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Wpitonya
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Username: Wpitonya

Post Number: 31
Registered: 08-2005
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 2:13 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I am doing a research paper on the decline of streetcars (all over...not only in Detroit). Can anyone give me any research advice?? Can anyone tell me about the decline of streetcars in Detroit?
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Douglasm
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Username: Douglasm

Post Number: 698
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 2:30 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Try this.....
http://hometown.aol.com/chirai lfan

Scroll down the homepage to "Midwest Transit-Present and Past". Click on it, then scroll down on the next screen to either Detroit or Detroit Suburban. There's some good infomation buried in there about the DSR, DUR, and other streetcar/interurban type stuff.
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Detroitnerd
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Username: Detroitnerd

Post Number: 714
Registered: 07-2004
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 4:02 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

http://www.metrotimes.com/edit orial/story.asp?id=9040
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Hornwrecker
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Username: Hornwrecker

Post Number: 1693
Registered: 04-2005
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 4:24 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The book you want on the DSR is Detroit's Street Railways, Volume II: 1922-1956,Bulletin 120 of the Central Electric Railfan's Association, 1980. I think there is a copy of it currently for sale on ebay, if you can't find it in a library or locally.

There is also some info in the three page DSR Streetcar Memories thread in the HOF section. Have a look there first, then come back with any specific questions, if you have them.
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Detroitplanner
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Username: Detroitplanner

Post Number: 305
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 9:35 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Well there were streetcars, then the City got rid of them so businesses like General Motors could get a piece of the action.

At the time it was a rationale move, after all; who didn't want GM to make more money; and the City could be served by busses.

Private companies ran many of the streetcar lines that became bus lines. The operators also were very smart and owned Jefferson Beach and Edgewater Amusement parks. This was to increase ridership, especially on weekends when the need for transit was less. There was no demand so they created one!

Busses served the city very well through the 1980's. As money got tight, people began to look at how much it costs to operate transit in general, and started to reduce service. This was done without asking the key question of "What will the impact be of worse transit on the economy as a whole?".
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Jasoncw
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Username: Jasoncw

Post Number: 261
Registered: 07-2005
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 9:37 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

If you want an ear full on street cars you came to the right place.

Hopefully this doesn't turn into a peoplemover expansion thread, or a light rail thread, or a MCS thread, or anything like that.
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Tndetroiter
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Username: Tndetroiter

Post Number: 492
Registered: 12-2005
Posted on Sunday, October 29, 2006 - 9:43 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

"Trains" ran an article about 8-6 months back about the decline of street car systems. It asserted the notion that the myth of GM and the rubber and gas interests conspiring to do in street car systems all across the country was largely false. I can't remeber why exactly they said the systems died off though...
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Motranzit
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Username: Motranzit

Post Number: 2
Registered: 10-2006
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 6:56 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

There's a new book out on the history of the DSR, published by Arcadia and written by Ken Schramm. Available at Pure Detroit.
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Kathleen
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Username: Kathleen

Post Number: 1663
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 8:06 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

More info on the Arcadia book: http://www.arcadiapublishing.c om/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scre en=PROD&Store_Code=arcadia&Pro duct_Code=0738540277&Product_C ount=&Category_Code=

And check out the Detroit Transit History website at http://www.detroittransithisto ry.info/index.html
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Aarne_frobom
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Username: Aarne_frobom

Post Number: 35
Registered: 10-2005
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 9:42 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

One of your key references should be an article in the Eno Foundation's magazine, Transportation Quarterly, of about six or seven years ago. The library I use no longer keeps its back issues, so I'm sorry I can't give you the citation. But this article by a historian is the best refutation to date of what's called the "Snell hypothesis," or what I call the National City Lines conspiracy theory. (This is the urban myth that trolleys were displaced by a secret conspiracy of GM, Firestone, and the oil companies so as to sell more buses, cars, tires and fuel.) The Eno article completes the work begun by economic historian George Hilton in the congressional testimony against the Snell hypothesis, which is referenced in the recent Trains Magazine article.

It would be good to add a Detroit case study to the research on the abandonment of trolleys. The Schramm book contains the outline of events, but not the details. The fact that trolleys survived longer in Detroit than in many similar cities, literally running in front of the GM building until 1956, provides circumstantial evidence that the publicly-owned DSR was not unduly influenced by private bus interests in its abandonment decision. Perhaps your research can fill out the record of decisions that took place around this event.

I think the recent Trains Magazine article sums up the issues pretty well. Trolleys were abandoned worldwide, not just in U.S. cities, because:

Maintaining the track and overhead in a city-street environment is expensive.

Routes are inflexible.

Street railways absorb too much street capacity needed by cars and buses.

There is no convenient, safe way to board passengers on track running in the middle of streets. (The photos of "safety zones" on Detroit streets in the DSR thread are positively scary.)

A route blocked by a parked auto or dead trolley car is impassable until the blockage is removed; buses can go around obstacles.

And most decisively: tracks built in the early decades of the 20th century were worn out by 1950, and presented an insurmountable barrier to continued trolley service when compared with bus purchase. Even under lightweight trolley cars, ties and rail don't last forever. Digging worn girder rail and spike-killed ties out from under pavement cost big, big money and in the 1950's, neither the DSR nor private trolley lines in other cities had it.

(Cool trivia: the last DSR car in Michigan is visible in the Google Earth aerial photo of Selfridge ANG Base, stored there by the Michigan Transit Museum.)
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Detroitnerd
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Username: Detroitnerd

Post Number: 716
Registered: 07-2004
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 11:01 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Yes, streetcar were abandoned worldwide, but not all streetcar systems in the world were abandoned. The way you put it implies that all parts of the world decided to give up streetcar service. Different parts of the world made different choices. And some American cities, notably New Orleans and San Francisco, kept light rail.
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Upinottawa
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Username: Upinottawa

Post Number: 596
Registered: 09-2005
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 1:06 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Toronto also continues to have a significant streetcar system.

tsc
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Focusonthed
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Username: Focusonthed

Post Number: 570
Registered: 02-2006
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 3:40 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I don't think streetcars make sense these days. In street light-rail with a dedicated, clear ROW is the way to go.
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Aarne_frobom
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Username: Aarne_frobom

Post Number: 36
Registered: 10-2005
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 3:47 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I think the trend must be regarded as decisive worldwide, but it's indeed uneven. The surviving large historic U.S. systems are San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. New Orleans, plus Shaker Heights, Ohio and maybe the Newark subway are on smaller scales. Toronto is significant for the similarity of its geography to Detroit's. The TTC serves modern Toronto much the same way the DSR served the Detroit that used to be. A trip on that system provides a view into Detroit's past that you can't get anywhere else.

A number of systems survive in Europe, but I don't know which cities still have them outside the fabulously-quaint systems of Lisbon and Porto. Conversely, trams have been extinct in Great Britain for some time.

I've never been able to draw any conclusions about why street railways survived in these cities and not elsewhere, beyond unique local politics and preferences.
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Danindc
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Username: Danindc

Post Number: 1877
Registered: 10-2003
Posted on Monday, October 30, 2006 - 3:59 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the system that runs through the oldest subway tunnel in the U.S.--Boston's T Green Line. I believe that, like Toronto, it still operates PCC cars.


quote:

I've never been able to draw any conclusions about why street railways survived in these cities and not elsewhere, beyond unique local politics and preferences.




Because those cities recognized streetcar lines as assets, and not just something that took roadway capacity from cars.

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