STREET RAILWAYS, an institution of American origin, though first sug gested by the tramways used for carry ing coal in the British collieries. In terest in street railways first developed in 1829, when the agitation for steam railways was going on in this country. Finally action was taken, in 1832, and a company was organized in New York City, which began laying a street rail way along the Bowery and Fourth Ave nue, extending from the Battery to Har lem, which was then the upper limits of the city. The line began to operate in the following year. The cars were built like the stage coaches of those days; they were, in fact, nothing more than stage coaches running on flat iron rails laid on blocks of granite. This venture proved a financial failure, yet four y&ars later, in 1836, another street railway company was formed in Boston and the second street railway was soon after in operation in that city. It was not till over twenty years later that street rail ways were tried out in England, through the influence of George Francis Train.
Between 1860 and 1880 there was a rapid development of street railways in American cities, and practically every community provided itself with one. Hitherto horses and mules had been the sole means of motive power. Experi ments were made with small steam lo comotives, but the smoke and soot they created made it impossible to use them within city limits, while their noise also made them objectionable.
In 1873 the first cable car system was put into operation in San Francisco. An underground cable, running along a conduit with an open slot in the top, down which the grip of the car extended from the street above, drew the car along at an even rate, up hill and clown, re gardless of grade. Huge spools driven by steam wound and unwound the cable in a central power house. The cable system was especially suited to San Francisco, many of whose chief streets were extremely steep, and the cable car became a universal institution in that city. Other cities also began adopting it, including New York. But the cost of laying a cable system was over $100, 000 a mile, and considerable capital was required to establish and operate it. The search for another means of locomotion still continued.
The names of Edison, Field and Thompson will always be associated with the development of the electric railway in this country. It was their inventions and experiments which were to make street railways as universal as they are in American cities to-day. The first electrically driven tramway was exhib ited at the Chicago Industrial Exposi tion, in 1882, but it was not till six years later, in 1888, that the first elec tric railway system was put into opera tion, in Richmond, Va., where a line twelve miles in length was laid by Frank J. Sprague, the "father of Amer ican street railways." The enterprise
in Richmond proved both mechanically and financially successful, and hence forward electricity became more and more the universal motive power for American street railways. Ninety-nine and one-half per cent. of street railways in this country are operated by elec tricity.
Another side development of street railways in this country, such as was the cable-car, has been the elevated rail way. As far back as 1860 the difficulty of operating a tram service along the congested thoroughfares of New York City was brought up for solution. Two alternatives only presented themselves: the tracks must either be laid along an underground tunnel, or raised above the streets on a superstructure. Both schemes were discussed, but the subway proposition seemed too expensive to justify itself. In 1866 construction was begun on the first elevated railway in New York City, running from the Bat tery to Thirtieth Street, along Green wich Street and Ninth Avenue. For a while the cable system was used as mo tive power, but very soon after steam locomotives were installed. Steam re mained the motive power until 1902.
The enterprise proved a commercial failure, but elevated railways were ob viously a solution to the problem of con gested streets in big cities. Boston, Chi cago and a number of other large cities followed the example of New York and reared elevated superstructures along their streets.
In 1920 there remained only nine local street railway systems in American cities which operated their lines by means of animal power. There was, in the beginning of the year, over 50,000 miles of street railway tracks, carrying on an average of 150,000 passengers per mile each year. Annually the number of passengers carried amounted to fif teen billions.
Dining recent years there has been a tendency in the larger cities away from private to municipal ownership in the operation of street railways. In 1911 Seattle took over 203 miles of street railway track, at a cost of $15,000,000.
In 1920 San Francisco owned 64 miles of track and 195 passenger cars, as com pared to 286 miles of track and 700 cars operated under private management.
Whether electric street railways, op erated along permanently laid tracks, will develop in the future as they have in the past few years, seems to depend in no small measure on the extent of the National sources of supply of gaso line. In many cities, and especially in the suburban districts, gasoline driven motors buses are competing with the street railways so successfully that in many instances the electric lines have been abandoned. In New York City sev eral old street railways have been abandoned in the downtown section of the city and bus lines established to take their places.