't tell me they're now making snowmobiles in Mexico.

 

[AdeeC]

Melbourne aside from having about 30 vintage trams still in service to complement the modern fleet also has roughly 200 vintage trams in storage. Some trams are also receiving major upgrades and now being stripped down and completely restored to run on the free city circle line.

 

[DocCasualty]

Detroit's streetcars were gone in the 1950s before I was born. I did get to ride them though in Mexico City on a trip with my family in the 1970s, as they were sold there. Another case where the automobile industry pushed the streetcars out while they were still very functional, but they don't call it Motown because of the music!

Here's some great old pics of the old Detroit streetcars during their heyday.

19 pictures showing the history of Detroit’s streetcar system http://photos.metrotimes.com/19-pictures-showing-history-detroits-streetcar-system/?slide=1&pic01

 

[Stanley Doble]

The very first street cars were horse drawn carriages in the late 1800s. So far as I know they were operated by private companies although they required a concession from the city to put their rails down in city streets.

Electric cars came later. Then came the automobiles which cut into street car ridership and profits. Not many people know that practically all street car companies were money losers after about 1920. Most were eventually taken over by city governments, or subsidized in some way. Street car systems in many cities were in a bad way with poorly maintained infrastructure and old cars that were well past their best.

This is why in 1929 a trade organization went to work on the design of the President's Conference Commmittee street car. It was meant to be a modern streamlined street car that could be built at lowest cost, to a standardized design. They hoped to revitalize street car use with an improved car that could take advantage of modern mass production savings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCC_streetcar

It worked and street car systems kept going in many cities for another twenty or thirty years.

The next phase will be all electric buses, quiet convenient cheap to run and pollution free. They are already in the testing stage. I hope we see them in operation in the next few years. After that, how about self driving buses and taxicabs?

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ I wonder if any transportation system (cars included) has ever paid for itself without direct or indirect gov't subsidies. Roads for cars didn't build and don't repair themselves. Airports get plenty of gov't money and the FAA (and TSA) isn't free. Trains, trams, subways, etc. seem to be the ones everyone points a finger at and says - "you don't pay for yourself," but in truth, do any of our transportation systems?

The real interesting analysis would be an objective (not politically or ideologically driven) cost-benefit to society (so gov't subsidies included) analysis of each type of transportations system. For example, building a subway in NYC is beyond stupid expensive, but also, an incredibly efficient way to move massive amounts of people versus putting all those people in cars, cabs, Ubers. Yet, somehow, subways are almost always "too expensive," but roads and bridges aren't. The same with trains - at least in high density areas - just observing them bring people into NYC versus every getting in their own car - hard to see how cars win. But if a true, objective analysis showed they do - then so be it; I'm just highly skeptical that we ever see real, honest, object cost-benefit analysis in the US.

Lizzie will blame the Boys in Marketing and I agree to an extent, but also, Americans love their cars (and, yes, I get that the Boys had a hand in that - but so did our spread-out country and long history of individualism).

 

[LizzieMaine]

The point that arises for me is that, before WWII, the "auto culture" was very different from what it became after the war. In 1940, less than half of all American families owned any kind of a motor vehicle -- the figure was around forty-five percent, which was about, give or take a few points from year to year, what it had been during the entire decade of the 1930s, and about what the peak level of auto ownership had been during the go-go 1920s. You can blame the Depression for a lot of that, but even more significant is the fact that most Americans didn't *need* to own cars, and a big percentage of those who did were people who lived away from urban service centers. Less than forty percent of city families owned cars before WWII, largely because there was no need for them to do so -- between extensive public transportation systems and the way in which urban life was built around the neighborhood model, where you usually worked a short distance from where you lived, cars simply weren't necessary. And the sort of romanticized "car culture" of the sort that characterized the 1950s and 1960s simply didn't exist -- if you owned a car before the war, it wasn't so much a symbol of the freedom of the open road as it was a utilitarian machine that got you to where you needed to be. If you needed to travel a long distance, your first thought wasn't to drive -- dealing with breakdowns, speed traps, seedy tourist camps, uncertain food, and rickety two-lane roads thru every two-bit town on the map -- but to take a train. Generally speaking the only people who would attempt such a drive would be the desperate or the reckless. If you were middle-class, the thought of driving cross-country would have been ridiculous and horrifying, not when you could enjoy good food, a warm bed, and a kindly grinning porter shining your shoes and brushing your coat on a Pullman.

The shift in population distribution from urban neighborhoods to the suburbs after WWII had much to do with the sharp increase in car ownership -- after a *drop* in auto ownership having to do with shortages and the wearing-out of prewar cars between 1946 and 1950, car ownership started to shoot up sharply and hasn't stopped since. But the way Americans *felt* about cars changed sharply, too, and you can see this thru the way they were advertised, not just as individual makes and models but as just the idea of that "freedom of the highways." "Discover America -- Best By Car!" was a propaganda campaign promoted by the auto and petroleum industries -- you saw it on road maps, gas station giveaway calendars, and all sorts of other paraphernalia, and this *sold* the idea of auto travel as the default to a nation that had never, ever before thought of it that way -- not just to sell cars, but to promote political support for the Interstate Highway System, a project which was actually highly controversial at the time. All you have to do is take a look at the shift in the public perception of Route 66 -- before the war, it was a trail-of-tears for desperate Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl -- the Joads and their ancient Hudson Super Six being the dominant image that came to mind. But by the 1960s Route 66 was Martin Milner and that other happy white guy breezing along looking for adventure in their spiffy Corvette. In less than twenty years, auto ownership *doubled* in the US -- as the Boys turned cars from a utility to a romance.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ I agree in direction, but as always, I think you overrate (and that's the word, it's one of degree not direction - they are powerful but not as powerful as you think - IMHO), The Boy's power as they, again, IMHO, fail quite often and usually only sell things people are willing to buy once they are made aware.

Could America have been sold on train travel post war? The Boys employed immediately after WWII by the still very wealthy train companies of the time (I've read the history on this extensively) tried their hardest to do so, but they didn't succeed. The passenger rail companies were very optimistic (overall) post WWII and invested heavily in new technology (diesel) and design and marketing (the Boys), but they lost the battle to the car. Did the railroad-boosting Boys fail or was America destined to be a car culture? And I am a huge railroad fan - I wish it had turned out differently.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the real difference is that, in the 1950s, Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Motors had more money -- and more political influence, individually and thru their connections in the National Association of Manufacturers -- than any railroad. With money you could buy propaganda, with political influence you could buy results. It was, as they say nowadays, a synergistic approach to manipulating both the private and public sectors, and the Great American Public, into doing their bidding. It's not for nothing that Secretary of Defense "Engine Charlie" Wilson, the former head of GM, was deeply involved in the execution of the Interstate program -- nor is it surprising that he was *still working at GM* when he was chosen by Good Old Smiling Ike for that job. Even the General knew who buttered his parsnips -- you didn't see any railroad executives or public-transit advocates being appointed to cabinet posts in his administration.

And GM, of course, was intimately connected to Standard Oil thru their joint ownership of the Ethyl Corporation, whose products would be given a huge boost by the creation of an auto-centric culture in the US -- with , of course, the accompanying diminuition of rail and public transport. With the pliable Eisenhower in power, and the GM-Esso combine having a free hand in shaping the administration's transportation policy, all the Boys had to do was sell the public into believing that *modern* travel, the *best* travel, was by car.

Really, the closer one looks at whose interests were really being emphasized thru all this, the more disturbing it becomes. It's like trying to roll a dead skunk out of the ditch with a stick -- the more you poke it, the more it stinks.

 

[sheeplady]

Years ago lived in a city that managed to both rip out it's downtown canal, poison it's lake, and rip up it's major elevated railroad in favor of the shiny automobile.

Both the canal and the elevated railroad became roads; the lake was poisoned by oil refineries and once earned the title "the most polluted lake in the US."

Yay.

We are a family of 4; two working adults, two children. We are counting the years until my (high mileage, drive that sucker into the ground) car is no longer with us (and we have no need to be in separate states once our old house sells), and then we can go down to one car. I can walk to work and my husband works from home. There's a $100,000 premium on houses around here that are within walking distance of my workplace and the local amenities compared to half an hour out by car. That takes less than a decade to make up the difference between a cheaper house and buying a car, figuring the additional time spent commuting is money, the need to pay for a car, gas, and maintenance, registration, and fees.

 

[MisterCairo]

Please don't tell me they're now making snowmobiles in Mexico.

No, thankfully. Skidoos made entirely in Québec. I have toured the factory...

 

[Shangas]

View attachment 74697 View attachment 74696 View attachment 74698 Melbourne aside from having about 30 vintage trams still in service to complement the modern fleet also has roughly 200 vintage trams in storage. Some trams are also receiving major upgrades and now being stripped down and completely restored to run on the free city circle line.

When I was a kid, you still had the older trams from the 50s, 30s, etc, rattling around town. And I mean RATTLING. You could hear them coming three blocks away! But these days, apart from the City-Circle tourist trams, I'm not sure that the old antiques are still used anywhere in Melbourne.