Seattle Municipal Street Railway | |||||||||||
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Locale | Seattle, Washington | ||||||||||
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The Seattle Municipal Street Railway was a city-owned streetcar network that served the city of Seattle, Washington and its suburban neighborhoods from 1919 to 1941. It was a successor to the horse-drawn Seattle Street Railway established in 1884, and immediate successor to the Puget Sound Traction, Power and Light Company's Seattle division.
The first streetcars in Seattle were operated by Frank Osgood as the Seattle Street Railway, which ran horsecars starting from September 23, 1884. [1] [2] Osgood went on to convert the horsecars to electric traction as the Seattle Electric Railway and Power Company, beginning with a test on March 30, 1889 and followed by regular service the next day. [1] [3] [4] : 16 By 1891, Seattle had 78 mi (126 km) of street railway tracks, of which 70 mi (110 km) had been built since 1889. [5] : 372 [6]
Name | Image | Length | Type | Operation started | Notes | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Single | Double | Total | |||||
Seattle City Railway | 5 mi (8.0 km) | — | 5 mi (8.0 km) | Cable | Oct 1888 | Originally named the Lake Washington Cable Railway. Started from Yesler & Fruit at Pioneer Place, ran east via Yesler to power house at Lake Washington; one turntable at each end. | |
Front Street Cable Railway | — | 2+3⁄4 mi (4.4 km) | 5+1⁄2 mi (8.9 km) | Cable | Mar 13, 1889 | Ran north from Pioneer Square along Front and Second. | |
Madison Street Cable Railway | — | 3+5⁄8 mi (5.8 km) | 7+1⁄4 mi (11.7 km) | Cable | Apr 6, 1890 | Ran east to Lake Washington, parallel to Yesler. | |
West Seattle Cable Railway | 2+1⁄4 mi (3.6 km) | — | 2+1⁄4 mi (3.6 km) | Cable | Sep 13, 1890 | Ran north from the West Seattle ferry slip. | |
Union Trunk Line | — | 3⁄4 mi (1.2 km) | 1+1⁄2 mi (2.4 km) | Cable | Mar 19, 1891 | ||
5+3⁄4 mi (9.3 km) | 1⁄2 mi (0.80 km) | 6+3⁄4 mi (10.9 km) | Electric | Aug 10, 1891 | Included three-block counterbalance operation, using a loaded narrow-gauge car running underground. | ||
Seattle Consolidated Railway | 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km) | 10 mi (16 km) | 22+1⁄2 mi (36.2 km) | Electric | Apr 7, 1889 | Formerly Seattle Street Railway Company; consolidated with the West Street and Lake Union Railway as the Seattle Electric Railway in 1889. Reorganized as Consolidated Street Railway in April 1891. | |
Green Lake Electric Railway | 4+1⁄2 mi (7.2 km) | — | 4+1⁄2 mi (7.2 km) | Electric | Apr 1, 1890 | Feeder to Consolidated. Ran north from Fremont to Green Lake. | |
Rainier Power & Railway | 3+1⁄2 mi (5.6 km) | — | 3+1⁄2 mi (5.6 km) | Electric | Jul 23, 1891 | Feeder to Consolidated. Ran east from Lake Union to Brooklyn suburb. | |
Woodland Park Electric Railway | 1+1⁄4 mi (2.0 km) | — | 1+1⁄4 mi (2.0 km) | Electric | Jul 25, 1891 | Feeder to Consolidated. Built and operated by Woodland Park owner Guy C. Phinney. | |
West Street & North End Railway | 3+1⁄2 mi (5.6 km) | 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km) | 8+1⁄2 mi (13.7 km) | Electric | Jan 16, 1891 | Initially drew power from Consolidated until powerhouse was completed in Jan 1891. Ran along West Street, then northeast to Ballard. | |
Rainier Avenue Electric Railway | 7 mi (11 km) | — | 7 mi (11 km) | Electric | Apr 6, 1890 | Ran east to Lake Washington, parallel to Yesler. | |
South Seattle Cable Railway | 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km) | — | 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km) | Cable | Jul 3, 1891 | Test cars operated in 1890 to hold the franchise; planned conversion to electric. |
In 1898, Stone & Webster began assembling a transit system by consolidating several smaller streetcar lines, including the Seattle Electric Railway. [1] By 1900, Stone & Webster had amalgamated 22 lines and gained a 40-year operating franchise under a new power and transport utility named the Seattle Electric Company. The system also included cable car lines on Madison Street and Yesler Way. By the end of 1900, the City Council, under public pressure, forced Seattle Electric to provide free transfers between lines, and reduced their lease to 35-years. [7] In 1907, Stone & Webster also acquired the lease to the Everett streetcar system, and in 1912 it combined all of its transit and utility holdings in the area under a new company, the Puget Sound Traction, Power and Light Company (PSTP&L). [4]
The City of Seattle entered into direct competition with Seattle Electric by furnishing electricity in 1905 after completing the Seattle Municipal Light and Power Plant. As Seattle Electric was distinctly unpopular with the citizens of Seattle and prevented by a state mandate, several requests for fare increases from the existing 5 cents were denied; meanwhile, there was an increasing need to transport tens of thousands of workers responding to the demand for ships resulting from World War I. High shipworker wages and the lack of fare increases meant that by early summer 1918, approximately 1⁄5 of Seattle Electric's cars were idle because they could not pay operators enough. [8] In September 1918, PSTP&L agreed to sell its lines to the city, and several months of increasingly acrimonious negotiations followed. [8]
On March 31, 1919, the city of Seattle purchased the entire Seattle division of PSTP&L's street railways but the price of the acquisition, US$15,000,000(equivalent to $263,600,000 in 2023), left the transit operation with an immense debt and an immediate need to raise fares, which hurt ridership. [1] [4] [8] By 1936, the city still owed half the principal on the 1918 bonds used to purchase the system, and was faced with a $4 million operating deficit. [1]
In 1939, a new transportation agency, the Seattle Transit System, was formed, which refinanced the remaining debt and began replacing equipment with "trackless trolleys" (as then known) and motor buses. Yesler Way's cable car operation closed out that mode of service with a final run on August 9, 1940. [9] The last streetcar ran on April 13, 1941. [1]
A modern streetcar system debuted in 2007, with the introduction of the South Lake Union Streetcar. A second line, the First Hill Streetcar, opened in 2016. Further expansion plans were shelved in 2018 and remained unfunded as of 2024. [10]
The Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) is the public transport agency for Hamilton, Ontario. The name is a legacy of the company's early period, when public transit in Hamilton was primarily served by streetcars. Although streetcars are no longer used in the city today, the HSR operates bus and paratransit services, with a ridership of 21 million passengers a year.
The Chicago City Railway Company (CCRy) was an urban transit company that operated horse, cable, and electric streetcars on Chicago's South Side between 1859 and 1914, when it became merged into and part of the Chicago Surface Lines (CSL) metropolitan-wide system. After that time it owned electric streetcars, along with gasoline, diesel, and propane – fueled transit busses. Purchased by the government agency Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) in 1947, it was liquidated in 1950.
Transportation in Seattle is largely focused on the automobile like many other cities in western North America; however, the city is just old enough for its layout to reflect the age when railways and trolleys predominated. These older modes of transportation were made for a relatively well-defined downtown area and strong neighborhoods at the end of several former streetcar lines, now mostly bus lines.
A horsecar, horse-drawn tram, horse-drawn streetcar (U.S.), or horse-drawn railway (historical), is an animal-powered tram or streetcar.
The Toronto Street Railway (TSR) was the operator of a horse-drawn streetcar system from 1861 to 1891 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its successor, the Toronto Railway Company, inherited the horsecar system and electrified it between 1892 and 1894.
The Toronto Railway Company (TRC) was the operator of the streetcar system in Toronto between 1891 and 1921. It electrified the horsecar system it inherited from the Toronto Street Railway, the previous operator of streetcar service in Toronto. The TRC was also a manufacturer of streetcars and rail work vehicles, a few of which were built for other streetcar and radial operators.
The Market Street Railway Company was a commercial streetcar and bus operator in San Francisco. The company was named after the famous Market Street of that city, which formed the core of its transportation network. Over the years, the company was also known as the Market Street Railroad Company, the Market Street Cable Railway Company and the United Railroads of San Francisco. Once the largest transit operator in the city, the company folded in 1944 and its assets and services were acquired by the city-owned San Francisco Municipal Railway. Many of the former routes continue to exist into the 2020s, but served by buses.
Streetcars in Washington, D.C. transported people across the city and region from 1862 until 1962.
The Los Angeles Railway was a system of streetcars that operated in Central Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods between 1895 and 1963. The system provided frequent local services which complemented the Pacific Electric "Red Car" system's largely commuter-based interurban routes. The company carried many more passengers than the Red Cars, which served a larger and sparser area of Los Angeles.
The Chicago Surface Lines (CSL) was operator of the street railway system of Chicago, Illinois, from 1913 to 1947. The firm is a predecessor of today's publicly owned operator, the Chicago Transit Authority.
Stone & Webster was an American engineering services company based in Stoughton, Massachusetts. It was founded as an electrical testing lab and consulting firm by electrical engineers Charles A. Stone and Edwin S. Webster in 1889. In the early 20th century, Stone & Webster was known for operating streetcar systems in many cities across the United States including Dallas, Houston and Seattle. The company grew to provide engineering, construction, environmental, and plant operation and maintenance services, and it has long been involved in power generation projects, starting with hydroelectric plants of the late 19th-century; and with most American nuclear power plants.
Streetcars or trolley(car)s were once the chief mode of public transit in hundreds of North American cities and towns. Most of the original urban streetcar systems were either dismantled in the mid-20th century or converted to other modes of operation, such as light rail. Today, only Toronto still operates a streetcar network essentially unchanged in layout and mode of operation.
The Puget Sound Electric Railway was an interurban railway that ran for 38 miles between Tacoma and Seattle, Washington in the first quarter of the 20th century. The railway's reporting mark was "PSE".
Streetcars in St. Louis, Missouri, operated as part of the transportation network of St. Louis from the middle of the 19th century through the early 1960s.
Madison Street is a major thoroughfare of Seattle, Washington. The street originates at Alaskan Way on the Seattle waterfront, and heads northeast through Downtown Seattle, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, Washington Park, and Madison Park, ending just east of 43rd Avenue East on Lake Washington. From Broadway to Lake Washington, the street is known as East Madison Street, which accounts for most of its length. It is the only Seattle street that runs uninterrupted from the salt water of Puget Sound in the west to the fresh water of Lake Washington in the east.
Streetcars in Los Angeles over history have included horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars, and later extensive electric streetcar networks of the Los Angeles Railway and Pacific Electric Railway and their predecessors. Also included are modern light rail lines.
Streetcars operated by the Cincinnati Street Railway were the main form of public transportation in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. The first electric streetcars began operation in 1889, and at its maximum, the streetcar system had 222 miles (357 km) of track and carried more than 100 million passengers per year. A very unusual feature of the system was that cars on some of its routes traveled via inclined railways to serve areas on hills near downtown. With the advent of inexpensive automobiles and improved roads, transit ridership declined in the 20th century and the streetcar system closed in 1951. Construction of a new streetcar system, now known as the Connector, began in 2012. Consisting initially of a single route, the new system opened on September 9, 2016.
The United Electric Railways Company (UER) was the Providence-based operator of the system of interurban streetcars, trolleybuses, and trolley freight in the state of Rhode Island in the early- to mid-twentieth century.
The Queen Anne Counterbalance was a funicular streetcar line operated by the Seattle Electric Company, serving the steep slope along its namesake street on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington, from 1901 to 1940. It replaced an earlier cable car line built by the Front Street Cable Railway in 1891.
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