100 years pass
Mon, 11/30/2009 - 3:24pm | by mides
1907 schedule for ferrys and street cars via: Mark Kelly
I was at the downtown Minneapolis library yesterday when a large map caught my eye. It was a 1910 ariel map with all the transit lines included. As a new Minnesotan I was shocked to see that at one time you could get to Stillwater or Hopkins on mass transit (that was not a bus).
It was a great reminder that not so long ago we had the plans and capital in place to move people around our region that was not based on expressways, but rather mass transit. Here is the old map (1910) and the new map (2020). A lot has changed in 100 years, but I find looking at these two maps educational to say the least.
Comments
Reduced frequency the biggest loss
The map at the MPLS Central library is fantastic - worth ordering from the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. If the Twin Cities still had its streetcars, it's hard to believe that they wouldn't be a tourist draw to rival the Mall of America.
On the other hand, I think a bigger shock is to look at the frequencies those streetcars ran at. Take the 70 in St. Paul, which now runs at absurdly low frequencies - 30 or 60 minutes on weekdays on St. Clair Ave. In the streetcar heyday, St. Clair line streetcars were running at off-peak headways of more like 10 minutes. Nearly any streetcar in the system ran at 10 minutes or less headways off-peak, and frequent lines might hit 3-5 minutes peak. See Twin Cities by Trolley for a complete list of lines and headways.
I love streetcars, but I have to wonder whether the deeper loss is the streetcar system, or the service frequencies. Clearly, we need dedicated right-of-way LRT and BRT for the big trunk lines, but hugely boosting bus frequencies could work miracles within the core cities.
Neat find
Really neat, thanks for posting these.