Technological Momentum, Motor Buses, and the Persistence of Canada's Street Railways to 1940

Abstract

As recently as 1939, 80 per cent of transit pas-sengers in Canada's cities still travelled on street railways, and this despite the introduc-tion of motor buses as competition as early as 1915. This article examines the ways in which Canadian electric railways contained the challenge from the motor bus. It posits the view that a major factor in the survival of street railways was their owner's success in gaining control over motor bus development, then sub-sequently using the bus to extend the life of the rail systems. After World War II, the high cost of renewing tracks and declining patronage favoured investment in trolly coaches and/or motor buses rather than in the modernization of the street railway systems. Service was still provided, however, by large vehicles operating on inflexible routes. This conservative approach to transportation on the part of the city traction monopolies ultimately ensured the triumph of the private automobile as the dominant carrier of urban commuters. Resume A une date aussi recente que 1939, 80 p. 100 des voyageurs dans les villes canadiennes em-pruntaient des tramways et cela, malgre l'ap-parition des autobus comme concurrents, des 1915. Cet article etudie les moyens par lesquels les tramways electriques canadiens ont resiste a la concurrence des autobus. L'auteur soutient qu'un facteur majeur de la survie des tramways est l'habilete que demontrait leur proprietaire a obtenir le controle du developpement des autobus, puis a utiliser par la suite ces derniers pour allonger la vie des reseaux ferres. Apres la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le cout eleve du renouvellement des voies et la baisse du nombre des clients ont favorise l'investisse-ment dans les trolleybus ou les autobus plutot que dans la modernisation des reseaux de tramways. Cependant, de grands vehicules desservant des routes immuables assuraient encore du service. Cette approche conservatrice du transport de la part des monopoles urbains de la traction a assure en fin de compte le triomphe de l'automobile privee en tant que moyen de transport dominant des banlieusards.

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