Detroit's Street Railways

Detroit's Street Railways
Author: Kenneth Schramm
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 134
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738540276

Detroit's Street Railways tells the story of public transportation in the Motor City. Dating back to 1863, when horse-drawn streetcars serviced the citizenry, public transportation in Detroit has a proud and colorful history. Early on, a host of streetcar companies carried Detroiters about their daily business. This period was followed by consolidation into one company, the Detroit United Railway, and later the establishment of the municipally owned Department of Street Railways. The Department of Street Railways, established May 15, 1922, inherited a vast system of streetcar lines throughout Detroit, the first city in the United States to establish municipally owned transit system. It was a leader and innovator in the transit industry, with continued streetcar service until April 8, 1956, when the last streetcars on Woodward Avenue were replaced by buses. When the Department of Street Railways began coach operations in 1925, the intent was to provide feeder service to the established streetcar lines, as expansion costs were prohibitive. Sadly, the program implemented to complement the city's streetcar operations led to the demise of the streetcar as the principal mode of transportation in the Motor City.

Pacific Electric Red Cars

Pacific Electric Red Cars
Author: Jim Walker
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2006
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738546889

Of the rail lines created at the turn of the 20th century, in order to build interurban links through Southern California communities around metropolitan Los Angeles, the Pacific Electric grew to be the most prominent of all. The Pacific Electric Railway is synonymous with Henry Edwards Huntington, the capitalist with many decades of railroad experience, who formed the "P. E." and expanded it as principal owner for nearly its first decade. Huntington sold his PE holdings to the giant Southern Pacific Railroad in 1910, and the following year the SP absorbed nearly every electric line in the fourcounty area around Los Angeles in the "Great Merger" into a "new" Pacific Electric. Founded in 1901 and terminated in 1965, Pacific Electric was known as the "World's Great Interurban."

Roads Were Not Built for Cars

Roads Were Not Built for Cars
Author: Carlton Reid
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1610916891

In Roads Were Not Built for Cars, Carlton Reid reveals the pivotal—and largely unrecognized—role that bicyclists played in the development of modern roadways. Reid introduces readers to cycling personalities, such as Henry Ford, and the cycling advocacy groups that influenced early road improvements, literally paving the way for the motor car. When the bicycle morphed from the vehicle of rich transport progressives in the 1890s to the “poor man’s transport” in the 1920s, some cyclists became ardent motorists and were all too happy to forget their cycling roots. But, Reid explains, many motor pioneers continued cycling, celebrating the shared links between transport modes that are now seen as worlds apart. In this engaging and meticulously researched book, Carlton Reid encourages us all to celebrate those links once again.

From Small Town to Downtown

From Small Town to Downtown
Author: Lawrence A. Brough
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2004-04-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780253343697

The Jewett Car Company was born in the heyday of the electric railway boom in the 1890s. The company gained an excellent reputation for its elegant, well-built wooden cars for street railway companies, interurban lines, and rapid transit service. Cities large and small used Jewett cars, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Many Jewett cars found their way to Indiana and many of the interurban lines employed the graceful, arch-windowed wood interurban that Jewett was famous for.Automobile competition and the problems of competing with much larger car builders, such as J.G. Brill and the St. Louis Car Company, signaled the beginning of the end. The company was offered the opportunity to produce munitions for World War I, but refused. The reason: the major source of finance for Jewett was a German nationalist banker from Wheeling, West Virginia, who refused to have the company do anything to harm Germany. As a direct result of that action, the Jewett Car Company failed.