By Ethan Barton
Return to Stuck in Transit main page
BALTIMORE — The last streetcar made its way over Baltimore streets in 1963, done in, partly, by the rise of the automobile and the growth of the suburbs — all coming atop an antitrust scandal.
But today, some groups are calling for the streetcar’s return.
Members of the Baltimore Streetcar Campaign want streetcars back because, the group says, they’re better for the economy and the environment.
A streetcar, or trolley, is powered by an overhead electric cable and runs on a track, though there are also trackless trolleys, which use rubber tires.
BALTIMORE – It all started with streetcars.
Jimmy Rouse, president of the Baltimore Streetcar Campaign, and its executive director, Robin Budish, were campaigning to bring back trolleys when they realized they were meeting people who were interested in more than streetcars — people who wanted to see many changes in transportation around the city.
“People kept saying that we really need to look at Baltimore transportation system as a whole,” Budish said. “And although streetcars are a component, there are many other improvements that need to be made, because the systems don’t really connect to one another.”
Last December, Budish and Rouse, along with some colleagues, organized a transportation symposium aimed at making Baltimore more liveable by improving rail, buses, water taxis and bicycles as well as adding streetcars.
What emerged from the discussions was Transit Choices, a grassroots group that now includes government officials, business leaders, and community activists — all of whom wanted to change and improve mass transportation in Baltimore.
One year later, Transit Choices is getting ready to go to City Hall in January with a list of “quick hits” — low-cost, high-impact improvements to transit projects that it would like to see happen in 2014.
“We have formed work groups on buses, biking, water transit, pedestrian facilities and rail which includes light rail, streetcar, heavy rail and MARC, and each has been tasked to come up short-term, medium-term and long-term goals,” she said.
The rail work group’s preliminary list includes: making light rail faster by giving the train signal priority over traffic; updating MTA bus shelters and stops; installing next-stop displays inside trains; adding bike hooks inside trains; and making the first door of trains accessible for wheelchairs without needing the intervention of an operator, as is now required.
The main objective of all the work groups: to create a system that would let commuters move effortlessly around the city, even when using more than one transit line.
Klaus Philipsen, president of ArchPlan, Inc., an architecture company, says that kind of integration would give Baltimore “a real system.”
“What makes a real system,” Philipsen said, “ is that a user can get from point A to point B and seamlessly transfer from one mode to another, ideally with one ticket and with one set of information, and doesn’t care what is run by the city and what is run by the MTA and whether it is a bus or a train or a Circulator bus or an express bus.”
Philipsen has been a consultant on the proposed Red Line light rail project since 2002. He thinks that Transit Choices has the potential to elevate the discussion on transit in the region.
“We have been able to get everyone to the table to talk about what Baltimore would look like with an integrated transit system,” Budish said.
No other group has been able to get all the different transportation entities around the table working collaboratively, with everyone focused on the bigger picture and not a particular project, she said.
Philipsen agreed. “Groups that previously existed were much narrower in their representation or in their target. This group really talks about transportation across the board, all the modes and it addresses the whole mobility question. I think they have a potential to make a difference.”
Transit Choices has about 90 members with representation from the MTA, City Hall, the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, and many private and public organizations and community activists.
“We want people to sign on as signatories to our mission,” Budish said. “Right now we have close to 100 but we would like to have 2,000 people on there.”
The group has no board and no voting. It is a collaborative effort in which the consensus of the group prevails.
Art Cohen, who began an advocacy group named “b’more mobile” in 2006, is a member of Transit Choices.
“People with diverse viewpoints about the future and the present, whether they are professionals working in the field or they are citizen advocates, or business people — they are finding ways to explore and agree on common ground,” Cohen said.
“I think it is a very healthy development. I think they are off to a good start.”
“They’re more permanent than buses. You can see the tracks,” said Andrew Blumberg, director of public affairs for the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. “They last longer. They were more resilient, more durable.”
That permanence, some boosters say, has an effect on business.
“Economic activity seems to spring up around streetcars in other cities that have them,” Blumberg said. “Just being able to see the routes means something to the riders and the businesses.”
Of course, efficiency isn’t the only reason riders love streetcars.
“Some people remember them and have nostalgia,” Blumberg said. “People seem to gravitate to that form of transit.”
Jeanne Shipley, 78, a former Baltimore resident who now lives on the Eastern Shore, remembers why she preferred streetcars to buses.
“The buses have the wind and were loud and moved around,” Shipley said. “The streetcars — they were just smooth.”
If streetcars were beloved, why did they disappear from Baltimore and from most other American cities?
One large factor was the increased use of the automobile, which cut ridership on mass transit. Motorists complained that streetcars tracks interfered with driving. And of course, Americans were moving to the suburbs.
But it was an antitrust scandal, many historians say, that really helped do the streetcar in and prompted the conversion of streetcar lines to bus routes over the two decades after World War II.
In the 1930s and 1940s, National City Lines, a holding company based in Chicago, purchased part or all of transit companies in cities across the nation and converted the streetcar lines to bus routes, regardless of public and expert opinion. National City’s investors included other big businesses that would profit from the conversion, such as General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil.
“National City Lines expedited the process” of turning streetcar routes to bus lines, Blumberg said. “But it still would have happened.”
In Baltimore, National City Lines purchased stock in the Baltimore Transit Company, the largest provider of public transit in the city, and began converting the streetcar lines to bus routes despite public anger.
One Baltimorean stockholder even sued Baltimore Transit over the conversions and their lack of concern for the stockholders. He lost in both trial and appeals courts.
In 1954, in a federal case, National City Lines and the other companies it conspired with were convicted of breaking antitrust laws. But the fines were small — despite the huge profits National City made — and no one went to jail.
Still, streetcars didn’t recover. By then, more and more people were buying cars, and cities began pulling up or paving over the tracks.
In Baltimore, the era ended Nov. 3, 1963. On that day, the last streetcar carried passengers through the city. Newspapers reported the visitors came from as far away as New York to watch.
