AARP Bulletin - April 2010

Your World ;

In Its Heyday

l

By
Christie
Findlay
federal funding, as many as 40
more cities—from tiny Cripple
Creek, Colo., to sprawling Los
Angeles—are exploring the pos-
sibility of building new lines, ac-
cording to the American Public
Transportation Association.
Supporters say that streetcars
cost less in the long run and pol-
lute less than other forms of trans-
portation while injecting new life
into neighborhoods. Simply put,
they help create communities
where residents have alternatives
to cars for getting around.
“Since the streetcar opened,”
Ann Niles says, “the neighbor-
hood has completely taken off.
The streets are full of activity.
There’s dense development, and
people are out walking their dogs
or going to the parks. The street-
car helped create the neighbor-
hood we want to live in.”
Streetcars make not only
healthier communities, adocates
say, but also healthier people
beause they walk to the stops
instead of climbing into autos.
That’s exactly what the Nileses

The history of America’s streetcars
mirrors that of its cities. Trolleys, cable
cars and other electric-powered cars that
run on rails began looping across cities
in the 1880s. During their 1920s heyday,
a network of streetcars laced the nation,
linking cities to each other, nearby
beaches and rural areas.
But even then, urban electric rail systems and
cities were losing ground to the combustion
engine and suburbs. Streetcar systems, 95
percent privately owned, struggled to stay in the
black. Many produced their own electricity and,
finding the consumer energy market more
profitable, began easing out of the mass transit
business. By the 1960s, most of the country
had thrown over streetcars for cars
and buses, which were faster and
considered to be more efficient and
much more modern.
One theory alleges that competitors—
car, bus and tire manufacturers and
oil companies—heavily invested
in streetcar companies and then
deliberately killed their lines. Rebuffed
in large part in a 1940s antitrust
court case, the theory was re-aired in
congressional hearings in the 1970s
and even made its way into popular
culture in the film Who Framed Roger
Rabbit and the book Fast Food Nation.
Other people insist the old streetcars
themselves were to blame for their
demise. Recently reviewing plans for a streetcar line in Washington, D.C.,
residents related memories of dirty, noisy and unreliable streetcars.
Not Portland’s streetcars today. “Ours are clean, quiet, well-maintained and
safe,” Ann Niles says. “Their enormous windows allow for both daylight and
observing people and architecture. At night, they’re well lit.”

Top to bottom: New York,
ca. 1910; Washington, ca.
1895; San Francisco, ca. 1875;
New Orleans, 1948.
LEFT: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MUELLER/REDUX; ABOVE FROM TOP: POODLESROCK/CORBIS; GRANGER COLLECTION ( 2); BETTMANN/CORBIS