16 votes

A thread about the history of streetcars in the US

Posted by skybrian
Tags: usa, transport.public, railways.light, streetcars, history, monopolies, author.jake berman, source.bsky, short read
https://bsky.app/profile/lostsubways.com/post/3ms5rws6ghs2m

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Title
Jake Berman (@lostsubways.com)
Authors
Jake Berman (@lostsubways.com)
Published
Aug 3 2026
Word count
80 words

4 comments

  1. skybrian
    Link
    From the Bluesky thread: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]

    From the Bluesky thread:

    in general, public transport before world war II was generally privately owned. it was a business, like railroads had been since the start of the industrial age. nobody liked the privately owned monopolies that owned public transit. 2/

    [...]

    basically, these monopolies dominated metro areas, because they weren't just the transport monopoly. in la, oakland and miami, the train company was the biggest real estate developer. in atlanta, new jersey and new orleans, they were the power company. 3/

    [...]

    these monopolies were hilariously corrupt as well, and they had few friends. henry huntington (of LA's red cars), or charles yerkes (of the chicago eleveated) were as detested as bezos and zuckerberg were today. 4/

    [...]

    the trains got a serious challenge from cars in the early 20th century. and by the end of world war II, the train systems were worn out and needed massive government investment to survive. but because the transit companies were shitty monopolies, nobody wanted to help them out! 5/

    [...]

    On top of that, the new, shiny buses often had A/C, and the streetcars only had fans. The first air-conditioned bus was introduced in 1946. The first air-conditioned streetcars weren't introduced until 1976. 8/

    [...]

    All of this is to say, GM was picking the bones of the dying streetcar companies. Think vultures, not eagles. And when we talk about the GM conspiracy charges... GM-affiliated National City Lines actually kept streetcars running longer than peer systems. 10/

    [...]

    There was, however, one exception to this: Minneapolis-St Paul. There, a finance bro, the mob, and a crooked lawyer really did buy the trains and sell them for scrap - but that was the exception, not the rule. 12/12

    5 votes
  2. [2]
    hamstergeddon
    Link
    I don't know what more it would add, but I feel like the story of small city/town streetcars is missing here. Used to be that long ago there were street cars that ran from town-to-town across the...

    I don't know what more it would add, but I feel like the story of small city/town streetcars is missing here. Used to be that long ago there were street cars that ran from town-to-town across the entire county. And I know of at least 3 other counties across 2 states around me that had similar setups in the pre-war era. My assumption is that these were replaced with buses at one point, but these days only half of the counties I'm talking about have any kind of bus service. One of which has been in a trial run for over a year now and the other is centralized around the major city in the county and doesn't extend across the county like the street cars did.

    Anyway, I don't know much about what happened there. Just context clues and assumptions on my part. I think small towns get left out of these kinds of discussions because while those cities all went on to have somewhat functional bus, light rail, or metro services, the small towns around me mostly just didn't. If you're too poor to own/maintain a vehicle, you're limited to jobs within walking distance. And depending on the town, you may be walking on the side of a busy road without a sidewalk.

    3 votes
    1. artvandelay
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Yeah the decline of interurbans is pretty tragic too. According to Wikipedia (which admittedly is a bit light on citations in this section), these networks often had very shaky financials to begin...

      Yeah the decline of interurbans is pretty tragic too. According to Wikipedia (which admittedly is a bit light on citations in this section), these networks often had very shaky financials to begin with and basically just had enough money to get established but not enough to stay operational. Their heavy equipment would damage the streets and people's opinions on those systems soured as the companies fought with the government over who was responsible for fixing the roads. Once highways were a thing and the government promised big money to construct them, the interurbans didn't stand a chance.

      I'll be honest, I was pretty ignorant about the lack of transit to smaller towns until I started watch this channel on YouTube called Adam. He does a lot of public transit related videos and has a series where he goes from city to city using only local public transit. Examples include DC to NYC, SF to Seattle, SF to LA, etc. While his videos are more meant to just demonstrate that you should enjoy the journey not just the destination, they also do a fantastic job of showing how public transit in smaller towns just struggle to exist. The bus systems that do operate in these smaller towns seem to run very infrequently, aren't super reliable, have low ridership, have poor way finding, and have many other problems. These problems are very much not self-inflicted by the operators but by the way the government provides them funding as if they were afterthoughts.

      7 votes
  3. PelagiusSeptim
    Link
    Here's a fun story from my hometown about streetcars. The city council gave the rights to one street to a company that still used mules, but many citizens preferred electric. So the company with...

    Here's a fun story from my hometown about streetcars. The city council gave the rights to one street to a company that still used mules, but many citizens preferred electric. So the company with electric tracks began placing them without permission, with the help of many citizens. It ended up causing a fight between the leaders of the two companies

    3 votes