[sinanju]

As I see it, electric trolleys made sense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era before internal-combustion technology came into it’s own. But trolleys could not compete with buses.

And that’s the long and the short of it.

[x]

As I see it, electric trolleys made sense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era before internal-combustion technology came into its own. But trolleys could not compete with buses.

It depends on population densities. In a place like Manhattan, private car ownership makes less sense than subways or even trolleys.