At its peak, the Twin Cities’ for-profit streetcar transit system served 200 million riders a year. But the popularity of cars and the relative low cost of building roads made the business unprofitable. Eventually the steel rails were pulled up or paved over and transit operations were taken over by municipalities.
Transcript
The last operating remnant of the Twin Cities’ once vast streetcar network is the short demonstration line between Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun.
Riders pay the fee to take the trip and hear about the history of the fleet of some 600 streetcars that roamed over 500 miles of track.
Taxpayers have invested billions of dollars over the years into the current transit system that includes buses, vans and light rail. But the origins of Minnesota’s transit begins more than a century ago as a for-profit company.
Aaron Isaacs is a volunteer with the Lake Harriet streetcar. He’s also a retired planner and analyst for Metro Transit. He is the author of the book Twin City Lines and is editor of the Railway Museum Quarterly.
Isaacs says the Twin City Rapid Transit was responsible not only for building the streetcars and lines, but also generating the electricity and maintaining the tracks year-round.
Isaacs: "It was entirely a for-profit business. Companies existed on the fares they collected."
Combustion engine coaches started as a supplement, then eventually became the vehicle of choice.
Isaacs: "You had suburban buses all over the Metro area by the mid-1920s. Buses started to replace streetcars in 1930s. It was a rather gradual process then you had the wholesale replace of streetcars by buses in the 1950s."
The rise of personal cars and the low cost of roads compared to high grade steel track doomed the for-profit streetcar business. The last streetcar ran in 1954.
At it’s peak, the Twin City Rapid Transit system serviced 200-million passengers a year. That’s more than twice Metro Transit’s current ridership.