Why streetcars nearly vanished...

[stmtrolleyguy]

The trolley bus was replaced because after a while, it got too expensive to keep maintaining the wires. They were prone to power outages, broken wires from time to time, and some other problems. THe real reason was that soon bus technology caught up to the trolleybus technology.

Most of the reasons are practical. Bus can pass each other on a road. Trackless trolley cannot. They can pass other cars, but they cannot pass other trackless trolley. Passing sidings in the overhead for trackless trolley would be hard to put in, more complicated overhead to maintain, and would only work if the two coaches were at the right place at the right time - exactly - every day. Also, when you need to expand a trackless trolley system, you need to install more overhead. This increases the overhead ($$$) in building the new lines, whereas a bus can go wherever, almost whenever.

The one hold-out is SanFrancisco, with their steep hills. Conventional busses were destroying transmissions on some of the hills (not steep enough for a cablecar). These routes have been converted back to trolleybus, because an electric motor will keep trying to turn almost as long as you keep givining it power.

(Just a sidenote here in Boston - the trackless trolley drivers on the few remaining routes know when the traffic lights are about to change. Some of them will engage take power, right before the light turns, holding the bus back with the air brakes. Once the light changes, they can release the brakes, and the buss will rival just about anything else on the road for a good 100 feet or so in acceleration.)

[daveklepper]

But St. Louis now has a fine and expanding light rail system. A friend wrote me:

"It is what Illinois Terminal would have been if they had had the money."

[MoPacFan]

Here in St. Louis streetcars did vanish in the early 60's. The reason being is that the city made the trolley companies; resurface any road with there track in it, maintain the roads, plow the roads when it snowed, and many other numerous things. The street car companies could not afford to do this and maintain there trolleys.

Although recently in the news here there is a "private investor" who is restoring trolley service to a certain part of the city. The work is supposed to start sometime in '06 and if anyone cares I will post up a thread on when they do.

[jockellis]

G'day, Y'all,
That trolleys disappeared is due to American's love of independence. I think we fought a war over it or something like that. We wanted to be independent of something that seemed to control our lives and required that we be at a certain spot at a certain time as did the trolley schedules. Now however, many of us find that we don't like being dependent upon a car which requires gas at different prices each week and which requires so many other expenditures for things such as insurance, tires, oil, windshield washer fluid, wax and the attendent trips to the auto parts store where we get to stand in long lines.
GM did grease the trolley's slide with aid to the bus company and advertising making men feel like cheapskates for not buying their family a car for its use, but the real cause was the same thing that brought our forefathers here 250 years or so ago, freedom.
Jock Ellis
Cumming, GA US of A
Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers

[daveklepper]

A correction to a prior posting. Although two men at a minimum were required at all Third Avenue Railway plowpits, at one point Capitol Transit did install motorized trolley catchers on most of their cars, allowing the motorman to flip a switch and down would up the poles and another switch and up they would go, with an upside-down V wire mesh over the wires to catch the trolley shoe and center it on the wire. This meant only one man was required in the pit. I am uncertain if all plow pits were so equipped with the "V"s. This technological improvement never reached Third Avenue.

Another interesting fact is that Third Avenue cars probably could have run on the Washington system but not visa versa. Because in Manhattan, there were numerous places where New York Railways (owned by GM from 1926 on) and New York and Harlem (owned by NYCRR up to 1934, but operated as part of the New York Railways system and sold to them in 1934) shared tracks with Third Avenue; and in lots of places there were two slots in the street between the two rails! When NY Railways went bus in 1935-36, including NY and Harlem with its trunk line being the first and its 86th St. Crosstown being the last, the Third Avenue conduit was left in place off-center. Both NY and Washington systems had truck-mounted plough carriers that allowed some side-to-side movement, but the Third Avenue carrier was longer allowing much more movement, with more slack in the positive and negative cables.

Remember that ground return was used generally with trolley wire, but conduit lines had separate positive and negative conductors, one on each side of the conduit trench. This was also true of London. There was no fixed rule of which side was positive or which side was negative; on conduit operation both side were insulated from the car body (like trackless bus operation and Cincinnati two-wire, two-pole streetcars) and the polarity of dc power affects direction only with permanent magnet fields which were never used in railway operation, only model railroads. A new exception is Maget Motor's and Stored Engergy Systems' Wheel Motors, (the magnets rotate, coils are fixed, no commutators) which do power some low-floor "trams" and trolleybuses. (I don't know of any in North America), but even there the control and power delivery systems involving conversion to ac and back to dc mean polarity of power makes no difference. Alstom's wheel motor on the Las Vegas guided bus line is an ac wheel motor, inside-out hysterises non-synchronous.

[Anonymous]

Why then Did Trolleybuses disapere from most US citys?
Cleveland,Philly,Akron OH actulay most US citys that had trolleys went to trolleybuses then to diesal. The Trolley Buses actauly out lasted most diesal buses in Dayton OH which still uses them

[SactoGuy188]

QUOTE: Originally posted by pchas

I think you should add San Francisco to that list, Dave. When the Muni's PCC streetcars were converted to LRV and undergrounded on Market Street, the plan was to eliminate the tracks from Market Street, but fortunately that never happened. Muni had acquired a fleet of historic streetcars that were put in use during the summer and for special occasions. They proved so popular, that rather than pull up the tracks, Muni extended the line down to Fisherman's Wharf and expanded the fleet. http://www.streetcar.org/

Actually, SF Muni was lucky they never abandoned the surface running of streetcars because as a consequence of the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway and the opening of (now) AT&T Park baseball stadium, SF Muni was able to run its street car lines along the Embarcardero from AT&T Park all the way to Fisherman's Wharf, along with connecting with the Market Street line! [8D]

[IRONROOSTER]

One of the big problems for private transportation systems is that they have to compete with the public system of roads. Since your taxes pay for the roads, there is no usage charge which keeps your direct costs down and makes the trolley, bus, etc a less attractive option. Pre WWI there were a lot of trolley/interurban lines built, almost every railroad ran passenger trains usually quite a few and it was profitable. The alternative was horse or walking, in some places water borne. After WWI roads were built to accomodate the car and passenger traffic declined. After WWII the interstate system was built leading to even more decline.

Another problem is that private systems tend to focus on the profitable parts and ingnore the non profitable. These leaves out the less populated areas.

I think the only way to have an adequate non car tranportation system, is for the goverment to either heavily subsidize it or build and operate it directly. I don't expect much more than we have now because everyone prefers the convience of having a car. It's only in major cities/population centers where enough roads/parking lots can't be built, that mass transit becomes an acceptable though not desired alternative. Even then if you don't keep the fares down with subsidies no one will use it.

Enjoy
Paul

[Jack_S]

I wonder: if the rails for the street cars been maintained by the government the same way that the streets are maintained for busses, would the streetcars have lasted?

Sort of the same argument I have heard about the Interstates and trucks versus passenger rail and rail ROWs.

Jack

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

While private development of public transportation sounds good in theory, one has to remember that most urban transit systems were municipalized because the private owners couldn't afford to stay in business and upgrade the property at the fares they were allowed to charge. In Chicago, the various component companies of Chicago Surface Lines were in receivership prior to 1929, and the Rapid Transit Lines weren't doing much better. Public attitudes aren't going to allow fully compensatory fares to be charged, as Southern Pacific found out in the 1970's on its Peninsula commute service, so private investors won't be attracted to the mass transit business.

[Anonymous]

One big problem with the original developers / operators of the trolley lines is that they pretty much failed to modernize either their infrastructure or their car fleet. That accounts for both the deteriorating ride and the ancient look of most streetcars (with the possible exception of major cities that converted over to the more streamlined PCC cars.

They also had to compete with the advnet of better roads and more and better automobiles. The irony is that most cities would pay dearly to have some or all of these lines back, because highway congestion has literally choked off the so-called "freedom of the open road" (unless you live well beyond the suburbs).

In Columbus, Ohio (for instance) part of the planned light rail system would run on the former ROW of the Columbus-Delaware & Marion Interurban line. This was part of an interurban system which, in its heyday, could carry you to any part of the state ... even places the railroads didn't go. They had intermodal connections with local streetcar systems, which (in turn) made connections at most of the local train stations.

Now we find ourselves pursuing a return to that intermodalism, with the notable addtion of making connections at major airport.

The more things change....

[PBenham]

The history of public transportation in this country isn't pretty. Problem one, it was built by private capital which was better than the alternative (AND still is).Problem two, the private automobile and the depression were too much for those not always adequately financed companies to overcome. WWII helped, but showed how the Bus could beat streetcars, being able to go to places that would have had to wait years for the necessary infrastructure to be financed, and built. Yes, busses needed scarce rubber tires, but that problem was dealt with by development of butyl rubber and winning back access to some of the rubber plantations cut off from the US by U-boats.

[stmtrolleyguy]

Hey, it's simple. They saw potential for a new line, and instead of letting in hang in limbo, they made it go somewhere where people would ride it. I haven't ridden the line, but I did get a chance to look around the storage yard, and it's an amazing collection. Those PCC's look great, and I've operated a Milan Car in Iowa just like the ones you have out there, and they are good, solid beautiful cars.

Not all trolley systems that are formed new will work. It will be interesting to see what happens in Tampa.

Just on another, slightly different note, many people believe that buses were the ultimate end to the trolley. In some aspects, this is ture. However, in many early cases (when the trolley companies bought the buses), busses helped to save the trolleys.

Many trolley companies were responsible for the upkeep of the roads they trveled on. For some areas, however, the trolley companies had to provide service as a condition of their usage of city streets. Some of these lines were anything but profitable. Many of these lines were changed over to busses. One trolley line would be lost, but it mean that the trolley company had more money to invest in the real heavy revenue-generating lines. So busses might not be quite as bad as we percieve them to be. (At least when bought by the trolley companes to help with overall health of the trolley sysytem.)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by daveklepper

While we are on the topic of Washington, there too streetcars made money despite the conduit system, and Roy Chalk wanted to keep the heavy lines streetcar but Congress forced bus conversion, and the operating costs on the heavy lines went up and the revenue went down. Those were the days of all-PCC operation with the "Silver Site-See-er" air-conditioned to show what could be done. Most cars had already been re-equipped with flourescent lighting and maintenance was always excellent.

The only city with any sense in this matter was Toronto, and possibly Philadelphia to some extent.

I think you should add San Francisco to that list, Dave. When the Muni's PCC streetcars were converted to LRV and undergrounded on Market Street, the plan was to eliminate the tracks from Market Street, but fortunately that never happened. Muni had acquired a fleet of historic streetcars that were put in use during the summer and for special occasions. They proved so popular, that rather than pull up the tracks, Muni extended the line down to Fisherman's Wharf and expanded the fleet. http://www.streetcar.org/

I cordially invite one and all to take a ride next time you visit my fair city! [:)]

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I'm not so sure about Philadelphia, some of their lines have the worst track that can be found anywhere.
In Chicago, the CTA had the problem of having to rehabilitate just about everything when they took over operations of Chicago Surface Lines and Chicago Rapid Transit in 1947. CSL had ordered lots of two-man PCC's prior to the takeover by CTA and the postwar decline in passengers. Since the L was also in need of new cars, the PCC's were traded in to St. Louis Car for new PCC Rapid Transit equipment, which lasted into the 1990's. Realistically, it was advantageous for CTA to replace two-man streetcars with one-man buses. CTA had almost no private rights-of-way for their surface operations, so continued streetcar service was unlikely.

[daveklepper]

The interesting point is that the Broadway-42nd and 42nd Street lines were profitable even with the conduit system and the maintenance required to make it reliable.

There were a number of "plow pits" in the Third Avenue system where streetcars changed from wire to conduit, but the only one that survived WWII was that at 145th Street and Lenox Avenue for the heavy 149th Street crosstown "X" line (like most crosstowns, "X" was used, 180th, "Z". being the exception) and the every 40-minutes one-car 145th and Broadway line, which used the pit to go on wire just to cross Lenox Avenue (now Malcome X Boulevard) to the reversing crossover and then come back. Unlike London, where ploughs were body mounted and tracked to swing out to the side of the car, in the devels strip between the tracks, both Washington and Third Avenue had plough pits with people removing and aplying the ploughs by hand from the carrier frame on the truck, not on the car body, and a second man or during light traffic the motorman, raising and lowering the pole. Plough pits in Washington included two in Georgetown, one for Cabin John and one for Friendship Heights routes, one in Hyattsville for Branchville, one on North 7th Street, and one toward Benning for Kennelworth and Seat Pleasant Lines, and the one toward Benning was also used earlier by the interurban to Baltimore (Washington Baltimore and Annapolis). All streetcar lines running in Washington during WWII and after used conduit and some did not use trolley poles at all, although all cars were equipped by the time of WWII. (12th Street, Calvert Bridge). Except the one car Branchville - Beltsville shuttle, a Toonerville. Like Lakeside in Baltimore, Hanover in Wilksbarre.

While we are on the topic of Washington, there too streetcars made money despite the conduit system, and Roy Chalk wanted to keep the heavy lines streetcar but Congress forced bus conversion, and the operating costs on the heavy lines went up and the revenue went down. Those were the days of all-PCC operation with the "Silver Site-See-er" air-conditioned to show what could be done. Most cars had already been re-equipped with flourescent lighting and maintenance was always excellent.

The only city with any sense in this matter was Toronto, and possibly Philadelphia to some extent.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Many of the streetcar lines in Manhattan were also required to use conduit pick-up, which as mentioned above, added its own problems to continued operation of cars in New York. Mayor La Guardia also believed that streetcars were obsolete and should be eliminated.

[Tharmeni]

The weekend papers here reported that Tampa's new trolley system (started in 1999) may soon cease service due to poor ridership.
The line extends from Ybor City to the Channelside (cruise ship docks) area, but never was extended to downtown where 30,000 business people have no way of getting to Ybor or Channelside at lunch time without getting in a car.

[Anonymous]

London Transport used the same conduit system as Washington DC, or a variant of it. The London one was the only long-term use of the system over here, mainly as the overhead was considered more reliable and didn't involve digging the road up if something broke. The conduit was used in the centre with the outlying areas having conventional overhead wiring, so trams were fitted for both. Changing over was pretty well automated - on the way in a crewman would pu***he plow out of the change pit and into the carrier under the tram, the trolley pole would be lowered, and the tram would proceed. On the way out, the pole would be raised at the last stop before the change-over (overhead and conduit overlapped for a short length of track) then the tram would be driven through the change-pit area at line speed. The plow would be fired out of the carrier sideways and would come to a halt in the change pit ready for the next tram entering the city centre to use. Photos here: http://dewi.ca/trains/conduit/ploughs.html

[daveklepper]

It depends on what you call a conspiracy. GM did directly purchase New York Railways from the Interborough Raid Transit (Belmont) subway interests in 1926 with the clear intention (in hindsight) of replacing streetcars with buses. While most other New York area streetcar lines modernized to some extent with steel lightweights, or Peter Witts, and then of course the home-made Huffliners of Third Avenue and PCC's in Brooklyn, New York Railways continued to run obsolete equipment. They did improve service, however, and one-manned the equipment for more economical operation. Cars were in and tracks in the street were out. LaGuardia forced Third Avenue to agree to bus substitution for that companies Manahttan lines, including 42nd Street and Broadway-42nd Street, which definitely provided far superior service as streetcar lines than buses and were more economical to operate even with the conduit system. Third Avenue agreed because otherwise important Bronx streetcar franchises would not have been renewed. The conversion of the Manhattan lines was postponed by WWII. In the middle of the conversion, new management came in and realized they had a windfall by selling streetcars, some for scrap and some overseas to continue operation, in Sao Paulo Brazil, Vienna, New Delhi, etc, and then leasing buses with the lease charges being operating expenses justifying applying for fare increases, and so they decided to continue to scrap the rest of the streetcar system as well, even though the original intent was to keep the main Bronx and Westchester lines streetcar. After conversion, maintenance expenses and operating expenses started increasing, far beyond what they had been on a per passenger basis in streetcar days and the system went banckrupt. I can also report that about 25% of the business of the Broadway-42nd line was optional, people who walked or could use the subway, and this vanished from the system, about half going to the subways, the line was converted.

In Philadelphia, there was no excuse for the abandonment of the 38 subvway-surface line or the No. 6 Willow Grove line, both of which the City wished to keep but the conglomorate National City Lines Management forced these two lines conversions. But the other conversions, about 90% of what was converted under National City Lines (Texaco Firestone GM) made sense from a traffic, economics, and transportation point of view.

Conversion of the trolleybus system to diesel in Providence, RI was a big mistake from the city's and passnger's point of view. Again, quick profits from scrap and copper and increased operating expenses by leasing the new buses.

Canal Street, New Orleans, the Pacific Electric Long Beach line, Woodward-Jefferson, Michigan-Gratiot, and Fort-Kercheval in Detroit, Sparos Point in Baltimore, University-Clayton and Grant in St. Louis are examples of lines that would have lost less money and provided better service if left as streetcars. The first two are restored (part of Canal has recovered from flood damage and is back in operation).

My own opinion is that about 10% or 15% of the USA's 1920's streetcar and interurban mileage made economic and transportation sense to save and was abandoned because of "the conspiracy," The rest were replaced by buses or no service at all for good reason.

[stmtrolleyguy]

I think that everyone has made a good point, and that your original ideas a pretty close.

It has been proven that GM and other tire/oil companies did work to provide busses at a lower cost that usual. But this doesn't mean there was a conspiracy - it is possible that at the time, busses really were a better way to go. Remember, as trolley tracks aged, the ride could be pretty bad. It wasn't until the PCC that the ride got to be very good no matter what the car ran over. The Bernie, the little single-trucked lightweight cars of the 20's and 30's were economic, but they rode horribly. This might have allowed the trolley lines to keep running, but the ride was so bad it scared away any future riders, and a good portion of their old riders as well. (If anyone wants elaboration on the Bernie, ask and I can explain a little more.)

The base line, is that the trolleys required more capitol (rails, wires) than busses, and that they clogged city streets. Busses aren't great, but at least a bus can pull to the curb to let people off, or pull around a stopped delivery truck at the curb, whereas the trolley has to pick a lane, and stay there.

A lot of modern light rail is coming in on dedicated right-of-way, such as old rail lines. This makes it different from "true" trolleys of the 1920's, because they aren't directly in the streets, but who's really that picky? The point is the same. Provide a fast service into and out of the city, with affordable prices and reasonable service. What I thing we will be seeing in the future is more trolleys that run on dedicated ROW outside the city, and then on the streets in the city.

[RudyRockvilleMD]

The streetcars vanished from the Washington D.C. area because they were too expensive to run. Overhead power lines were forbidden in certain parts of Washington, D.C, mostly in what was the downtown and an area that was more or less south of Florida Avenue; that ban applied to the overhead wires for the streetcars.

The streetcars used a center slot third rail to pick up the electricity where the overhead wires were banned. The streetcars were fitted with a device called a "plow" which was fastened to its underside to project through the slot in the ground, and contact the power rail in a trench. The plow was removed from the streetcar when it got into the area where conventional overhead power pick up was permitted. The change from overhead to underground power pick up was done by a worker in a pit under the track who removed or attached the plow.

To the best of my knowledge Washington, D.C. ws the only city in the United States that used the center slot third rail power collection system in recent years. The power collection system was not reliable at times. The trenches could flood in a heavy rain storm especially if their drains were clogged with leaves. If the city used salt to melt the snow on the street the melted snow could short out the power line, and this ocurred inJanuary, 1961 when the late President Kennedy was innaugurated; a blizzard the night before his innauguration dumped 8 inches of snow in Washington, and the city had to use salt to clean the snow off Pennsylvania Avenue for the parade. The salt melted the snow, and the brine got down into the third rail trench. At times the slot contracted seizing the plow, and causing the plow to pull away from the streetcar; this condition was called a "pulled plow," and it shut the line down. The only way to fix the problem was to send a service truck out to cut the plow with a welding torch, retrieve the bottom half of the plow, and tow the streetcar away.

[Randy Stahl]

Don't forget that in many cases the streetcar franchises made the street railway company responsible for the entire maintenence of the streets that they operated on . The franchises were the reason for the early abondonment of some systems. The development of street railways and interurbans was directly tied to the development of electric power as a whole, once electric power was marketable things started to change. The REAL killer of many streetcar / interurbans.... The public utility act of the 1930s. That act made it possible for GM and the others including greyhound, to purchase the systems at rock bottom prices.
Randy
Randy

[Anonymous]

Well there are those who say streetcars didn't die, they were killed off by GM, which went around buying all the street railways it could, and then converting them to GM buses:
http://www.lovearth.net/gmdeliberatelydestroyed.htm

And there are those who say otherwise:

http://www.1134.org/stan/ul/GM-et-al.html

Streetcars were a money-losing propsition from the get go. In the early 20th Century streetcar lines were usually built by real estate developers to increase property value in new subdivisions, by making it easy for suburban homeowners to commute to their downtown jobs. Once all the homes were sold, the money-losing streetcar system became a publicly-owned system.

An example of this is the Key System in the East Bay, that was developed by Francis Marion "Borax" Smith. His streetcar system served property developed throughout the East Bay by Frank Havens' Realty Syndicate. But by the 1950's the Key System was bust, and a bond issue created the AC Transit bus system that replaced it.

I don't think it was a conspiracy to get rid of the streetcar per se. In the 1950's the streetcar subdivisions that had been developed in the early 1900's were fully mature. It made more sense to serve the outer ring of subdivisions with buses rather than make a large investment in heavy rail, particularly at a time when freeway development was in its heyday.

[SactoGuy188]

I was re-reading the recent TRAINS article on why streetcars nearly vanished from the USA.

I think in the end, there were two issues that doomed them:

1) The costs of servicing all that overhead wire and trackage got more and more expensive, especially since the streetcar lines had less and less patronage as passengers moved out of urban areas where most streetcars ran.

2) It was vastly easier to use buses to adjust routes to improve rider patronage.

What's interesting is that the revival of streetcars (as light rail systems) were often done using available or abandoned railroad right of way. Here in Sacramento, CA, the light rail lines either used former Southern Pacific right of way for the line to Folsom, CA, the current Union Pacific (neé Western Pacific) right of way down to southern Sacramento, or the abandoned freeway right of way for the line to Watt Avenue and I-80 junction. The new Natomas line now under construction is the first light rail line in Sacramento that has to get new right of way for the line.