6 ms·

My god, did that happen to every trolley line? Makes me want them back all the more.

• rmason 9y ago
  Well my dad was called a conspiracy theorist and worse for advocating that GM bought up Detroit's trolley line. I am just glad that he lived long enough to see the truth come out and be proven right.
• Symmetry 9y ago
  That makes sense to me? Buses are environmentally equivalent to trolleys, cheaper, both have to deal with traffic, etc. In most cases the fact that buses are more flexible is good but inflexibility can sometimes be useful in terms for getting people to believe you're really going to stick with a new route and therefore it makes sense to start a business on it. Now if they were replacing subways or light rail with buses that would be horrible.
  • noobermin 9y ago
    Having a dedicated line to travel on helps and preference at traffic lights helps a bunch. I think you underestimate the amount of delays buses have to deal with when they also have to be in traffic.
    • Symmetry 9y ago
      Both trolleys and buses can have dedicated lines of travel or you can force them to share their lanes with other traffic. And both both buses and trolleys can be given light priority or they can wait with everybody else. The issues you're raising are totally orthogonal to bus versus trolley. Cities with good bus or trolley systems do these and cities with worse but cheaper systems don't. And another good way to speed up buses or trolleys is not forcing them to pull out of traffic when they stop to pick up customers by having special islands or having the curb extend into what would otherwise be parking spaces.
      • noobermin 9y ago
        It probably does depend on the infrastructure choices the city implements. I don't see a lot of buses systems that have isolated islands, dedicated lanes, etc. I do see them frequently for street trolleys.
• rdiddly 9y ago
  It happened in a lot of cities nationwide, from what I understand. Didn't know about Detroit, but am not surprised. I think possibly the fact has even been established that it was the result of a, well I'm tempted to use the word conspiracy, but let's say "effort," of Standard Oil, Firestone Tires and Ford, but don't quote me on that. A lot of places felt the need to take the suspiciously over-enthusiastic step of burning the trolley cars... ostensibly to strip the wood & recover the scrap metal.
• noobermin 9y ago
  It's funny how so many people don't know this. It is true of almost all major midwest to east coast cities.