Posted on 09/22/2016 4:22:31 PM PDT by Ken H
Glen Echo amusement park, now there’s a blast from the past. I was over in Arlington so getting a chance to ride a DC streetcar was rare for me.
The small W&OD railroad was still in business but it was all freight. It had once been an interurban line connecting with DC up by Rosslyn. Streetcars and interurbans had an economic reason for being until after WWII but they disappeared when they couldn’t pay for themselves.
post WWII car sales boom just guaranteed the streetcars demise especially within DC borders. Lots of post war GI Bill housing built in the farthest reaches of NE beyond street car terminals.
Where my family lived, one had to catch a bus, transfer to street car in Brookland to get to downtown with maybe another transfer to a bus. Auto cut that trip to a third or bit less in time.
“post WWII car sales boom just guaranteed the streetcars demise especially within DC borders. Lots of post war GI Bill housing built in the farthest reaches of NE beyond street car terminals.”
Exactly. Auto sales, as well as buses, were the demise of of the streetcar.
Being able to drive where you want, when you want, is something that modern fans of streetcars aren’t taking into account. Plus we use our cars as portable offices, and if you go shopping you need a way to get your stuff home. Not so easy when you’re going by streetcar.
There was a whole supporting infrastructure that existed when people were moving about by streetcar, which made it convenient to use them. That infrastructure no longer exists.
Maybe something like that will come back some day, with the advent of driverless cars, with people deciding that owning and driving cars is a hassle. But if so it will be an organic development and not one that can be willed into existence by busybodies who want to impose their ideas on how people should live onto everyone else.
Well put. Streetcars followed the existing commercial zone and were extended as commerce increased.
Back to my personal example of the Brookland streetcar terminus, no more than a covered turnaround point. Houses beyond that point were pre-war custom built for the most part, the owners of which already had autos.
Beyond that point the post war affordable tract housing, via GI Bill, had provisions for a rear yard car space serviced by an alley. With that mobility commercial space within that zone languished for more than 2 decades. Small strip shopping centers grew up along side RR right of ways serviced solely by auto. And later the full bore suburban shopping centers across the MD border. Even bus service languished in that zone, becoming a totally subsidized city owned system. Market forces rule, period.
Sounds good to me.
BUT, no "motorsickles" for ya? What are you, a barbarian, NO motorsickle?? :o)
Traded it for the horses. :)
Do you ever get the impression that it’s an Alinsky-like plot to just waste money so as to collapse the system even quicker?
Sometimes it’s cronyism for funneling taxpayer money to political donors. The California High Speed Rail being a glaring example.
Sometimes it’s environmental zealots trying to force people to concentrate in cities.
Sometimes it’s Leftists looking for one more way to be able to control people, something that they simply can’t resist.
Probably it’s all of the above.
I hear that horse manure is good for fertilizing rose bushes. :o)
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