Minneapolis Street Railway Company, St. Paul City Railway Company, Minneapolis & St. Paul Suburban Railroad Company, Twin City Motor Bus Company, Minnetonka and White Bear Navigation Company, Rapid Transit Real Estate Corporation, Transit Supply Company
The Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT), also known as Twin City Lines (TCL), was a transportation company that operated streetcars and buses in the Minneapolis-St. Paulmetropolitan area in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Other types of transportation were tested including taxicabs and steamboats, along with the operation of some destination sites such as amusement parks. It existed under the TCRT name from a merger in the 1890s until it was purchased in 1962. At its height in the early 20th century, the company operated an intercity streetcar system that was believed[by whom?] to be one of the best in the United States. It is a predecessor of the current Metro Transit bus and light rail system that operates in the metro area.
TCRT commissioned water-color painting of the streetcar system in the Twin Cities, originally completed in 1904; updated 1916.
The origins of street rail transport in the Twin Cities are not entirely known.It allegedly dates back to 1865, when businessman and mayor Dorilus Morrison began building rails in downtown Minneapolis. He quickly joined forces with Colonel William S. King and other Minneapolis businessmen to create the Minneapolis Street Railway. However, the lines didn't go very far and the railway was useless for a time. There are some indications that a streetcar was purchased but never used, collecting dust for several years.
On the other side of the Mississippi River, the St. Paul Railway Company started the first successful horse-drawn streetcar system of the metro area in St. Paul. Then in 1875, the reformed Minneapolis Street Railway made a deal with the Minneapolis City Council where the company would have exclusive access to street rails for 50 years if they could be up and operating in four months. The company recruited real-estate mogul Thomas Lowry, who on September 2, 1875, brought on line a route between downtown Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota.
The streetcars became popular because they rode on smooth rails, while most of the streets of the era were dirt or made of cobblestonepavers. These roads became treacherous to pedestrians and uncomfortable to ride on in horse-drawn buggies, especially during Minnesota winters.
Thomas Lowry envisioned linking together the various railways that were cropping up around Minneapolis. While other systems were popping up with more horse-drawn carriages or cable cars, Lowry pushed forward with electrification of the lines. Starting in the late-1880s, electric streetcars began moving in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Cable cars quickly lost favor as they struggled through snowy Minnesota winters and the public quickly grew weary[weaselwords] of slow horsecars.
Rise of the system
Minneapolis - St Paul Twin City Rapid Transit Company c 1894
In 1890, the two cities were connected with a railway along University Avenue, the first of four rail lines linking them together.[1] A merger of the two city systems, the St. Paul City Railway Co. and Minneapolis Street Railway, formed the Twin City Rapid Transit Company. It went on a building spree, quickly doubling the amount of electrified track in the system.[2]
The company continued absorbing smaller competitors for the next 40 years. In 1898, the company began a transition to using company-built streetcars and machinery (such as cranes and snowplows) rather than purchasing the cars from other companies. The first such car was built as a personal streetcar for company president Thomas Lowry, although his was a special-order. The car featured one end with large windows, to make the scenery more visible. This car was used on special occasions, such as the opening of new lines and a visit by United States President William McKinley.
TCRT built some of the largest streetcars in the country. The Twin City Rapid Transit Company got into the business of building street cars at its Nicolett Shops in 1898 after concluding that cars it was operating from Eastern manufactures couldn't hold up to Minnesota's harsh winters. By 1906 they opened a manufacturing facility at its Snelling Shops where they not only manufactured cars for TCRT but also Chattanooga, Duluth, Seattle and Chicago among others. These cars were larger than traditional streetcars, being 45 feet (13.72m) long and 9 feet (2.74m) wide.
Streetcar in downtown Minneapolis, 1939.
Old track was also upgraded. In the early days, a number of lines had been laid down with narrow gauge[which?] track. These were all upgraded to 4ft8+1⁄2in (1,435mm) (standard gauge). In addition, the basic construction of the lines improved. The rails of the Twin Cities were upgraded to the most expensive track in the country, running US$60,000 per mile. Tracks featured welded (thermite) joints, and were commonly surrounded by cobblestone or asphalt. By 1909, 95 percent of the rails were of this type of construction. They were used until the company ended streetcar service.
"Streetcar boat" Hopkins on Lake Minnetonka
From 1906 to 1926, TCRT experimented with "streetcar boats." Officially known as Express Boats, they were steam-powered vessels with designs reminiscent of the streetcars of the day. The boats operated between communities on Lake Minnetonka, but improved roads in that area hit ridership hard in the 1920s. Ultimately, seven were built, but most of them were scuttled in the lake in 1926.
As the rise of the internal combustion engine in transportation grew, the Twin City Rapid Transit acquired several bus lines that began to pop up around the time of World War I. They also acquired a taxicab company in the 1920s.
When the transportation system peaked in 1922, it had nearly 530 miles (850km) of track and 1021 streetcars.[3] Rail extended a distance of about 50 miles (80km) from Stillwater on the bank of the St. Croix River in the east to Lake Minnetonka in the west. For a time, TCRT was the largest employer in the area.
It is rumored that anyone who lived in Minneapolis was no farther than 400 yards (370m) (less than 1⁄4 mile or 0.40 kilometers) from the nearest station at that time.
Changing labor conditions
Snowplow streetcar, 1939.
In 1917, a major labor strike took place in the months after the United States entered World War I. It began on October 6, and was influenced by the organization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the "Wobblies"), a militant group that had been organizing unions in the region, particularly in the northern Mesabi Iron Range. Horace Lowry, son of Thomas Lowry, headed the company at this time and absolutely refused to negotiate with the striking workers. This angered workers and others who felt sympathy for them.
Angry strikers in St. Paul damaged streetcars and harassed those who had continued to work. The Minnesota Commission of Public Safety ordered the workers back on the job and they complied for a while. People again left work in late-November. On December 2, a crowd energized by speakers from the Nonpartisan League again grew angry after TCRT cut off electricity to the streetcars in downtown St. Paul, making it impossible for many people to return home. Over the following days, many were arrested and the strike was effectively broken. 800 people were eventually replaced by non-union workers.
Things turned out differently in the 1930s, although it was not a smooth transition. In 1932, most of the system's streetcars were converted to "one-man operation" where, rather than requiring both a motorman to drive in front and a conductor to take fares in the rear, the motorman took over both operations. The doors on the streetcars were modified to allow easier boarding in front. So-called "gate cars" which had used open grating on the rear of the cars mostly disappeared from the lines. The transition from two-man to one-man operation was taking place on many streetcar lines across the country around this time.
The conversion to single-man operation meant that about half of the company's workforce was suddenly surplus. Many employees found it hard to get work and were often forced to take strange shifts. One worker recorded having a 17-hour shift from 4:24p.m. on Sunday to 9:49a.m. on Monday. There was a company union, although it hadn't done much good. By October 1933, the workers had gained backing from Minnesota Governor Floyd B. Olson, St. Paul Mayor William Mahoney and the National Recovery Administration, among others. The next year, the workers voted to join the Amalgamated Transit Union.
Competition from automobiles
With the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile, the rail lines began to decline. Buses were frequently used toward the edges of the system as long routes, especially those with low ridership, were cut back. World War II allowed the system to bounce back for a time, since strict fuel rationing and citizens' efforts to conserve resources made automobile use rather un-patriotic. However, the restrictions also hit TCRT itself since they could not afford to build many new streetcars. The company was forced to add more buses to shore up the system's various routes.
After the war, trolley riders returned to their automobiles. TCRT's management explored ways to upgrade the line to bring people back. Heavy wartime use meant that the rails needed to be repaired. Competition from other forms of transportation required modernization. In 1945, the company received its first streamlined PCC streetcar. The following years saw dozens of new PCC cars on the streets, although the first one remained unique in the fleet because it was the only one to have air brakes. All of the PCCs were several inches wider than standard, to match the nine-foot (2.74m) width of the company's older streetcars.
Company takeover and decline
A 1954-built Twin City Lines bus, now preserved, in 2011
The company had a long-standing policy of reinvestment in the rail system. When profits appeared, they were usually used to pay off loans and improve the rails, streetcars and other hardware the company owned. It was rare for the company to pay out dividends. In 1948, Wall Streetspeculator Charles Green bought 6000 shares of TCRT stock. He expected to quickly gain profit, but found he had purchased stock just as the company decided to set forth on some major construction. Knowing this would demolish his anticipated dividends, Green contacted other shareholders and urged them to vote out the company's president, D. J. Strouse and put him in charge instead.
Green took control of the company in 1949 and quickly started dismantling the railway system, announcing that the company would completely switch to buses by 1958. The system's PCCs were sold to Mexico City (91), Newark NJ (30) and Shaker Heights OH (20). Green sold his shares in 1950 to be briefly replaced by Emil B. Anderson before local lawyer Fred Ossanna ascended to head the company the next year. Ossanna held off on the teardown for a short while, but soon announced that the process would be accelerated. Lines would be removed and replaced by buses in two years.
Closeup view of the Thomas Lowry Memorial statue in Smith Triangle Park at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue, Emerson Avenue, and 24th Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The inscription reads: "The lesson of a public-spirited life is as a tree ever bearing new fruit." Lowry died in 1909.
On June 19, 1954, four years before Green had envisioned, the very last streetcars ran in Minneapolis. The leftover vehicles were burned to recover the scrap metal they contained. The last streetcar was famously photographed alight behind Fred Ossanna and James Towley as Towley presented Ossanna with a check.[4]
At the time there were a range of issues facing TCRT. Highway development enabled settlement over a wider area. Minneapolis' population peaked in the late 1940s and St. Paul's a decade later in the late 1950s.[citation needed] Population growth and job growth was spread out in less dense suburbs where capital requirements for building new rail were too high compared to the potential ridership. Building rails to service these areas was cost prohibitive.[citation needed] Buses though could be profitable on such routes.[citation needed] More so other streetcar lines without connection to NCL also converted to buses, frequently having done so long before the TCRT began the process.[citation needed]
Fred Ossanna came to work at TCRT as a lawyer for Charles Green in the 1949 takeover of the company. Reportedly[by whom?], Ossanna planned to order 25 buses from General Motors and was instead offered 525. The vast majority of buses in TCRT's eventual bus fleet were built by GM.
Most of the activity was geared toward stripping TCRT of its assets to fill the pockets of owners and investors. Ossanna was convicted in 1960 of illegally taking personal profit from the company during the transition period.[citation needed] He was imprisoned along with other accomplices. Carl Pohlad, who became the owner of the Minnesota Twins in 1984, was the eventual successor of Fred Ossanna as head of Twin City Lines in the 1960s. He ultimately sold the company in 1970.
Streetcar preservation
Before the dismantling began, TCRT had purchased a significant number of PCC streetcars. These were sold off in 1952 and 1953, still in very good operating condition. The cars ended up in Mexico City (91 cars), Newark, New Jersey (30) and Shaker Heights, Ohio (20). Relatively few places could have taken them because of their extra width and each of these buyers had significant amounts of dedicated right-of-way. For instance, the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit commuter line in Cleveland was grade-separated in many areas. The vast majority of the older wooden streetcars, mostly built by TCRT itself, were destroyed. Out of 1240 built by the company, only five have survived to be restored and operated by rail museums.
Only two of the wooden streetcars in use in the 1950s had been given away to railfan groups before the rest of the fleet was burned. They are owned by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum (TCRT No. 1300) and the Seashore Trolley Museum (TCRT No. 1267) in Maine. One other steel-sheathed car (TCRT No. 1583) had been sent to a railway to the north in Duluth-Superior, but it was never used. It now resides at the East Troy Electric Railroad Museum in Wisconsin. A few additional cars escaped the burn pits, but they were still subjected to harsh conditions and only two are restored.
One of the streetcar boats, the Minnehaha, was found by divers and then brought to the surface in 1980. After a long wait, it was restored and has been operating on Lake Minnetonka from 1996 to 2004 by the Minnesota Transportation Museum and since then by the Museum of Lake Minnetonka.[5] MTM also restored one of TCRT's old PCC cars (TCRT No. 322), operated now by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum.
A number of PCC cars once owned by Twin City Rapid Transit are just beginning their lives as museum pieces. The Newark City Subway finished operation of their 24 remaining cars on August 24, 2001, replacing the cars with new light-rail trainsets. Fifteen have been sold to the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), for their collection of classic streetcars on the Market Street Railway. In addition, 12 PCCs that ran on the Shaker Heights line are now owned by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. Many of these cars owe their longevity to the fact that the Twin Cities area makes heavy use of salt to de-ice roadways in the winter. In anticipation of this, the cars were largely made of stainless steel to prevent corrosion.
Historical remnants
Other vestiges of the company's streetcar history remained in the Twin Cities, and some surviving elements are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the oldest structures to survive is a building in Minneapolis now known as the Colonial Warehouse. First built in 1885, it housed the headquarters of the Minneapolis Street Railway Co. during the early horsecar era and also later served as a powerhouse as the system was converted. The lines needed a lot of electricity, so hydroelectric generators were installed at Saint Anthony Falls about a mile away and the Southeast Steam Plant was also constructed nearby. The old headquarters was sold in 1908, soon after these were constructed. The steam plant was bought by the University of Minnesota, which now uses it for providing heat to the campus downriver.
A large building on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul first served as the main construction and repair shop for the streetcars when it was built in 1907. It was expanded and remodeled over the years, later becoming a major garage for the bus system. However, the complex became outdated, with poor ventilation, a leaky roof and other problems. It was finally shut down and demolished in September 2001.
Selby Hill in St. Paul was a steep climb and was a place where cable cars were used in the late 19th century before Selby Hill Tunnel was constructed in 1905 to provide a more gradual incline. The tunnel still exists, but the ends have been blocked off, and as of July 2022 has largely become a homeless encampment.[citation needed] It is near the Cathedral of St. Paul.
Billboards across the area were originally laid out to target passengers of the rail lines with advertising. Many of these billboards remained for decades afterward, despite the fact that automobile traffic frequently favored different routes. These finally disappeared due to city beautification efforts in the 1990s.
Legacy to 21st century rail
In the 1970s, the bus lines (some of which still trace former horse-drawn buggy paths) were shifted to a partially publicly funded operation overseen by the Metropolitan Council. All regional transportation for the metropolitan area was soon overseen by the Met Council's transit agency which would take on the name Metro Transit. Twenty years after rails disappeared from Twin Cities streets, politicians and planners began proposing new light rail systems. Congestion was bad enough in 1972 that there were proposals to build new subways or people movers, but excessively high costs prevented any of the projects from getting anywhere until the end of the century. The University of Minnesota did a fair amount of research on personal rapid transit (PRT) systems and has held a number of patents on the idea.
The Newark Light Rail (NLR) is a light rail system serving Newark, New Jersey and surrounding areas, owned by New Jersey Transit and operated by its bus operations division. The service consists of two segments, the original Newark City Subway (NCS), and the extension to Broad Street station. The City Subway opened on May 16, 1935, while the combined Newark Light Rail service was officially inaugurated on July 17, 2006.
The PCC is a tram design that was first built in the United States in the 1930s. The design proved successful domestically, and after World War II it was licensed for use elsewhere in the world where PCC based cars were made. The PCC car has proved to be a long-lasting icon of streetcar design, and many remain in service around the world.
Nicollet Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Richfield, Bloomington, and Burnsville in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It passes through a number of locally well-known neighborhoods and districts, notably Eat Street in south Minneapolis and the traffic-restricted Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.
The Minnesota Transportation Museum is a transportation museum in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States.
The Como-Harriet Streetcar Line (CHSL) is a heritage streetcar line in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which follows original streetcar right-of-way between Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska and is operated by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. The heritage line was originally developed in the 1970s by the Minnesota Transportation Museum which spun off streetcar operations in the winter of 2004–2005.
Fred Albin Ossanna was a Minnesota lawyer who, along with Kid Cann, oversaw the dismantling of the Minneapolis-St. Paul streetcar system as head of Twin City Rapid Transit Company in the 1950s. Ossanna had been hired by Charles Green, a Wall Street speculator who had purchased a large number of TCRT stock shares and ousted D.J. Strouse as head of the company soon after. When it was discovered that Green had connections to organized crime, Ossanna took control. In a period of 22 months ending in June 1954, rails were removed from city streets where trolleys once traveled to be replaced by General Motors buses. Ossanna and associate Barney Larrick were both convicted of fraud on August 6, 1960 for activities that had taken place during the conversion from streetcars to buses. Ossanna had been a prominent local attorney, and left marks in various places. He helped found the Sunset Memorial Park and Funeral Chapel in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1922 by providing funding. In 1938, he had acted as counsel in a debacle known as the "Bemidji Affair" where bidding irregularities had appeared on a project for the Bemidji State Teachers College. At some point, Ossanna had done some work for National City Lines, a company that became infamous for buying up streetcar lines and converting them to bus systems.
Thomas Lowry was an American lawyer, real-estate magnate, and businessman who oversaw much of the early growth of the streetcar lines in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding communities in Minnesota. He became head of the Minneapolis Street Railway Co., later to become part of Twin City Rapid Transit (TCRT). He is not known to be a relative of Sylvanus Lowry, the slaveholder and profiteer of slavery-related enterprise from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
The Metro Green Line is an 11-mile (18 km) light rail line that connects the central business districts of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota as well as the University of Minnesota. An extension is under construction that will extend the line to the southwest connecting St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie. The line follows the path of former Metro Transit bus route 16 along University Avenue and Washington Avenue. It is the second light-rail line in the region, after the Blue Line, which opened in 2004 and connects Minneapolis with the southern suburb of Bloomington.
Government Plaza station is a Metro light rail station on the Blue Line and Green Line in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The station is located on 5th Street South, between 3rd and 4th Avenues South in downtown Minneapolis. This station opened on June 26, 2004, with initial light rail service in the Twin Cities.
The F Market & Wharves line is one of several light rail lines in San Francisco, California. Unlike most other lines in the system, the F line runs as a heritage streetcar service, almost exclusively using historic equipment both from San Francisco's retired fleet as well as from cities around the world. While the F line is operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), its operation is supported by Market Street Railway, a nonprofit organization of streetcar enthusiasts which raises funds and helps to restore vintage streetcars.
The San Diego Electric Railway (SDERy) was a mass transit system in Southern California, United States, using 600 volt DC streetcars and buses.
Lake Street is a major east-west thoroughfare between 29th and 31st streets in Minneapolis, Minnesota United States. From its western most end at the city's limits, Lake Street reaches the Chain of Lakes, passing over a small channel linking Bde Maka Ska and Lake of the Isles, and at its eastern most end it reaches the Mississippi River. In May 2020, the Lake Street corridor suffered extensive damage during local unrest following the murder of George Floyd. In August of the same year, city officials designated East Lake Street as one of seven cultural districts to promote racial equity, preserve cultural identity, and promote economic growth.
The Minnesota Streetcar Museum (MSM) is a transport museum that operates two heritage streetcar lines in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the western suburb of Excelsior.
Minnehaha is a steam-powered excursion vessel on Lake Minnetonka in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The vessel was originally in service between 1906 and 1926. After being scuttled in 1926, Minnehaha was raised from the bottom of Lake Minnetonka in 1980, restored, and returned to active service in 1996. The vessel operated uninterrupted on Lake Minnetonka until 2019. It is currently stored in a maintenance facility in the town of Excelsior.
Transportation in the U.S. State of Minnesota consists of a complex network of roadways, railways, waterways and airports. The transportation system is generally overseen by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, a cabinet-level agency of the state government. Additionally, regional governments such as the Metropolitan Council have authority over regional planning for the transportation system and local governments such as cities and counties oversee the local transportation network.
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 Minneapolis Streetcar System was a proposed streetcar system for the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Extensive studies and plans for the new system were completed in 2007 and presented to the Minneapolis City Council in January 2008; on April 2, 2010, the Council voted to approve the plans and seek funding. On December 21, 2010 the Federal Transit Administration granted $900,000 to further study the Nicollet and Central Avenue corridors. In June 2021, after no further development on the system, a bill authorized the Metropolitan Council to use funds collected for the Nicollet-Central line to be spent on bus rapid transit funding.
With five different modes of transport, the San Francisco Municipal Railway runs one of the most diverse fleets of vehicles in the United States. Roughly 550 diesel-electric hybrid buses, 300 electric trolleybuses, 250 modern light rail vehicles, 50 historic streetcars and 40 cable cars see active duty.
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.
Metro is a transit network in Minnesota serving the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. It also provides service to some suburban areas. As of 2022, the system consists of two light rail lines and five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines all of which are operated by the local public transit company: Metro Transit. The five lines connect Downtown Minneapolis and St Paul with the Bloomington, Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, Roseville, Richfield, Burnsville and Brooklyn Center.
References
↑ Issacs, Aaron (1995). The 1940s's. Minnesota Transportation Museum. p.4.
↑ Kieffer, Stephen A. (1958). Transit and the Twins. Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company. p.20.
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