Urban public transportation supported the rapid expansion of cities in the late 19th century and made possible the development of residential districts separated from places of work. Converging on a central point, public transportation lines created the “downtown” and the “hundred-percent corner,” the point of maximum accessibility where new institutions like department stores clustered.
By the 1870s the horse-powered street railway was the prevalent public transportation mode for large and small American cities. Starting in 1832, horsecars had steadily replaced horse-drawn “omnibuses.” The smooth rails doubled the load a horse could pull. In flat terrain, horsecars could travel seven miles per hour. Cities granted franchises for tracks on their streets in return for fare limitations (five cents was the norm) and paving or street-sprinkling obligations.
Horses could work for only a few hours, and horsecar companies had to maintain as many as eight to 10 animals for each vehicle they owned. The West End Street Railway of Boston at one time stabled about 8,000 horses. Horses were polluting, generating about 10 pounds of waste per animal per day plus urine. Horses were also subject to disease. An equine epidemic in 1872 killed or disabled 18,000 horses in New York City, crippling public transportation.
Cable cars were the first attempt to overcome the limitations of horsecars. Andrew S. Hallidie, a California manufacturer of wire cable, designed a cable car in 1869 that was drawn by a continuous wire cable beneath the street. By 1873 a Hallidie car scaled Clay Street in San Francisco, and soon Nob Hill was covered with cable lines. The cable, driven by a cable drum in the power house, ran continuously at nine miles per hour. Individual cars used a grip extending downward through a slot to grasp the cable. The “gripman” needed skill to engage and disengage the cable smoothly when stopping or coasting around street corners.
Cable railways had their greatest success in San Francisco, but 30 other cities also operated cable cars. Chicago had the second-largest system, opened in 1882, while other major cable operators included Kansas City, New York City, the Brooklyn Bridge, Cincinnati, Washington, Seattle, and Tacoma. The San Francisco cable cars were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. A Washington “grip” car is displayed in the Smithsonian, and a Chicago grip car replica is in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
The biggest urban transportation innovation was the rapid adoption of electric streetcars in the 1890s. After a successful installation in Richmond, Virginia, in 1887, city after city converted their horsecar and cable lines to electricity. The streetcars drew power from a “trolley pole” contacting an overhead wire, and the car itself was soon known as a “trolley.” Trolleys were faster than the horsecar, and the expansion of their lines opened new residential areas and recreational opportunities by extending to amusement parks and beaches. The electric trolley would remain the backbone of urban transportation in all but the largest cities until it was replaced by buses and the spread of automobiles starting in the late 1920s. In the largest cities, traffic congestion led to a search for alternatives. The steel-bridge industry made it practical to build continuous elevated viaducts above city streets, separated from pedestrians and vehicles below. New York City initiated the first steam powered “el” trains in 1871. Sioux City, Iowa, opened an elevated steam railway in 1890, and Chicago opened its first elevated line in 1892. The Chicago el lines converged on an elevated loop, which soon replaced the cable car loop
Electric trolleys competed with automobiles for space on city streets. (Library of Congress)
As the definition of Chicago’s downtown. The West Side elevated line in Chicago was electrified in 1895, and soon electricity replaced steam on other el lines throughout the country.
The other solution was to burrow beneath city streets. London had opened its Metropolitan subway in 1863 using steam locomotives, but the use of coal-burning locomotives underground had obvious limitations. Alfred Beach, the New York publisher of Scientific American, advocated pneumatic subways, with differential air pressure moving a car through a closely fitting tunnel. He financed a demonstration line 312 feet long beneath Broadway in 1870. It was not mechanically practical, although further developed. An 1897 subway under Tremont Street in Boston diverted streetcars from the surface for a few congested blocks, but the first true subway, the Interboro Rapid Transit (IRT) in New York City, would not open until 1904.
Further reading: Alan Black, Urban Mass Transportation Planning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995).
—Francis H. Parker
Trolley cars See transportation, urban.
World History
