Cleveland’s Transit Vehicles
James A. Toman and Blaine S. Hays | Filed under: Regional Interest
The social and political aspects of Cleveland’s public transportation history are the subject of this companion volume to Horse Trails to Regional Rails. The focus here is on the technological aspects of the system. From the start of street railway operations in 1859 until the end of the surface electric era in 1963, the city was crisscrossed with hundreds of miles of track and overhead wire, and with thousands of poles to keep the overhead wire in place. Thousands of streetcars, and then thousands of buses, carried millions of passengers. The old Cleveland Transit System alone carried over 493 million passengers in 1946, and that total does not reflect the ridership of various suburban carriers.