The streetcar system in Indianapolis, Indiana, was the city's original public transit system, evolving from horsecar lines that opened in 1864 and running through 1953. Mirroring its status as a hub of railroad activity, electric railways also concentrated services in Indianapolis with both a large system of local trolleys as well as a widespread network of interurbans.
Public transit arrived in Indianapolis on October 3, 1864, in the form of 12-seat mule-drawn streetcars which began operating between Union Station and Military Park. Citizens' Street Railway Company managed several streetcar lines running on a hub-and-spoke system radiating from downtown Indianapolis to outlying neighborhoods. [1] [2] Early lines were established on Virginia Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, and Fort Wayne Avenue. [3]
The first electric streetcar began operation on June 18, 1890, replacing the last of the mule-drawn streetcars in 1894. [4] [5] Electrification of the city's streetcar system dramatically improved efficiency and expediency, allowing residents to live further from the civic and business center of downtown. The development of several streetcar suburbs occurred during this time, including Irvington, Riverside, and Woodruff Place.
On January 1, 1900, the first interurban arrived in Indianapolis from Greenwood, Indiana. To accommodate the growing popularity of interurban travel, the Indianapolis Traction Terminal opened in September 1904, serving all but one of the 13 interurban lines converging in the city. [6] As the busiest interurban station in the world, the Indianapolis Traction Terminal was the hub for Indiana's extensive 1,825-mile (2,937 km) interurban network. [7] At the height of ridership, the terminal served more than 600 trains daily and seven million passengers annually. As automobiles became increasingly prevalent, the interurbans' popularity waned. The terminal served its last interurban in September 1941. [5]
After the bankruptcy of Citizens' Street Railway, the Indianapolis Street Railway Company purchased the operations in 1899 and began running streetcars. [8] [9] The company purchased the Broad Ripple line in 1902. [8] The railroad's assets were wholly leased to the Indianapolis Traction and Terminal Company starting in 1903, and the two companies would eventually merge under the Indianapolis Street Railway Company name in 1919. [8] [9] [10] The new company was acquired by the Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company in 1920.
Despite hard years of deferred maintenance during the Depression, the Indianapolis' streetcars continued to run. [11] Indianapolis Railways, Inc. purchased the city's operations in 1932. The company would go on to convert some lines to trackless trolley. [8]
Like most American cities following World War II, Indianapolis's electric streetcar ridership declined as personal automobile ownership increased. In 1952, more than 400 public transit vehicles traveled more than 43,000 miles (69,000 km) daily, providing 72 million passenger trips annually. The city's last streetcar was decommissioned in January 1953, replaced by trackless trolleys and motor buses. [5]
The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. The term "interurban" is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in many parts of the world before the Second World War and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution, when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
The Key System was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
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 San Diego Electric Railway (SDERy) was a mass transit system in Southern California, United States, using 600 volt DC streetcars and buses.
The J. G. Brill Company manufactured streetcars, interurban coaches, motor buses, trolleybuses and railroad cars in the United States for nearly 90 years, hence the longest-lasting trolley and interurban manufacturer. At its height, Brill was the largest manufacturer of streetcars and interurban cars in the US and produced more streetcars, interurbans and gas-electric cars than any other manufacturer, building more than 45,000 streetcars alone.
New York State Railways was a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad that controlled several large city streetcar and electric interurban systems in upstate New York. It included the city transit lines in Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Oneida and Rome, plus various interurban lines connecting those cities. New York State Railways also held a 50% interest in the Schenectady Railway Company, but it remained a separate independent operation. The New York Central took control of the Rochester Railway Company, the Rochester and Eastern Rapid Railway and the Rochester and Sodus Bay Railway in 1905, and the Mohawk Valley Company was formed by the railroad to manage these new acquisitions. New York State Railways was formed in 1909 when the properties controlled by the Mohawk Valley Company were merged. In 1912 it added the Rochester and Suburban Railway, the Syracuse Rapid Transit Railway, the Oneida Railway, and the Utica and Mohawk Valley Railway. The New York Central Railroad was interested in acquiring these lines in an effort to control the competition and to gain control of the lucrative electric utility companies that were behind many of these streetcar and interurban railways. Ridership across the system dropped through the 1920s as operating costs continued to rise, coupled with competition from better highways and private automobile use. New York Central sold New York State Railways in 1928 to a consortium led by investor E. L. Phillips, who was looking to gain control of the upstate utilities. Phillips sold his stake to Associated Gas & Electric in 1929, and the new owners allowed the railway bonds to default. New York State Railways entered receivership on December 30, 1929. The company emerged from receivership in 1934, and local operations were sold off to new private operators between 1938 and 1948.
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.
Transit Windsor provides public transportation in the city of Windsor, Ontario, Canada as well as LaSalle, Essex, Kingsville, Amherstburg and Leamington and serves more than 6 million passengers each year, covering an area of 310 km2 (120 sq mi) and a population of 235,000. They operate a cross border service between the downtown areas of Windsor and Detroit, Michigan via the Tunnel Bus, and service to events at Detroit's Comerica Park, Little Caesars Arena, Huntington Place, and Ford Field. The Windsor International Transit Terminal neighbours with the Windsor International Aquatic and Training Centre.
Pittsburgh Railways was one of the predecessors of Pittsburgh Regional Transit. It had 666 PCC cars, the third largest fleet in North America. It had 68 streetcar routes, of which only three are used by the Port Authority as light rail routes. With the Port Authority's Transit Development Plan, many route names will be changed to its original, such as the 41D Brookline becoming the 39 Brookline. Many of the streetcar routes have been remembered in the route names of many Port Authority buses.
Johnstown Traction Company (JTC) was a public transit system in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, United States. For most of its existence it was primarily a street-railway system, but in later years also operated rubber-tired vehicles. JTC operated trolley (tram) service in Johnstown from February 23, 1910 to June 11, 1960. Johnstown was one of the last small cities to abandon trolley service in the United States. It was also the smallest city to acquire a fleet of PCC cars and acquired trackless trolleys at a late date compared to larger transit properties. Many of the 1920s-era cars went directly to museums; however, none of the 17 PCC streetcars were saved. Efforts to sell the 16 then-surviving PCC cars intact were unsuccessful, and in 1962 they were scrapped, but many of their components were salvaged and sold to the Brussels, Belgium tram system, reused in the last series of single PCC trams (7156–7171), which ran from 1970 until February 2010.
The Indiana Railroad (IR) was the last of the typical Midwestern United States interurban lines. It was formed in 1930–31 by combining the operations of the five major interurban systems in central Indiana into one entity. The predecessor companies came under the control of Midland Utilities, owned by Samuel Insull. His plan was to modernize the profitable routes and abandon the unprofitable ones. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Insull empire collapsed and the Indiana Railroad was left with a decaying infrastructure and little hope of overcoming the growing competition of the automobile for passenger business and the truck for freight business. The IR faced bankruptcy in 1933, and Bowman Elder was designated as the receiver to run the company. Payments on bonded debt were suspended. Elder was able to keep the system virtually intact for four years, and IR operated about 600 miles (970 km) of interurban lines throughout Indiana during this period. During the late 1930s, the routes were abandoned one by one until a 1941 wreck with fatalities south of Indianapolis put an abrupt end to the Indiana Railroad's last passenger operations.
The Terre Haute, Indianapolis and Eastern Traction Company, or THI&E, was the second largest interurban in the U.S. state of Indiana during the height of the 1920s "interurban era." This system included over 400 miles (640 km) of track, with lines radiating from Indianapolis to the east, northwest, west and southwest as well as streetcar lines in several major cities. The THI&E was formed in 1907 by the Schoepf-McGowan Syndicate as a combination of several predecessor interurban and street car companies and was operated independently until incorporation into the Indiana Railroad in 1931. The THI&E served a wide range of territory, including farmlands in central Indiana, the mining region around Brazil, and numerous urban centers. Eventually, it slowly succumbed like all the other central Indiana interurban lines, to competition from automobiles, trucks, and improved paralleling highways.
Transportation in Indianapolis consists of a complex network that includes a local public bus system, several private intercity bus providers, Amtrak passenger rail service, four freight rail lines, an Interstate Highway System, an airport, a heliport, bikeshare system, 115 miles (185 km) of bike lanes, and 116 miles (187 km) of trails and greenways. The city has also become known for its prevalence of electric scooters.
The Fort Wayne Public Transportation Corporation (FWPTC), branded as Citilink, is the public transportation operator for the metro area of Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana. Transportation is provided Monday through Saturday on twelve fixed route lines plus two deviation routes. Citilink does not operate on Sundays and six holidays.
The San Francisco trolleybus system forms part of the public transportation network serving San Francisco, in the state of California, United States. Opened on October 6, 1935, it presently comprises 15 lines and is operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, commonly known as Muni, with around 300 trolleybuses. In San Francisco, these vehicles are also known as "trolley coaches", a term that was the most common name for trolleybuses in the United States in the middle decades of the 20th century. In 2023, the system had a ridership of 42,240,000, or about 204,700 per weekday as of the first quarter of 2024.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States.
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.
Danville Mass Transit is the primary provider of mass transportation in Vermilion County, Illinois with twelve routes serving the region. As of 2019, the system provided 606,155 rides over 28,659 annual vehicle revenue hours with 11 buses.