RAIL TRANSIT
REBIRTH OF THE
STREETCAR BY DAVID PETER ALAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
wo centuries ago, before anyone had the idea of laying rails on the ground so wheels could run swiftly and smoothly over them, nobody could travel faster than they or a horse could walk, or a boat could sail. Then came trains and streetcars, and everybody’s world suddenly seemed smaller. Then, in the past century, came the decline of passenger trains and the near-extinction of streetcars in the United States and Canada. The past few decades have brought the rebirth of the streetcar, but not necessarily the way it was in its former Golden Age. It has become a genus, with several different species of vehicles that could be classified as “streetcars” or as the related species of “light rail” in all parts of the nation. There were elevated railroads in New York City and a few other places by the late 19th century, but even the “accommodation
44 Railway Age // May 2021
trains” that made plenty of local stops did not bring everybody within easy walking distance from their homes or offices. Then came inventors like Frank Julian Sprague and Granville T. Woods, who figured out how to propel a vehicle along rails by taking power from an overhead wire. The streetcar or “trolley car” (named after the wheel at the end of the trolley pole that comes in contact with the wire) was born. From their debut in Richmond, Va., in 1888, the cars were an instant success. Streetcars replaced cable cars everywhere except in San Francisco, and the horse barns that had previously pulled omnibuses became “car barns.” Cars were connecting every neighborhood in cities, and ran between cities and towns on interurban routes. Then came decline and near-extinction, largely driven by Alfred P. Sloan, Chair of the Board of General Motors. There is an apocryphal story that Sloan was watching hoards of Cleveland commuters
board streetcars to take them home from work in 1922. As the story goes, he decided that the only way to sell enough automobiles was to destroy the streetcars. Whether or not that was the start of Sloan’s own culture war, he succeeded brilliantly. By the mid-1960s, only eight North American cities (Boston, Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New Orleans, San Francisco and Toronto) had at least one surviving line. Yet, during the past 40 years, the streetcar has rebounded from the precipice of the grave. Counting cities and towns that sport at least one line with vehicles that can be called “streetcars” under a broad definition, there were 41 in the U.S. and five in Canada last year. It was a remarkable comeback for a mode whose vehicles were once considered worthy only of being scrapped, and the idea behind it was disrespected as obsolete, even silly. That was not true everywhere, though. In 2010, I interviewed Justin T. Augustine III, railwayage.com
William C. Vantuono
T
Nearly wiped out decades ago, the lightest form of light rail has made a remarkable comeback.
