In today's world where there is sufficient traffic for a form of rail transportation it is urban. With the sprawl of today's communities there is no 'inter'. One community's leaving sign is the next community's welcome sign.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I think you will find genuine rural areas between St. Louis and Bellville with farms. And Pacific Electric's LA - Long Beach line, the last to be bussed and the first to be revived as light rail, traversed only settled communities without real rural areas by the time the USA entered WWII.
Settled areas are one thing, but a business core and many opportunities for employment are another. If two or more such are connected by light rail, especially if not contiguous, then i would judge the line to be an interurban line.
Of course up to about 1939, there were still farms abutting both the Brighton and the Culver Brooklyn BMT lines, now the B & Q and the F. And my relatives did not say "We will take the subway to Manhattan." They said "We will take the train to the City." If they did not remember the days of steam engines, they did remember suface operation of gate elevated cars with traps and steps and trolleypoles and entrance to Manhattan either via the Brooklyn Bridge or the Fulton Ferryboat.
And you are entitled to your definition. As I am with mine.
CTA's proposal in 1958 to operate third-rail equipped PCC's in local service on CA&E between Forest Park and Wheaton is rather well-known. However, it is questionable how serious this proposal was for a variety of reasons. The proposed operation extended beyond CTA's legally established service area and would have required action by the General Assembly. The proposal did not include any method of funding the operation. Any kind of operation by CTA into Dupage County was politically unfeasible at the time.
Also, the Illinois Prairie Path was one of the first rail-to-trail conversions and came into existence shortly after the formal abandonment of CA&E in 1961. As an urban trail, it is quite popular and heavily used.
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