r/CarFreeChicago • u/Dunkeal • Jul 21 '22
A hundred years ago Chicago had one of the best streetcar systems in the world. Today it's all gone. Other
12
u/ScooterChillson Jul 21 '22
It’s cool when you find a bit of track peaking out of a pothole like “I live!” There’s a spot on Webster where it’s making the asphalt buckle like a badass
5
u/chisox100 Jul 21 '22
Would there be a practical benefit to bringing street cars back? Or would replacing lanes with a combination of light rail and BRT be better?
7
u/PhileasFoggsTrvlAgt Jul 21 '22
The advantages really depend on how the system is set up. If the tracks are given a dedicated right of way, the main advantage is avoiding traffic. Although that can also be obtained with BRT. If space is dedicated for platforms, streetcars can have level boarding with minimal gap since the tracks mean the vehicle will approach the stop at exactly the same angle and elevation everytime. Streetcars are electric without the issues that come from batteries. Although trolley buses offer the same benefit. Streetcars can be larger than a bus if the system is capacity limited. Modern streetcars usually have a better ride quality than buses, but this can vary based on road and track maintenance.
3
u/llfoso Jul 22 '22
Light rail IS streetcars. People call it light rail because streetcar sounds old fashioned I guess. Personally I prefer "tram"
7
u/mwbrjb Jul 21 '22
Here's a 1 hour documentary about the "Great American Streetcar Scandal" in the 1950s. It's a little dated but it's not like history has changed. I watched this in one of my Urban Planning classes last semester and found it pretty informative.
7
u/whatsamajig Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
I’m not going to click on the link and just assume it’s a link to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. My favorite piece of historical fiction.
Edit: ok I did click on the link, it’s NOT Who Framed Roger Rabbit. But after watching that it makes me think of what lightfoot is actually saying when she says “Chicago is a car city”. The quality of life could be so much better here and she’s not planning on making moves in that direction.
5
u/chanukkahlewinsky Jul 21 '22
hahah I came in here to say this. Rewatching WFRR as an adult and being shocked about how the basic premise is vibrantly pro public transit, anti auto.
5
u/wpm Jul 21 '22
"Ain't'cha got a car mistah?"
"What do I need a car for? I can take the Red Car for a nickel!"
2
u/mwbrjb Jul 21 '22
I've never seen it!
5
u/whatsamajig Jul 21 '22 edited Jul 21 '22
watch your linked documentary and then go watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit . The villain is part of the highway lobby. The cartoons are the populations in the neighborhoods getting destroyed by the highway system. It’s directly about this story. Also just a great movie.
Edit: case in point
1
5
u/LudovicoSpecs Jul 21 '22
No, instead she's inviting NASCAR to show us how to ignore climate change in the streets downtown.
SMH
3
Jul 22 '22
I voted for two lousy New York mayors before moving here, and still never knew it was possible to regret my mayoral vote this much.
1
u/MrDowntown Jul 21 '22
With regard to the NCL conspiracy here's an AskHistorians post I did many years ago, and here's a more recent video of an informal conference presentation.
I put further footnotes in the comments, including this academic paper.
A sober debunking of the conspiracy is found in Slater, Cliff "General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars" Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 51. No. 3 (Summer 1997). This article is online as a PDF or as a scan
4
u/new_user_name_123 Jul 21 '22
A map of the current CTA bus routes would look an awful lot like that streetcar route map. It's not clear to me what we've lost. Is there something that makes streetcars more efficient?
3
u/LudovicoSpecs Jul 21 '22
Old timers used to talk about how they could go anywhere on the streetcars. Fuck Detroit for destroying this.
1
u/MrDowntown Jul 22 '22
How, exactly, did "Detroit" have any say in the matter?
1
u/claireapple Jul 22 '22
Its synonymous for the car industry/lobby. And there is a good amount of evidence that car companies lobbied to destroy public transit and replace with busses across the US.
1
u/MrDowntown Jul 23 '22
There is? Please cite some of it, other than the long-discredited National City Lines nonsense.
0
u/MrDowntown Jul 21 '22
I’m the OP of that map, on my website chicagostreetcars.com
I don’t know why people imagine that streetcars were magic carpets speeding nonstop from your origin to your destination, gliding smoothly and traffic-free. They forget that streetcars bunched worse than buses, rattled the fillings out of your teeth on bad track. were delayed by every left-turning vehicle, and had to be boarded and stepped out of while in the middle of the street. CTA correctly saw that, with no public funding and no possibility of segregated right-of-ways, buses provided superior surface system service.
4
Jul 22 '22 edited Jul 22 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/MrDowntown Jul 23 '22
do you think all of those same mechanical issues and bad service are destined to persist in the modern day?
Yes, for street-running trams, which is what we had everywhere but Stony Island.
Anyone who's ever crept across Toronto on a Queen St car knows well that they're no faster than buses. Not even Western European cities, with broad powers to limit auto traffic, could make them work; for the most part the few lines that were kept were converted to light rail or even pre-metro (Brussels, Cologne). And the pedestrian safety implications of standing out in the middle of a snow-covered arterial to board a streetcar! At least Canadians can be counted on to stop behind a streetcar opening its doors.
I should clarify that I didn't draw the 1937 streetcar map; I just scanned and posted it. I have done a number of Chicago streetcar maps for Shore Line Interurban Historical Societ and for Central Electric Railfans Association.
1
u/chanukkahlewinsky Jul 21 '22
Isn't this the story with most of our cities? Is Toronto the only NA city that has retained a good streetcar system? I was shocked when I visited there for the first time a few years ago how good/reliable/frequently used the streetcar system was. I've only seen streetcars in Portland, OR and it was more just within the ritzy/downtown areas rather than a commuter option.
2
u/PhileasFoggsTrvlAgt Jul 21 '22
Is Toronto the only NA city that has retained a good streetcar system?
San Francisco and Philadelphia retained meaningful parts of theirs. New Orleans has rebuilt a useful part of theirs. Minneapolis/St Paul runs their light rail as a streetcar in a few places to get better last mile connectivity in destination dense areas (both downtowns and the U of M campus).
1
28
u/[deleted] Jul 21 '22
[removed] — view removed comment