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  #41  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2018, 3:32 PM
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Originally Posted by LMich View Post
I think people forget that streetcars were often considered major noise nuisances, particularly when poorly maintained, and could be moderately dangerous for pedestrians and users of other modes. I know there is a nostalgia for them now, and that it was stupid to rip up entire systems whole cloth, but there were definitely a lot of lines that functioned better as (motor)bus routes. Oh, and the whole thing about cyclists? Yeah, the cycling community was not happy about the installation of the line on Woodward, recently. There was a whole piece about the speed of the new line so they had a person take a bus, a person drive, a person walk, and a person cycle. The cyclist end up wiping out early in his trip, if I remember it correctly, while trying to navigate the rails in the street. lol
I rode one of the historic streetcars in SF and yes, they were noisy. I had heard the comment about noise too and this confirmed it. The PCC streetcars were designed to address this problem and newer models would be even better as far as reducing steel wheel on steel rail noise.
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  #42  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2018, 6:00 PM
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Originally Posted by LMich View Post
I think people forget that streetcars were often considered major noise nuisances, particularly when poorly maintained, and could be moderately dangerous for pedestrians and users of other modes. I know there is a nostalgia for them now, and that it was stupid to rip up entire systems whole cloth, but there were definitely a lot of lines that functioned better as (motor)bus routes. Oh, and the whole thing about cyclists? Yeah, the cycling community was not happy about the installation of the line on Woodward, recently. There was a whole piece about the speed of the new line so they had a person take a bus, a person drive, a person walk, and a person cycle. The cyclist end up wiping out early in his trip, if I remember it correctly, while trying to navigate the rails in the street. lol

The tracks can be tricky if you're not used to them, but otherwise, cycling along streetcar routes is vastly preferable to bus routes.

A couple of the streetcar lines in my area have been temporarily replaced with buses, and it's definitely made biking less pleasant (and they're noisier too!). Whereas a cyclist would have to jostle for space with aggressive bus drivers who pull into the bike lanes to let passengers on and off, a streetcar stays in a controlled lane and leaves a comfortable space for cyclists.
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  #43  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2018, 6:41 PM
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Originally Posted by LMich View Post
I think people forget that streetcars were often considered major noise nuisances, particularly when poorly maintained, and could be moderately dangerous for pedestrians and users of other modes.
This is more propaganda than actual issues that were made better by streetcars going away. People were probably used to the noise, just like anyone living near an elevated line in Chicago or New York is used to how noisy the trains are when they pass by.

Also, I don't think street cars are more dangerous for pedestrians than what we have today. In cities that still use streetcars, Lisbon for instance, it's easier to be a pedestrian there than say... Houston.
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  #44  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2018, 2:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Boisebro View Post
Boise had an electric trolley system that connected the towns throughout the Treasure Valley from 1906 to 1928.
...
Many of the old rail lines are still embedded under downtown streets, but the only reminder above ground is a kiosk where the old South Street Station was located:
...
Boise is currently considering a new fixed rail streetcar system, starting with a downtown loop and eventually expanding throughout the valley, but it's still a long way from reality.
I was born in Boise and still have a lot of family in the area. I knew they'd had a little rail "back in the day," but had no idea it tied together Boise, Middleton, Caldwell, Nampa and points in-between. Looks like it even went to roughly where the airport is now (or maybe it was just to Union Station - hard say from that map). I know that for a big fire in Nampa, they had to bring a fire brigade from Boise via what sounded like a commuter rail track running at speeds - at that time - were among the fastest ever in America - something astounding like - wait for it - 59mph!

My grandmother lived on farmland just outside Caldwell when I was growing up. My mother and her siblings just sold that property recently, after a decade of dithering about what to do with it. My brother lives in the North End, I have a cousin in Meridian, my parents now live in Middleton, and I have an aunt by marriage and a different blood uncle in Nampa, and a great-aunt out in Owyhee County (her husband was my grandmother's brother and a semi-famous horseman). My grandmother and her brother grew up in Silver City and Murphy - I still like visiting Silver City in the summer months just to see an old American mining-town-now-ghost-town. Silver City was the first city in Idaho to have electric lights - I minor miracle at the time. Now it doesn't have any electricity except what residents get from private solar panels.

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Originally Posted by left of center View Post
Chicago's surface lines (in contrast to the elevated lines) used to be one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the world, with over 500 miles of track and hundreds of different marked routes. Ridership declined around WWII, and the CTA eventually absorbed the private companies that operated the lines. By the 1950's, the rails were being ripped up or buried under asphalt as buses began to replace the streetcars.
...
When doing street reconstruction it's still relatively common to see streetcar tracks pulled up as part of the work. I live in River North and usually work in the greater Loop area. Just in the past couple of years I've seen tracks pulled out of Clark Street, Wells Street, and Franklin Street, as well as a few points north of downtown.

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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Some systems were bought by a private company and deactivated. It was done with the goal of selling buses.
Buses were considered a modern alternative to streetcars. Streetcars were dangerous - a danger that modern lightrail still runs into because when properly designed and on straight runs they're so quiet and sometimes they "sneak up on" pedestrians. Plus buses can go around obstructions. Trolley-buses, to me, seem like a good combo - less pollution, quieter than either diesel buses or steel wheels, some ability to move around obstructions. Boston's Silver Line uses combo trolley/diesel buses, although they require more time switching between the two power sources than would seem to be ideal.

I'd love to see Chicago implement better-designed combo trolley/diesel-hybrid buses, especially downtown where all the diesel buses contribute a lot of particulates to the air. They CTA is using a lot of hybrid buses these days, which helps alot, and even is experimenting with all-electric buses, which seems like a good alternative if the range and charging times can be kept reasonable. Alternatively, they could use wireless charging from in-the-street chargers - that would be cool. It'd be kind of like trolley buses, but without the unsightly overhead wires.

I don't fully buy into the most conspiracy-minded interpretations of automobile companies' buying and dismantling streetcar systems - many of those systems were functionally bankrupt at the time anyway and buses kept them closer to solvency - although as the conversion of transit companies to public services demonstrates, even that didn't cure all the financial ills they suffered because of competition from personal automobiles and grade-separately rapid transit (elevated and/or subway systems) in many cities.
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  #45  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2018, 3:04 PM
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Minneapolis/St Paul streetcar map circa 1947:

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  #46  
Old Posted Jun 13, 2018, 6:47 PM
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Edmonton only had seven streetcar lines at its peak in 1944.



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  #47  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 5:26 AM
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Originally Posted by Centropolis View Post
it blows my mind neither st. louis nor detroit built a real rapid transit system considering that the streetcar system appeared to be completely maxed out in both cities.
St`Louis has a decent sized and effective LRT system. It`s Detroit that didn`t create any rapid transit and still hasn`t.

The wholesale destruction of the streetcar systems, contrary to popular belief, wasn`t due solely to GM. Post-WW1, the car began to make a real difference in how the public got around and Post-WW2, the change was huge as everyone seemed to own a car. Few systems actually had exclusive ROW and with the huge increase in car traffic in the cities, streetcars were very much slowing traffic down. Buses were seen as far more flexible in the urban environment as they could negotiate around accidents, construction, and breakdowns of other vehicles. The buses also offered the kind of service that streetcars couldn`t in the new and rapidly growing lower density suburbs.

Streetcar expansion into suburban areas was not cost effective and so the tracks were ripped up so that buses could run from the new white suburbs directly downtown without having to negotiate their way around streetcars. The streetcar ridership began to fall dramatically at the same time due to `white flight` so the cities had expensive streetcars and tracks to repair with collapsing ridership due to a plunging population and a much poorer one to boot. In the US this was made much worse by the fact that City Halls didn`t want to spend a lot of money on new streetcars and track/catenary repairs when the people using them were increasingly black.

The buses took over because they were transporting the white suburbanites while the streetcar tracks, infrastructure, and rolling stock was allowed to die a slow death because they were increasingly only serving the inner-city black community. The many urban freeways built after WW2 also ripped thru and destroyed inner city black areas which meant the destruction of neighbourhoods but also streetcar tracks and the cities had no intention of reconstructing those ripped up tracks for the black population. The blacks needed better transit but the wealthy white suburbanites wanted their tax dollars going toward new roads in their new suburbs...….guess who won that argument?

The destruction of streetcar routes was another example of white flight`s long-term negative urban consequences.

Last edited by ssiguy; Jun 14, 2018 at 5:43 AM.
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  #48  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 5:45 AM
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not demolished, but good comparison - 1950:



Today:

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  #49  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 1:07 PM
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The Pacific Electric, once the largest electric railway in the world. Torn up and replaced with freeways.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric
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  #50  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 1:25 PM
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Here's a closer map of the downtown area in 1906:



http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault...ar_system.html

Larger version available in the link
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  #51  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 2:18 PM
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian View Post
^^As someone who has "wiped out" a scooter (Vespa type) on streetcar tracks, all I can say is, "You learn to take them at an acute angle." And by the way, they aren't as dangerous as those big metal plates construction crews put over holes they've dug in the street when they go home for the day (or weekend).
Agreed. I've never understand why those things aren't mandated to have a roughed textured surface for safety. When they are wet they might as well be covered in wet leaves and snot.
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  #52  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 9:52 PM
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Originally Posted by badrunner View Post
The Pacific Electric, once the largest electric railway in the world. Torn up and replaced with freeways.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric
it's a bit hard to make out but I'd love to see a map with the network on it, but more clearly shows how far Los Angeles had developed at that stage.

It was a mind-boggling network.
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  #53  
Old Posted Jun 14, 2018, 10:01 PM
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There's a full size version available in the wiki article.

direct link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ic_Railway.jpg (9MB)

It's a gem.
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  #54  
Old Posted Jun 15, 2018, 1:58 PM
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I guess since we're posting interurban systems, too, here is an old map of Detroit's interurban lines circa 1913:



And another typology from 1915:



This entire system is gone. Detroit United Railway (DUR) was the private owner and developer of most of the original streetcar lines and many of the interurban lines, which they'd all bought up until the 20's. It was at this time when Detroit was trying to create a more comprehensive system that the city's Department of Street Railways (DSR) bought many of the lines as the DUR unraveled itself. By 1928, DUR had pared itself down to a single interurban line between Detroit and Toledo and had re-organized itself as Eastern Michigan Railways before going out of business in the early 30's.
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  #55  
Old Posted Jun 16, 2018, 2:26 AM
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Originally Posted by PhilliesPhan View Post
Here is what Philadelphia's trolley system looked like in 1944. This doesn't even include all of the trolley routes in North, West, Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast Philly, as well as the routes that went to our suburban counties:


Smartsync.me

Ripping out our trolley system was one of the most foolish things to ever occur in my city, aside from not building out our proposed subway system.
I know it sounds foolish, but the trolley to bus conversion was a sign of the times in the 1950’s. The real blunder in Philadelphia’s history was not building an expansive subway system to NE, NW, SW, and immediate suburbs suck as Norristown, Jenkintown, Bensalem, Darby, and Chester. Philadelphia even had an inter urban rail system to Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Reading, and Lancaster, and West Chester, but that was scrapped in the 1980’s thanks to SEPTA and with the CITC, we’re officially a one company town!
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  #56  
Old Posted Jun 16, 2018, 2:45 AM
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Old Tracks

every time they dig up a street in River North (Chicago) more of these - note the grove for the flange - easier to maintain, and makes for very simple switching.



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  #57  
Old Posted Jun 17, 2018, 12:25 AM
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Best one of Boston I could find from 1925--includes other things than streetcars.


Theres also the streetcar map from the 40s.


Then juxtapose that to the current green line map, you can see what they got rid of, vs what they added.
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  #58  
Old Posted Jun 20, 2018, 3:31 AM
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#WinnipegNow+Then: Streetcar on Notre Dame Avenue. Today the tracks are exposed during a street renewal project.




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It is so cool to see the old streetcar lines being dug up on Notre Dame. I wish we could just keep them there and put streetcars back on them. They could provide an important layer to the city’s public transit network - high capacity, high frequency, neighbourhood connectors.
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