The Rise and Fall of the Electric Street Car Part II: The Beginning of the End

The success of the electric street car was short-lived. The Great Depression forced many routes in United States to close. There was a brief life-line for the electric trolley during the Second World War when rubber and gas were rationed and factory workers turned to mass transit. Production of wartime materials limited the possible of growth (from 1942-1943 there was little change in the total number of cities with electric street cars). However, the end of the war brought and increase in automobile use and a decline in street car use to the already struggling street car lines. By the 1960s the electric street car could only be found in a hand full of cities across North America.Growth and decline of the Electric Streetcar. Solid red area is number of cities with an electric streetcar in operation; transparent red area represents possible cities (for lack of complete records) that may have been in operation.

Service provided by the electric street car was most often replaced by buses which were seen as more flexible and requiring less infrastructure than the electric rail counterpart. This shift from electric trolley to bus has led many to believe that a union of automobile, oil, and tire companies was responsible for the dismantling of what otherwise appeared to be a productive public utility.

The possibility of a conspiracy against the electric streetcar is at least likely given the circumstances publicly known. In 1949, General Motors together with Standard Oil (now Cheveron) and Firestone were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit authorities. The goals of this group were to promote the use and sale of buses, tires and gasoline: three things not needed in cites with electric streetcars. Therefore the use of such a transit system often came at the cost of reduced or complete dismantling of electric street car routes.

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The Rise and Fall of the Electric Street Car Part I: The Beginning

The modern electric street car evolved from horse-drawn omnibuses which lasted from 1820s-1880s. Before long, bus operators started running horse cars on rails to reduce rolling resistance and increase speed (this began in 1830s-40s) compared the unpaved surfaces used until then. In 1860s-1890s other forms of motive power (often steam or cable) became more common. Making the switch from horse-drawn trolleys to electric was an obvious choice for most cities wishing to be rid of the care and maintenance horses required.

1882 was the birth of the first electric street car in America in South Bend Indiana. In little more than a decade the electric street car had transformed the urban and suburban landscape of almost 900 U.S. cities. Scranton Pennsylvania was an early adopter of the Electric street car and earned the nickname “The Electric City”. Electricity provided a major advancement in transportation but the use of rail was becoming obsolete; city streets were no longer dirt and the investment of track meant routes could not change to accommodate an evolving city.

Part II >