streetcar

Streetcars are the oldest form of public transit that is still being used globally.

Today, streetcars are vehicles similar to trains that operate on rails that are networked into roadways. An overhead line is used for power but when electricity was not an accessable resource as in years past, horses were used to draw the cars.

see: trolley, tram

One of the oldest methods of mass transit, every city in America used to have a streetcar system. An outgrowth of horse cars, the first electrified line ran in the Hamden section of Baltimore, Maryland, in 1883. They mainly got power from an overhead line, though some citys also used a third rail. Also known as light rail.

Streetcars were ubiquitous in many American cities until the late 1940s, when the General Motors Corporation, through a number of front companies, bought the majority of the streetcar lines in America and dismantled them. The streetcars were replaced by bus lines, and, coincidentally, most of the buses bought for said lines were made by General Motors.