During the first half of the 1930s,
the heyday of the electric streetcar seemed to be over. To halt the decline in
trolley ridership, the heads of 25 leading electric railway companies organized
the Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC). The PCC held numerous
meetings to discuss ways to draw passengers back to the trolley lines. The result
of these meetings was a redesigned trolley car that would make the electric
streetcar more appealing to the traveling public.
The PCC Car
The PCC developed a modern-looking
streetcar that was equipped with better, more comfortable seats. The ride along
the rails became smoother, and the exterior of the car was redesigned to make
the electric railway more visually pleasing. That this design looked
suspiciously like modern buses was no accident.
This new trolley was given a new
name (the "PCC car"), but was still an electrified streetcar. As part of its
marketing campaign, the electric railway industry claimed that the new vehicle was better than its
predecessors in terms of acceleration, braking, passenger comfort, and noise.
The PCC car was indeed a much nicer
streetcar. The first one appeared on the streets of Brooklyn, New York
in 1935. By 1940, 1100 of these cars had hit America's streets.
Rationing and Railways
The PCC car's emergence on the eve
of World Word War II benefited the electric railway industry, the traveling
public, and the U.S.
government. Once the United
States became involved in the global
conflict, large-scale rationing was enforced. One of the many directives from
the federal government was for owners of automobiles to stop using their cars
for idle transport. This wasn't necessarily because of a gas shortage, however,
for the United States
had domestic oil reserves to help carry it through the war.
The problem was a shortage of
rubber for automobile tires. The Japanese had cut-off the prime source of
natural rubber that the United States
imported from Southeast Asia. If motorists continued to drive their cars, the
supply of tires would run out. Moreover, the supply network for the war effort was
at risk of collapse, especially since the United States now relied upon
trucks to move goods across the country.
Mass Transit vs. The Good Life
Wartime limitations on automobile
travel forced stateside Americans to return to mass transit for the duration of
the war. The years 1941 to 1946 saw the highest recorded passenger totals on
the nation's mass transit system with 23.4 billion annual trips. In 1946, over
9 million of those trips were on electrified streetcars. This figure
represented the highest passenger total since the electric streetcar's peak in 1923.
After the war, returning GIs who wanted
"the good life" for their families were drawn to the freedom of mobility found in
the automobile. The automobile industry quickly responded to that demand. In
1945, automobile production totaled 70,000 vehicles. A year later, that number
jumped to 2 million vehicles produced.
The dream of raising a family in
the pastoral suburbs and leaving the deteriorating downtown streets seemed
achievable with the easy availability of the personal automobile. Now that the
war was over, what would become of the electric streetcar?
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