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St. Louis Trolleys In Color by Andrew D. Young Morning Sun Books w dust jacket
St. Louis Trolleys In Color by Andrew D. Young Morning Sun Books
Hard cover with dust jacket
128 Pages
Copyright 2011 Morning Sun Books, Inc.
Introduction
In 1945, St. Louis seemed drab, run-down and seedy. The Depression, World War II and years of suburban flight had all but eliminated commercial or residential development within the city limits.
But appearances can be deceptive.
During that same time period, downtown St. Louis was thriving. Shops, offices, industry, entertainment, and river and rail transportation were all part of the mix, tied together by a network of streetcar and bus lines that every few minutes could get you anywhere in town for no more than a dime.
Municipally independent outer suburbs in St. Louis County were small cities with local car and bus networks. Maplewood, Wellston and University City centered on streetcar loops while Bridgeton, Clayton, Ferguson, Kirkwood, St. Charles and Webster Groves all had streetcar service in the 1940s, and some into the 1950s and the 1960s. Most are still served by bus and others by MetroLink Light Rail, the street railway's present incarnation.
Though still a streetcar city in 1945, St. Louis had been eliminating car lines in favor of buses since 1929. This was largely a byproduct of road-widening projects, such as those on Vandeventer, Market, Natural Bridge and the outer limits of the St. Charles Rock Road. The crippling expense of relocating or realigning marginally profitable routes during the ensuing upheaval could not be justified.
Money-losing suburban shuttles were also eliminated in the 1930s, including Marcus, Midland, Jefferson Barracks, the Bridgeton and St. Peters shuttles, and the Florissant line beyond Berkeley and Meramec Highlands beyond Woodbine and Magnolia in Kirkwood.
A larger-scale conversion of major lines to bus began in 1939, cut short by World War II after a few lines such as the #20 Cherokee (on Gravois), the #21 Tower Grove and the #80 Compton had been done. This was a program to reorganize and simplify transit routes in specific neighborhoods. Other car lines were amalgamated and better integrated with bus lines and the most heavily-traveled were upgraded with 200 new streetcars, accompanied by a fleet of similarly-styled buses.
Eight more car lines were to be converted in 1942. The replacement buses were delivered, but an order from the new wartime Office of Defense Transportation early that year (1942) put closures on hold, and for the rest of the 1940s, public transit was stretched to the limit. The eight car lines survived, with the new buses used instead to augment existing bus lines.
This new bus fleet, several hundred more slightly older units, 253 streetcars less than fifteen years old plus the 200 new streetcars of 1940 and 1941, put St. Louis public transit in a better position to soldier on in times of acute shortage and restrictions on auto use than many other cities saddled with decades-old cars and antediluvian buses.
A further 100 new cars came in 1946 and another 100 were expected around 1950-1952 to complete modernization of those lines to be retained and to replace surviving older cars, still almost 300-strong in 1948, many dating back before 1910 and some to 1902-03.
Car-to-bus conversion resumed in 1946 with the eight lines postponed from 1942. The process was complete by mid-1947. From then until 1952, streetcar lines were culled on the grounds of profitability and the potential (or not) for further ridership growth. The fact that newly-available high-capacity (53-seat) diesel buses with fluid transmission could now handle all except the very heaviest streetcar lines was an additional factor taking the transit company away from streetcars.
A wholly new and successful network of rush-hour express bus lines from suburbs to downtown, begun in 1945, had only a tenuous relationship to traditional transit route patterns typified by the long streetcar lines serving St. Louis County. These had never been economically viable since the day they were completed. They were converted to bus between 1948 and 1950.
From 1951, post-war ridership and revenue decline prompted continual readjustment and amalgamation of bus lines throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Much ingenuity was devoted to public relations and marketing techniques to counter these problems, but the effort wilted in the face of increasing public resentment at the unrelenting upward pressure on fares, especially when it was clear that service was simultaneously (and almost silently) being reduced as a cost-cutting measure.
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