The private automobile is on the brink of extinction for lack of affordable food. We’ve experimented by feeding it corn by products, explosive hydrogen gas, vegetable oil, a thousand pounds of batteries and yes, even coal and it still gives us fiscal indigestion.
Before I throw in the towel and begin buying hay and tacking a harness to my Wrangler, I was remembering the days before our four wheeled friends arrived. The extinction of one creature heralded the arrival of the paving of America, it was discarded and put into the scrap heap of antiquated technology. It was non polluting and was subsidized by the electric utilities, ran fairly often, was cheap to use and even ran down city streets when arriving in town as to bring you reasonably close to your destination… It also provide next or same day freight service and interchanged with Class I’s. It was built cheaply with light rail, could run up and down steep gradients so avoiding a lot of environmental digging and tied together small hamlets and big cities. It was the first technology that allowed the creation of suburbs. Our now extinct creature was called the Interurban. Is it time yet to think about bringing it back? I wonder what other solution would work for moving us around. Maybe balloons…
Progress is always change, but change is not always progress.
I guess you haven’t noticed it is makeing a comeback. Only now it’s called light rail. Although I don’t think the light rail networks will be nearley as big as the interurbans were.
from a practical POV, under idealized circumstances, the interurban’s made a lot of sense. More efficient, less polluting, fewer vehicles on the road…and cheaper than a car, after factoring in maintenance and periodic replacement.
Unfortunately, the less than ideal circumstances that are an unavoidable part of life, negate thos benefits pretty fast.
just one example: You have an important appointment at work, but you are running 10 minutes late and will miss the interurban’s 7:30 run. SO your 10 minutes now becomes a half hour-45 minute late, and counting.
So long as people can just jump in their cars and remain in control of their transportation decisions, they will. The flexibility offsets the efficiency of mass transit .
I agree that as long as the equation between fuel cost\availibility remains at a level that allows an affordable mass transit by individual private automobiles then it will remain a status quo but yet a moving target. Millions of commuters do catch the 7:30 or miss it right now.From a practical point of view, unless affordabillium is discovered as a new cheap non polluting souce of fuel-if you play the current situation out to its logical next step ( barring government intervention-whatever that would be) then a shift is beginning where market forces of supply and demand are no longer workable in a sustainable way of affordability for most folks.Where does reinvestment occur in making privately funded mass transit a profitable game?-I think that day is coming sooner than we think.
Hey, I’m not disagreeing with you. I look at old archived photo’s of my town from back when there were interurbans all over the place, with regularly scheduled routes, tied into other city’s, tied into other systems…and I wish we had those options today. I’d sure take advantage of it.
But, for the earlier described reasons, i’d also keep my car.
And unfortunately, the economic “advantages” of the interurban
disappear in a hurry, if part of the package doesn’t include helping you avoid auto insurance cost, car payments, etc.
…It is amazing the newworks we had back early in the 20th century of city streetcars and town to town interurban lines. My area in western Pennsylvania was covered with much of this type of transportation. And that terrain was not too level. Johnstown, Pa. had a vast system through out it’s metropolitan area and outreaching interurban systems tying smaller communities together. Some on the drawing boards that were not completed and some that were completed just part of the orignial distance planned. It is amazing how all that was done back then.
At one point in my neck of the woods, you could leave Chicago and go as far North as Sheyboygan Wisconsin, as far West as Rockford, Illinois, as far South as Louisville, Kentucky and as far East as Dayton, Ohio. Granted it was a long ride transferring from system to system but if you had to go-you could do it without a ticket on a Class 1 or a automobile.
it would be interesting to see a system map form theperiod where interurban developement peaked, just to see what travel was possible.
You say you could go from Chicago to Dayton…but not on to Cincinnati? I’m probably ignorant of some fact that dictated why that was a limitation, but that seems strange that you couldn’t.
Your’e right. The Cincinati and Lake Erie-I. Theres a book I forgot about called The Longest Interurban Journey about the heyday of the interurban travel. It seems a group of civic boosters converted a local New York state car into a rolling tavern and boosted their way across country all the way to Chicago.
well, this is just me thinking out loud, no more no less.
The old traction companies often were affiliated with or a direct part of electric utilities, were they not? Seems like the names of many of them I’ve read about seems to suggest that was the case.
As time went on, they abandoned the tracks for electric buses, that still used the same caternary, but freed them from maintaining the rail system, opting for rubber tires instead .
But still the energy companies predominated the (local) mass transit industry.
Then ridership declined, the caternary gave way to motorfuel buses,… and even that was not patronized well enough to maintain the interest of private industry, so most bus companies fell int municipality owned public transit system, under some moral belief that the government “owed” the service to the poor.
Spinning all that onto it’s ear, coupled with your observation that cars are soon to run out of “food”,what is to say that the energy moguls of today won’t become the mass transit barons of tomorrow?
As gasoline becomes increasingly unaffordable, perhaps the oil companies will diversify to providing mass transit scale bus service with the fuel they have
People may not pay $6/gallon for gas, but they might pay $3 to ride a bus that runs on it, if there are no better alternatives
That was my thought as well. What is the tipping point when the economic convergence of factors make mass transit possible as a investment opportunity? I think this will happen but typically the railroad industry cant seem to get ahead of the curve in forecasting future trends much like the interurbans failed to do with the onset of federally subsidized road construction and automobiles in general One of the biggest factors in the decline of interurbans was that the Supreme Court made power utilities divest their interurban holdings in one of the earlier cases of anti-monopoly policies of the US. Interurban bus routings make sense if you take enviromental concerns out of the equation as well as potential scarcity of fuel.Thinking out loud as well-what if you had electric power distribution strung overhead on major interstates- that takes batteries out of the mix. Sounds crazy but perhaps a version of a third rail such as they use in linear induction motors would work. In any event while these musings are more than abit wacked- transit for profit is eventually going to happen.
Elevated Mono-Rail tracks above mosty abandoned rail lines is the current solution.
Andrew F.
Maybe so-but this country, let alone private capital appears not to be able to finance big ticket infrastructure projects anymore and the return on expensive high tech solutions have a long payback period for private investors. That is why a low tech solution like basic two rail interurbans built cheap has a more immediate appeal to me.
Maybe an “open access” infastructure model would lend itself best to the resurgence of interurban operation? 
“It was non polluting and was subsidized by the electric utilities”
Baloney: (1) All you did was move the point source of the pollution, (2) Highly unlikely they subsidize anything anymore and (3) most interurban R/W was in public roadways which is not likely gonna happen again.
Nice sentiment though…[sigh][sigh][sigh]
May I Suggest:
“The Electric Interurban Railways In America” by George W. Hilton and John F. Due… Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. 1960.
There are complete regional and state maps, along with a brief history of each interurban company.
Hilton is my favorite rail author. He’s a PhD economist and a rail fan. His economist bacground allows him to understand “the why” of things and he’s able to explain “that why” in terms that make his writing informative and enjoyable to read.
The book goes into why the interurbans were built, how they operated, and why they declined. Interurbans facinated Hilton both as a rail fan and as an economist. And that shows in this book.
“Those that don’t know and understand history are bound to repeat it.” This book would give anyone interested in reviving the interurbans a knowledge and understand that will be invaluable.
Open access is a real possibility if it happens, it will certainly promote the concept along alot faster - especially on underutilized trackage or branchlines or for that matter, industrial trackage -all of which have already been used for light rail but mostly confined to city boundarys because they are municipally funded agencies versus private capital.Rail banked lines would be another candidate.
As far as present day pollution is concerned-I would think nuclear power is the trend-not coal plants which were used in the time of the interurban. Roadway access does not seem to be a big problem with the growing light rail system. I think it is Phoenix that has some 13 miles of street running they are constructing now as I write this.
A significant factor in both interurbans and streetcars was the population distribution. People lived in residential areas and worked downtown, or in the industrial section of town. There were clear paths between the two. Taking the trolley downtown got you access to the interurban (if it didn’t go through your part of town), so it was relatively easy to use those modes. A recent article in Trains about CUT discusses one trolley line that was built specifically to serve one suburb (which I think the building of the line may have had an interest in).
Cities today have decentralized. There is often no “border” between residential and commercial areas. Many people live in one suburb and work in another. I would suggest that to be successful in replacing automobiles, a local transit system today would have to be built in concentric rings as opposed to hub and spoke, with interconnections between the rings.
No to expensive Mag-Lev, yes to dependable old mono-rail.
Andrew F.