I don’t know WHY Philly kept their trolleys. Perhaps because, starting in the 1950s, Philly was seen as sort of an economic backwater and that perception has only gotten stronger over the years. So maybe the urge to redevelop the transit system wasn’t as strong.
I do know that the main reason they went away from trolleys more recently was a major car barn fire that destroyed a lot of their rolling stock. Since then they have restored and upgraded some PCC cars and restarted trolley service on a couple of historic lines. Most notably the number 15 on Girard Avenue, which I rode a lot as a kid.
It would be hard to operate the Subway-Surface lines from the 35th and Market area to City Hall as anything but a trolley line. And Philly is one of the very few US cities I know of with commuter rail service right from the airport direct to downtown. When you leave the air terminal building the bridge to baggage claim takes you right over the rail line.
Althoulgh Memphis trolleys are for tourists, many downtown shoppers also use them in the historic district. The line goes out to the hospital also. They are fun to ride.
I can only conclude that sometimes old-fashioned is good. Perhaps we could turn the table and ask why so many large American cities got rid of their streetcars? Kansas City, MO, is one example of a medium-large city that once had an extensive system that was scrapped for buses, whose revenues then declined.
With probably the best of intentions, let’s remember that the federal government after World War Two did just about all in its power to get the white middle-class out of the cities and into the ring suburbs. V.A. Loans, FHA loans, Ginnie and Fannie Mae in the 1960s, and of course additions to the original Interstate Highway legislation that sent expressways running into and sometimes thru central cities. (That was not Pres. Eisenhower’s original intention. He wanted toll roads running to the edge of the city, not downtown. If you’re in Chicago and take the original Chicago Skyway exit that dumps you onto Stony Island Boulevard (1953), that was the original intention. The Dan Ryan came along almost ten years later (1962).)
Now, I guess, the ironic thing is to watch cities scrambling to retain some trolley charm (I am not counting rubber-tired tourist trolleys, which mean nothing to me). Charlotte, North Carolina, undoubtedly had SOME kind of streetcar system in the first half of the 20th Century. Now, if I recall correctly, it has inaugurated a brand new "antique&qu
Most cities got rid of their streetcars because of one major problem: they couldn’t easily reroute streetcar routes to compensate for demographic changes in the city. Since buses weren’t tied to where you could run streetcar lines, that’s why by the late 1950’s all the city transit companies switched to buses.
early streetcar lines were privately owned, if they werent profitable via the ticket sales, out it went, or recivership, bought out, whatever or disappeared. Existing lines today may be far too embedded into the social situation to abandon them and are often extra-supported thru government financing.
Through with all this topic was oroginally opened for the todays situation, in cityes in which streetcars lines where totally disementeled, there was no streetcar lover to protest against this messure?
Of course there were people who protested against the elimination of trolley cars, but almost always they were in the minority. Trolleys were “old-fashioned” and to advocate for them was “against progress.” In some cases (perhaps not quite so many as thought), General Motors bought out the (then privately-owned) transit systems and started converting them to their own diesel busses. In some cities GM worked their magic on journalists after WWII, and all of a sudden newspapers were saying trolley cars “ground” or “struggled” uphill, as opposed to busses, with their “smooth” ride that “glided” by. Lies, of course, but what can you do?
Where was most of the money put? Freeways, urban freeways. People didn’t consider then that the freeway is itself a transportation mode and that in not too many years it would cost much more to maintain them than to acquire the land and build them originally did. Cheap gas, cheap cars, expanding suburbia all conspired to rout (no pun intended) public transportation. Some cities went from tolley to trackless trolley to bus. And all the time, legislators and corporations like GM were telling us this was what we wanted and they were merely responding to “public demand.”
You will notice in the USA that while we decry the elimination of streetcars, most of us use and benefit from the rural Interstate highways, which probably more than any one other factor hastened the demise of the long-distance passenger train. - a.s.
All depends on the perspective you’re looking at it from. One could regard oneself as benefiting from the highways, so long as you aren’t stuck on them when traffic isn’t moving. From my perspective, it’s not a choice to me; therefore, I’ve been forced to use the only mode now available (but at the same time, the other modes used to be quite prevalent).
As far as cities go, it’s not cheaper to use buses. Buses last 20 years if you’re lucky (average age is about 15 years, longer for trackless version, longer still for rail vehicles); most buses are internal-combustion; and within the city, it’s a canard when one mentions the flexibility in terms of altering routes, since most city routes have remained unaltered for decades upon decades. (AFAICS, most cities didn’t convert from trolley to trackless, that not being National City Lines’ goal; the two technologies, trackless and tracked, grew up alongside each other, besides.) Pity that the statute of limitations ran out to reopen the NCL case; but seeing the current state of the Big Three, the chickens are already coming home to roost there.
Note other countries that also have “highways” (the interstate wasn’t invented here) that for a long time have known that it’s not enough to have it as the dominant, and often sole, land transportation mode for passengers. They’re way ahead of the USA, who has stagnated.
The one and only one North American city where protests DID work was Toironto. The politicians did listen, a downtown elevated freeway was scrapped, and the basic streetcar system kept, all heavily used routes that were not directly paralleled by or above the new subway lines. Two York University professors spearheaded the drive, one a woman, and they had all their facts straight and did an excellent job. Later, Mayor Marvin Landsman was thoroughly pro-streetcar and during his era the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle and the Articulated Light Rail Vehicle were designed with proven componants and worked reliably, replacing the huge PCC fleet, which were fine cars but had rust problems. The CLRC and ALRV are good looking cars, too, but not low-floor. As far as I know new low-floor cars are being out for bid right now.
This is basically a streetcar system, tracks in the street, stopping at every other corner, etc. There are some new LRV lines and stretches of track, and one older private right-of-way line still in use, but it is basically a streetcar system. And a darned good one!
Trolleybuses (trackless trolleys) can last sometimes for 30 yrs. or even more. For eg, in Ruse, Bulgaria (about 50 miles South from Bucharest, Romania) they have some second-hand trolleybuses bought from Switzerland. The oldest (4 in number) are made in 1956! The rest of the Swiss are from 1963-1966. [:O] The company who manufactured them was “F.B.W”.
Talikng about buses, they sometimes can run even more than 20 yrs. And I’m not talking about Cuba. In Romania, in Municipium of Miercurea Ciuc (administrative center of Harghita county) we have 3 “F.B.W.” buses made in 1965 [:O], brought in Romania in 1990. Well, you must admit the city is small and people there are more civilized then in Bucharest. And in some areas we still have some buses made in the '70’s (most of them second-hand bought).
But, the basic streetcar (not the modern ones with God knows what equypment) is an simple vehicle, that lasts long and it’s quyte easy to built. But the guys from Garbage Motors applied the word of Lenin “Tell them what they want to hear”.
And a streetcar or an light rail vehicle can carry more people than a bus or trolleybus (even articulated ones). This is one of the reasons that most Romanian cityes didn’t quyt the streetcar in the '50-'80’s (there where very few cars and workers couldn’t be transported only by bus or trolleybus).
The oldest streetcar that I ride was made in 1955 (that was back in the '90’s) - in the '000’s it where streetcars from 1964-1965, the oldest trolleybus was from 1975, and the oldest bus around 1979-1981. None of the vehicles was made in Romania.
The old Public Service trolley system is still alive and kicking in New Jersey in a small way. The Newark Subway is the last remnant of the extensive old PS system. Calling it a subway is a bit of a stretch as the system is primarily above ground in the bed of an old canal. I have not looked at the signs on the new LRVs they are running (I still ride the system occationally) but when they were still running PCCs (I was on the last ride) the cars still carried the sign “7 Newark Subway”, the route designation from the old trolley days.
It is kind of sad that the old trolley system was torn apart, especially considering that they are now rebuilding it of sorts. The Hudson-Bergen light Rail, Camden’s Light rail service and the expansion of the Newark subway line is an example of what-was-old-is-new-again.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. Busses are not cheaper to run, which is why it took GM to advocate for them. Just allowing natural Depression-era economics (which wasn’t about ripping out old systems for the heck of it), trolleys would probably have had more of a stay without GM’s help – in some cities at least – and there would probably be more extant trolley systems. Note that the most effective resister of the rip-up-the-tracks philosophy is not in the USA at all (Toronto, ON).&nb