Public transportation has a noticeable presence in Cleveland. The Healthline rumbles down Euclid, trolleys tour the city and trains screech to stops along their routes. And we Clevelanders make good use of it (even if it’s only for slightly inebriated travels to and from bars): Last year alone, ridership increased to 49.2 million rides on RTA systems.
But even back in the day, trolleys and streetcars buzzed around, taking people where they needed to go. The cars (and the city in the background) looked a bit different from what we see now, but you can still recognize most of it.
Here are some cool photos of vintage streetcars which served Cleveland through the years, courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2014.
As cities become more and more congested, the old will become new — again.
Dayton still had trolley buses (two sticks on top, rather than one…and rubber tires instead of steel wheels on rails) long after Cleveland’s were phased out. San Francisco still has them.
Cleaner, quieter, far better than the noisy, stinky buses we’re so used to. And they’re all over eastern Europe…and Russia…despite winters as bad or worse than ours. Do they know something we don’t?
Chuckles the Clown