Our street car lines — yesterday and today
MinnPost photo by Steve Date
A short section of the Como-Harriet line stills operates as a historic tourist attraction.
My mom used to remind me that I once rode on a streetcar in Minneapolis. Since the last car ran in the summer of 1954, I was a year old at most, so I have no recollection of it. But she knew it was important to remember that part of our local history and wanted me to know that I had been a small part of it.
The Twin Cities had one of the best public transportation systems in the country through the first half of the 20th century. It began with horse-drawn streetcars in the 1870s followed by trial periods of cable cars and steam engines.
When electricity emerged as the energy of choice in the 1890s, the light-rail system blossomed and ridership took off. By the 1920s, an elaborate and extensive web of tracks covered the metropolitan area. There were over 500 miles of rail, stretching from Stillwater to Lake Minnetonka, and from Anoka to Hastings.
Within the city limits of Minneapolis and St. Paul, more than two-dozen routes were spread out in such a way that most people had to walk no more than a few blocks to catch a streetcar.
Streetcar routes in Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1933.
Streetcars dominated public transportation through World War II. But in 1949, a group of investors took control of the Twin City Rapid Transit Company — which by then included buses — and the end of the streetcar era was in sight. Buses were becoming cheaper than rail to run and driving a car to work had become part of the post-war American dream.
Car No. 1300 made the historic final Minneapolis streetcar run on the Como-Harriet Line on June 19, 1954. The cars were quickly sold to other cities and put into use or sold as scrap metal.
MinnPost photo by Steve DateThe old rail bed of the Como-Harriet line is now a walking path on a hill above Lake Calhoun.
In 1971 a group of individuals and the Minnesota Transportation Museum had the foresight and the funding to reconstruct about a mile of the Como-Harriet track and restore some of the cars as a tourist attraction and living history museum. Many people enjoy riding the old streetcars and the volunteer operators love telling the history of this bygone mode of transportation.
MinnPost photo by Steve DatePassengers wait to board at the Linden Hills station.
The current ride runs from the Lake Harriet station and stops abruptly on the southeastern shore of Lake Calhoun, at the site of the old Lakewood Cemetery Station.
MinnPost photo by Steve DateOld Lakewood Cemetery Station stood where the restored track now ends.
The track once continued north from there, across a bridge at 36th Street and along Lake Calhoun, up on a small bluff above the lake. After a few blocks, the tracks ran through an alley between James and Irving Avenues on its way toward Lake Street.
Streetcar stop in alley between James and Irving Avenues in the 1950s.
The Como-Harriet line must have been one of the most scenic routes in the city. Passengers enjoyed views of the lakes, a beautiful cemetery and residential areas on their way downtown.
MinnPost photo by Steve DateCar No. 1300 travels between Lakes Harriet and Calhoun.
The Hiawatha line, our first light-rail train since the '50s, has been successful. A second one, between the two downtowns, is now under construction and others are in the planning stages. I think about what we once had here and feel sad that it all had to be destroyed. But I guess good ideas have a way of coming back around.
I was at Lake Harriet last weekend and decided to take a ride. I thought about my mom and wondered if car No. 1300 might have been the one I rode on with her as a little guy.
MinnPost photo by Steve DateInside car No. 1300.
Thank you, Mom, for reminding me about my streetcar ride. Even though I don't remember it, I haven't forgotten.
MinnPost photo by Steve Date
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Comments (13)
How Different the Twin Cities Metro Area Would Be
If we had not allowed a few very wealthy men to take over the Twin City Rapid Transit Company and massively pad their own pockets, and those of their cronies, by shutting down and selling off the light rail system in favor of running buses and building our huge (and hugely expensive) highway system.
Whole neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul were devastated by the building of interstates 35 and 94 right through the middle of them, neighborhoods whose character was changed in negative ways that can never be corrected.
No doubt the street car system would have aided in keeping the city more compact and reducing sprawl. We would likely have far more green space and public parks in the suburbs (those things being facilitated within Minneapolis and St. Paul by the existence of the street car system).
We would now have far less noise and far better air quality, especially in the inner cities. Our health would be far better if we all had to walk a block or two to catch the street car to get where we need to go. The pace of life would be slower and, not having to always jump into and drive a car to get wherever we need to go, our stress levels would be far lower than they routinely are, today.
We'd be physically and mentally equipped to get far more done day-to-day than we are today, when half of us (or more) arrive at work exhausted because we just drove 30 minutes or more through very heavy traffic just to get there.
We'd have far more energy to enjoy our hours off, as well, if we didn't arrive at home even more deeply exhausted because, not only are we're tired from our day at work, but we just drove that same 30 minutes through heavy traffic, breathing polluted air in order to get back home.
How often it happens that when we let the wealthiest among us have their way (especially those who value money above all other things), they end up enriching themselves to completely unjustifiable heights (and are able to successfully set up systems which allow them to do so on a continuous basis) while the rest of us end up being impoverished, often for decades afterwards, in a whole variety of ways which become so much a part of "the way things are" in our lives, that we fail to notice there was (and is) another way (as we are today).
Yes, but...
Remember that the streetcar too was an engine of sprawl. Lowry Hill was not developed until the streetcar arrived. The same goes for Linden Hills and much of south Minneapolis, not to mention the northside. But it was a different kind of sprawl. It was more compact though not as dense as cities such as Chicago and New York. And Thomas Lowry made his fortune selling real estate made more profitable by the arrival of his streetcars.
Much of the old Como-Harriet-Hopkins right-of-way from downtown out to Hopkins still exists, with the private rights-of-way being almost completely intact and owned by the public. I have often wondered if with the arrival of modern streetcars we could ever reconstruct that line as a local version of the Southwest LRT meant to serve the communities not directly on the LRT line or not near one of the LRT stations.
The Selby Ave. tunnel is still there, though closed off. One can walk down the hill from the Cathedral and see the tracks emerging from a portal to another time.
Rose tinted glasses
You complain about a 30 minute drive, but as somebody who relied on public transit, that won't change just because you stop driving, in fact it takes longer.
Unless you are lucky enough to live and work on a single line, you will have transfer to another line (or 2 or 3). That is more down time. Not to mention if you miss the train/bus (it will happen, no matter how well you plan something will come up).
And as for buses or trains, I'll back the bus every time. The bus routes are easily flexible to meet demand as it shifts between populations. If a train breaks down, it will knock out the line much longer and affect more people than if a bus breaks down (send another bus). Plus the infrastructure costs. Buses have the same infrastructure as cars. Two birds with one stone.
Now I love the retro look, and the trollies above look fun, but that is me being a tourist, not a commuter. It quickly turns from the excitement of something new to yet another commute. After the 32nd time I take the trolly, it would have lost it's 'fun' a long time ago.
Need for Both
We need both buses and rail. Buses simply cannot handle the capacity we expect along certain corridors in the future (Hiawatha, University, Southwest, Bottineau). Not coincidentally, that's where we're building and planning rail.
The flexibility of buses is largely a myth. If you compare the current bus routes to the old streetcar maps they are roughly the same. A bus doesn't weave around in traffic either. It generally stays in the right lane and deals with whatever backups exist, just as a streetcar would. We've build the LRT lines with plenty of bypass crossovers to avoid breakdown problems. Moreover a rail car lasts a LOT longer than a bus.
But we cannot build rail everywhere. That's not practical. LRT will serve the highest-demand long-haul corridors, modern streetcars will serve the next highest-demand corridors and buses will continue to run everywhere else. We need more buses, not fewer, just as we need more rail, not less.
Time
"You complain about a 30 minute drive, but as somebody who relied on public transit, that won't change just because you stop driving, in fact it takes longer."
A big advantage of transit is that you can do something else while commuting. I am quite productive on the bus from Minneapolis to St. Paul, so much so that I don't notice the 45 minute trip at all. That's only about 15 minutes longer than the same route by car, by the way, and that's not even in rush hour traffic.
It is true that many places are not conveniently accessible by bus. That's not an argument for dropping transit, that's an argument for increasing our investment in it.
Permanent Impact
Splendid photos, and nice summation of the history.
These streetcar lines and especially their loss has had a permanent impact on the Twin Cities. Anyone who's driven around in a high traffic part of the city, such as Uptown on a Saturday night or Downtown during rush hour, knows this impact first hand. The rigidly square grid of streets results in stop-start progress with a four-way stop every two blocks on one-ways and cross-traffic is invisible until you are at an intersection, which come far too often for efficient automobile traffic.
Most streets are under-utilized as well, bringing soaring repair costs to residential streets hardly used by anyone who doesn't live on them. The street grid system in the Twin Cities is rational to a T, but not for automobile traffic. The cities were built on streetcar lines, and their layout is meticulously suited for that type of transit. Any other kind of transportation, except maybe bicycling, is inevitably frustrating, inefficient, and costly in terms of its use, in terms of its operation, and in terms of its maintenance.
Map
I don't suppose you have a high-res version of that great map?
Here you are
http://sdate.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/streetcar.gif
Thanks for the map.
It's nice to know that the bus and light rail will soon get me to downtown Minneapolis over the same route my mother could have traveled in 1933. You just can't beat progress.
Always There
You could always take the bus along that route. Central Corridor didn't magically reinvent it. Central Corridor was built to handle current and future capacity needs, not to open new areas to transit. Southwest LRT will do the latter.
Conspiracy or Creative Destruction?
I grew up in the 40s and 50s and dearly loved the streetcars. My grandparents took me joyriding every weekend, and we probably covered every line in the system. I didn’t understand why they disappeared and blamed the evil bus people. Fifty years later, after a life long career in the transit business, the nostalgia remains, but I have a better understanding of why they disappeared, and why, for the most part, they belong in a museum.
There is a persistent urban myth that GM along with oil and tire interests conspired to do way with streetcars and that an outfit called National City Lines, controlled by these interests, bought up street railway properties and deliberately converted them to buses. Nothing could be further from the truth. If there was a conspiracy, then every person who bought an automobile between 1920 and 1950 is a co-conspirator.
The Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT) carried 238 million riders in 1920, its all time peak year. By 1929 ridership was down to 168 million, and by 1941, on the eve of World War II, it had fallen to 105 million. Meanwhile automobile ownership soared. The system recovered, briefly, during World War II, but once wartime rationing ended and automobile production resumed, the slide continued. By 1948 the system was nearly bankrupt.
Streetcars required tracks and an electric power infrastructure that were expensive to build and maintain. That, and under the terms of its operating franchise with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, TCRT had to maintain the streets where its streetcars ran and clear them of snow during the winter months.
As a private company, its only revenues came from passenger fares, and, as more and more people turned to automobiles, its revenues dried up. Worse, the Minnesota Railroad and Warehouse Commission, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, opposed fare increases. At the time, local banks wouldn’t finance new buses, much less fund an extension of rail lines into the suburbs. Then, in 1949-50 a new management took over and persuaded General Motors Acceptance Corporation to lend it money to convert the system to bus operation. Four years later the streetcars were gone. Unfortunately, this management had connections with organized crime and used the opportunity to enrich itself from scrap metal sales and fraudulent real estate deals. Those involved eventually went to jail, but the bus conversion was inevitable. Even angels couldn’t save the big yellow cars.
Not Inevitable
It wasn't inevitable. We could have had public ownership of the streetcars, just as we do the buses today. I don't think there was a grand conspiracy with GM but it was certainly the case that we heavily subsidized the automobile while the streetcars had to fend for themselves under fare restrictions. So no grand conspiracies, just the usual public policy mistakes.
Please forgive the
Please forgive the borrow:
Thanks, Steve, for reminding me of my forgotten streetcar ride.
Your photos instantly reminded me of the ride that you (and your grumpy wife, my grumpy sister) took me on all those years ago.
Take care.