With the end of World War II, America
underwent an automobile-driven explosion of sprawling suburbs. This demographic
development continued during the 1950s and 1960s, and the streetcar industry gradually
lost the support it needed to continue operations. Many government agencies did
little to prevent the continuing disappearance of streetcar lines throughout U.S.
cities. A post-war economic boom also changed the habits of commuters and
consumers.
Trackless Trolleys
The prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s
permitted many American families to own at least one automobile. The traveling public
then made its transportation choice known - the automobile was the wave of the
future. During this time, transportation planners embraced the idealistic
notions of Robert Moses, the architect of the modern roadways. Four-lane
highways spread across the countryside and plowed through the center of cities,
eliminating evidence of an era when streetcars dominated the urban landscape. As
Mark S. Foster laments in Streetcar to
Superhighway, "By the time transportation planners made any significant
effort to save mass transit systems, many were either defunct or beyond
financial salvation".
Many of the streetcar lines were converted
to "trackless trolleys", buses powered by electricity via two "trolley" poles
mounted atop the vehicle. One pole was for the positive electrical current (600
volts, as was the streetcar). The other pole was for the negative return. These
trackless trolleys provided a cost-effective alternative to replacing rundown
and expensive streetcars. In addition, buses did not require the laying of tracks
- an expensive and increasingly unpopular option.
Trackless trolleys were not
entirely new, however. As early as 1910, they had appeared on the streets of Los Angeles. Ohio saw the
introduction of these hybrid buses in 1933. Later, Boston,
Philadelphia and San Francisco converted many of their rail
lines to these rubber-running trolleys. Some lines are still in operation
today.
Decline and Return
The number of streetcar lines left
in the U.S.
continued to decline from the middle of the twentieth century to its end. By 1970,
there were only seven cities left with operational streetcar lines. It seems
amazing that these vehicles were allowed to rumble through American cities at
all, but their services were still needed.
Philadelphia ran its few remaining PCC cars
along a couple lines through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Boston still runs its PCCs on the
Ashmont-Mattapan line. One of the last lines was replaced by bus as late as
1992. Fast forward 13 years, however, and the route may return to the electric
streetcar.
Oddity or Necessity?
For a time, America's few remaining streetcar tended
to be relegated to outsiders as something to promote tourism. The Market Street
F Line in San Francisco and the Charles
Street line in New Orleans come to mind. Yet when the San
Francisco Line was brought back to Market
Street in the 1970s, it soon became popular with
the commuter crowd. Today, the non-profit Market Street Railway organization
continues to expand its service and acquire streetcars for the two
lines it now runs. The non-profit expanded its F Line service through The Embarcadero District
after a 1989 earthquake rendered unusable the double-decker freeway that towered
over the shoreline of Fisherman's Wharf and the Ferry Building seen below.
 The handful of streetcar lines that
have managed to survive in Philadelphia and Boston continue to run
through their respective cities as part of municipal mass transit
organizations. In today's cities, mass transit is run primarily by city
governments as a service to workers who reside in urban centers. City-run bus
routes tend not to make much money from this service, but are deemed necessary
and demanded by working class voters who cannot afford a car to get to work.
There are also a growing number of
non-profit streetcar and trolley preservation organizations which continue to
restore old trolleys and lobby city governments to restore some trolley line
track. Commuters in San Francisco
have taken to their streetcar lines over some protests from locals who complain
about the rumbling they hear at 5:45 in the morning. But most urban residents have
welcomed the few instances of streetcars that re-appear in their cities.
Photo Credits: Mike Szilagyi photo (trackless trolley), rootsweb.ancestry.com
Previous Blog Entries in This Series
The American Streetcar (Part 1)
From Stagecoach to Streetcar (Part 2)
From Horse-Drawn Streetcars to Cable Cars (Part
3)
The Birth of the Electric Streetcar (Part 4)
Electric Streetcars and Trolley Technology (Part
5)
Electric Streetcars: Private Lines and Public Roads
(Part 6)
The Rise of the Electric Streetcar (Part 7)
Electric Streetcars and the Industrial Revolution
(Part 8)
General Electric and the Schenectady Streetcar (Part
9)
Streetcar Suburbs and Interurban Trolleys (Part
10)
Electric Amusement: The Trolley and Leisure (Part
11)
The Streetcar Turns a Corner (Part 12)
Electric Streetcars: The PCC and Wartime Mobility
(Part 13)
Post-War Trauma for the Streetcar (Part 14)
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