Streetcar

“ People traverse it, not with the object of arriving at any particular destination, but for the delight of the road itself, of the joy it gives to the eye and to the imagination. Its only traffic is what the transport agent would call “holiday traffic”; for when the idle season ends the highway is deserted. In earlier days there would rumble along the road the carriage and four of the traveller of great means; then came the humbler vehicle hired from the town; then the sleek motor; and finally, as a sign of democratic progress, the char-à-banc, the omnibus, and the motor-brake. ”

“ Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of waggons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirty-fourth street cross one another as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the struggling mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers’ imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around them. ”

“ That Main Street didn’t remember, and somehow seem to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the elevated train
They make the weary city street reverberate with pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made beneath a butcher’s cart.
God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky,
That’s the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die. ”

“ No one, unless disposed to self-martyrdom, will think of entering a vehicle except under direst necessity; but there are delightful little street cars, running on an iron tramway, which take you the entire round of the city, past all the hotels, the stores and principal thoroughfares, and bring you back to the starting-place for five cents. Walking is here a most delightful exercise; the side-walks everywhere are laid with light springy planks on which it is a pleasure to tread. We stroll on in a kind of go-as-you-please, walking-made-easy fashion, as though we never wanted to stop. ”

“ Modern street traffic, too, is of the most mixed and bewildering kind, and the already perilous London streets have been made much more so by the motor in its various forms of van and bus, business or private car. ”

“ And for this, at eleven every Saturday, there is a great rush westward, a vast migration over Lea, from all the length of High Street. From the nearer parts they walk, or do their best to walk; but from further Stratford, by the Town Hall, the Church, and the Martyrs' Memorial, they crowd the cars. For one thing, it is a long half-mile, and the week's work is over. Also, the car being swamped, it is odds [Pg 74] that a man shall save his fare, since no conductor may fight his way a quarter through his passengers before Bow Bridge, where the vehicle is emptied at a rush. ”

“ In no other way could they accommodate all that rushing traffic of the swift cars and the lean, torpedo-like trams that with a splendid service link up the heart of the town with the far outlying suburbs. And even though the streets are broad the automobile is becoming too much for them. ”

“ Of course on rails they travel smoothly, but they and the rails greatly increase the difficulty for cabs and carriages. The traffic in a New York street in no way resembles that in [Pg 21] a London one. Where there is one tram-car in London there are fifty in New York, and fifty cabs here to one there. The same as to carriages. Nearly the whole of the passenger traffic is done in the tram-cars and elevated railroads, and no wonder it is so, for to traverse the streets on wheels in any other way is very painful. ”

“ Many people living at the present time, who have grown up amidst the exceptional and possibly very transient characteristics of this time, will be disposed to regard the traffic in the streets of our great cities as a part of the natural order of things, and as unavoidable as the throng upon the pavement. But indeed the presence of all the chief constituents of this vehicular torrent—the cabs and hansoms, the vans, the omnibuses—everything indeed except the few private carriages—are as novel, as distinctively things of the nineteenth century, as the railway train and the needle telegraph. ”

“ Scores of cabs and carriages went by, eastward and westward, but no carts or wains or lorries, such as one sees in London or Glasgow—vehicles with bright lamps and well muffled occupants, gentlemen in evening suits, and ladies in ball or dinner dresses, and crowds of pedestrians, under the brilliant gas lights and long boulevard-like lines of trees—the ever-changing human panorama of a great city street before midnight. ”

“ Those men who ventured early into the street-car business were pioneers; they assumed large risks, and they rendered a public service. They had the courage to undertake experiments; they had faith that the town would grow and become in time a city. And they staked all on the chance. They had little difficulty, if they had any at all, in securing franchises from the city to use the streets, for the people of the city were glad to have the convenience of transportation. ”

“ In most manufacturing centres, however, the motoring workman could get to his cottage home by a journey of a few miles. Even in London, moreover, this disadvantage will be overcome to a large extent in the future, for it is as certain as anything of the kind can be that we must ultimately have special highways, smooth, dustless, reserved for motor traffic, leading out of London in the principal directions.... My own conviction is that motor cycling, the simplest, the quickest, the cheapest independent locomotion that has ever been known, is destined to enjoy enormous development. ”

“ Trolley-cars clank, motor-cars of the latest models throb quietly, pony-traps and bullock-carts stir the ancient quiet. One wonders how so much new life can find room to move about in such narrow streets with their still narrower sidewalks that permit men to pass in single file only, and angular corners and low buildings. ”

“ As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car lines—surface, underground or elevated—of any great American city.
The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITY. Every woman who brings a baby into the world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that city's street railroads. She increases the gross income of that railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with each child to which she gives birth. ”

“ When the only public approaches to Parliament were King Street and Union Street, these were so wretchedly paved, that when the King went in state to the House, the ruts had to be filled up with bundles of fagots to allow the royal coach a safe transit. While the art of street-paving was thus so imperfect, that of road-making was equally defective, so that the country visitor to the metropolis, and its dangers of coach-driving, had generally a sufficient preparative for the worst during his journey to town. ”

“ If the steam railroads are feeling the competition of the motor, the interurban trolley lines and the street-car companies are harder hit. The interurban lines are most of them short and depend upon local traffic. Their cars stopped at any cross-road along the way to pick up passengers and freight. But the motor transport is going them one better; it picks up its load at the front gate, saving the trouble of even a short walk, or in the case of freight, of loading and unloading and a short haul to the track. ”

“ Having hired the car in crowded Times Square, near his Forty-fourth Street rooms, he ran it up along Broadway with the thought of awaiting the driver.
The traffic was congested with surface cars, heavy trucks, other motors, and carriages. His whole attention was riveted on the task in hand. Driving a car in the streets of New York ceases to be enjoyment, very promptly. ”

“ Street cars are not needed in the city. Nearly all London streets are in as good condition for driving as our Central Park roads. There are eight thousand hansoms, four thousand four-wheelers, and two thousand omnibuses, so that you are not obliged to walk on account of the absence of cars. The four-wheeled cabs, or “growlers,” as they term them, are dilapidated, uncomfortable vehicles, which lack new springs, and are dirty both inside and out. The horses and the drivers are old and superannuated; they have all seen better days in private carriages or hansom cabs. ”

“ Now that more than one half the population of the United States live in cities makes the matter of local transportation of at least passing interest. Railroads were at first tram cars and many of them were built through the city streets, it was easy, therefore, to make of them street cars caring for such local traffic as desired to take advantage of them. They became a popular means of local transportation in the decade 1850-60. As the demand became greater the one-horse car gave way to the two-horse with its longer body and greater capacity. ”

“ Children liberally embellished with local colour swarmed on sidewalks where ash and garbage-cans flourished in subtropical luxuriance, and disputed the roadway with the ramshackle wagons and push-carts of peddlers, horse-drawn drays, and grinding, gargantuan motor-trucks that snarled ferociously at the aliens, the frail, pretty pleasure cars from Fifth avenue. ”

“ In those days not even a locomotive's whistle was heard in that languid old town, and the thin stream of visitors came by unpleasant little steamers over seas often choppy, or by rocking red stages over mountain roads choppy at best. There were no pavements and few sidewalks, and one diminutive, ramshackle street-car ambled unpunctually through State Street, from the Arlington to the wharf and back again. ”

“ Around him all is quiet; the few shops are closed; an occasional pedestrian passes, his coat-collar drawn up over his ears, and humming some café-chantant air, or a carriage with coach-lamps sparkles along the middle of the street like a huge firefly. ”

“ The ’twenties of the nineteenth century were almost as remarkable for those early horseless vehicles, the steam carriages, as the present era is for petrol-driven and electric motor-cars. Railways, too, began early to threaten stage-and mail-coaching; and long, whirling, and involved controversies on road and rail traffic occupied the columns of the press, and overflowed into innumerable pamphlets.
Few people had sufficient imagination to foresee an era of mechanical locomotion ”

“ Noise, too—that distracting rattle and rumble of vans, light carts, omnibuses, and cabs—will be done away with, and how much this will help to restore the nervous system of Londoners who can tell? Horses having almost vanished, the space each one would occupy—some seven feet in length—will be saved on each vehicle, and thus the increase of traffic will be partly provided for. Collisions and the running-down of cars will be unheard of, the steering and stopping powers of the electric motors being perfect. ”

“ The last means of conveyance to be mentioned is the railway carriage, which—the city being built on a perfect flat—is admirably adapted for locomotion. The rails are laid down in a broad avenue on each side of Broadway, and the cars are drawn by horses, some two, some four. Those that are used for the simple town business have only two horses, and will hold about twenty-four passengers; the others run from the lower end of the town to a place where the engine is waiting for them outside. ”

“ As for going downtown on foot, or even over to Cousin Mary's on Ninety-sixth—well, what does a person have a car for anyway?
On Sundays, holidays and election days, instead of ferrying over to the Palisades and walking ten miles or less, as we used to before we could afford not to, we got out the bus and crowded our way into the procession which packed the main road to the most expensive roadhouse, and having eaten thereat we would climb back into the car and take an hour's healthy exercise riding over the bumps of the state highway. ”

“ Whilst I is lingering there wondering what I better do next, if anything, I sees a street-car go scooting by up at the next crossing, and I gets an idea. If street cars in New York is anything like they is at [70] home, sooner or later they all turns into the main street and runs either past the City Hall or to the Union Depot. So I allows to myself that go on up yonder and climb aboard the next car which comes along and stay on her, no matter how far she goes, till she swings back off the branch onto the trunk-line, and watch out then, and when she goes past our corner drop off. ”

“ Somebody’s idea of a perfect motor trip was independent of roads or stopping-places.
Meanwhile I had been told that the best information was to be had at the touring department of the Automobile Club. So I went there.
A very polite young man was answering questions with a facility altogether fascinating. He told one man about shipping his car—even the hours at which the freight trains departed. To a second he gave advice about a suit for damages; for a third he reduced New York’s traffic complications to simplicities in less than a minute ”

“ With such an immense population, one can infer the great demand placed upon 'buses, public hacks, taxicabs and private vehicles, which at once suggests light-tire traffic. Heavy trucks, loaded with all sorts of merchandise, are not seen in corresponding sections of London as one finds them in populous American centers. In the subways, or tubes, are but two tracks, which prohibit, of course, fast travel. On the other hand, sixteen underground railways intersect the city and suburbs. The atmosphere of a subway is perhaps a more cosmopolitan phase than any other of our industrial factors. ”