Well, the "THING" within JTA or the City is exposed just a bit closer to home, here we have it eating at Cleveland, Ohio, then bouncing to Tampa, complete with the US Congress and The FBI!!! Watch the video, then look around the room and take names, someone is going to the library and the Courthouse to get to the bottom of OUR story!
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/interurban-railway-systems/486122896
Another Video, that covers Los Angeles in about 2 minutes...Follow THIS money! Shall we film our own story? Stephendare, Steve, others? How about this film?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFhsrbtQObI
Ocklawaha
That's interesting...good find!
Interesting video. It's amazing to see how far we've regressed. Jacksonville continues down the same path today. As of Oct 18th, 2007, JTA is still claiming people prefer to ride buses over rail. It's an indefensible position, but they're sticking to it.
Great find. While National City Lines had a stake in Jacksonville, It appears that Jacksonville was ahead of the "bussation" trend.
QuoteNational City Lines also had significant control of the following additional transit systems.
* Baltimore Transit Co. (1944-1972)
* Jacksonville - Motor Transit Co. (1943-1945)
* Los Angeles Transit Lines (1945-1958)
* Oakland - Key System Transit Lines (1946-1960)
* Philadelphia Transportation Co. (1955-1966)
* St. Louis Public Service Co. (1940-1963)
"Bustitution" was not significant with these transit systems. Jacksonville had already converted to buses. The Key System discontinued all remaining local streetcars in 1948, but retained the interurban trains over the San Francisco Bay Bridge until 1958. Some streetcars remained in Los Angeles through the public takeover in 1958. And the original streetcars in Baltimore and St. Louis outlasted Chicago's streetcars, and those cities now have new light rail systems. And Philadelphia still has streetcars.
Yeah, I think it's cool that Philly still has them, and I believe it has the 5th largest public transportation system of the country.
(http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s31/jbm32206/itemPCCstreetcar.jpg)
Ock, since Jacksonville migrated from streetcars to buses before the national trend, is it possible that our first buses may have been Fords? We did have a Ford manufacturing plant downtown, and our street cars seem to have gone away many years before highways, urban flight, the Mathews bridge or even WWII.
Just a thought. I would be curious to see why Jacksonville pulled the plug on the system as early as it did, considering it was before the depression even, which was blamed in some cities.
Here is a shot of an old bus in Jacksonville. Does anyone know who built it?
(http://www.metrojacksonville.com/images/downtown_frankenstein/rewind_to_blight/Forsyth1940logo.jpg)
Im looking and here is one I found.
(http://www.carneymaryland.org/Food_service_delivery.jpg)
QuoteAn innovative way to deal with the lack of supermarkets in the Carney area in the late 1940's. Here, a Frosty
Home Food Service truck (a converted Ford transit bus) makes a delivery on Harding Avenue.
Notice the front of the bus... the same shape grill.
Both are very cool photos...my how they've changed over the years!
1947 Ford Transit Bus
(http://www.erha.org/erhastore/images/asburyfordtransit309.jpg)
(http://www.erha.org/erhastore/images/asburyfordtransit.jpg)
So did having a Ford plant in downtown have anything to do with the streecars disappearing in Jacksonville before any other cities?
Great Finds and Theory to Y'all too. (gee can hippies give Ditto's?)
The photo from the destruction of transit piece, is of a flat front bus with an oval grill, this appears to me to be about a 1936 REO. There were a couple of other brands with flat front transit buses at the time. The leader would probably have been Twin-Coach. They were located in KENT, OHIO (Hippies, Remember Kent and Jackson State? same place, different address). TC had a contract before the Jacksonville Trolley Wreck with Goodyear Zeppelin Corp, and a bit later with General Motors Components Division...Hummm?
The players in the change or final years were: Stockton, Ingle, Barrs, Fletcher, Moore, and a bunch of others.
Jacksonville Traction continued OWNERSHIP until January of 1933. That is when MOTOR TRANSIT COMPANY purchased the property and made Ingle, President, he was the former president of JTCO! By Feb 29, 1933, the TU reported that the streetcars would stop operation on the most heavily traveled routes: Ortega, Murray Hill and Avondale. By 1934, streetcar numbers were down to 50, and track miles to 46.7, the bus count reached 45, with 50 route miles. By 1935, streetcars shrunk to 24.1 miles and 15 cars, while buses went to 65 on 75 route miles. By late in 1936, streetcar service was only seen on Kings Road and LaVilla lines, and only at rush hour. At 11:30 AM, on a dark and cold rainy December 12, 1936, the final streetcar stopped in front of City hall at Forsyth and Ocean, rolled down to Bay, and climbed the old Riverside Viaduct to the Car Barn. Within an hour the wire was dead.
Even more interesting is the date of the last run. Some books place this as 1933. Records show it ran until 1936. How long did it take Motor Transit to unload the new buses on the next victim? In 1936, Motor Transit Company sold controlling interest to City Coach Lines of Chicago. Motor Transit continued to operate until the VOTERS approved a franchise by John Fletcher, for Jacksonville Coach Company. When the franchise was approved, Motor Transit withdrew, selling it's interests to the new company on February 18, 1945. The Motor Transit name was used until October 1947, finally ownership went to City Coach Lines of Atlanta, and headed by Manfred Burleigh of DETROIT. LA LA LA
I don't think we were before the curve on this, I really think we may indeed have been the first VICTIM of the murder plot.
Ocklawaha
Oh this is sweet... Spent the first of many, many hours in the downtown library's Florida room, lost in Jan. 1932. Some rich stuff, the Jacksonville Traction Company is in broke, the franchise is due to be renewed, and along comes CITY COUNCIL with a great new franchise that REQUIRES the streetcars be slowly removed and the Tracks to be torn out. They expect the franchise to be approved within two weeks. Humm? Says it was detailed a couple of months ago, and will be again when approved. Meanwhile, the VERY NEXT DAY, GM announces a whole new marketing plan, and guess where the regional offices and distribution center for their cars is??? Yeah, nothing fishy here! BA*T*RDS!
Ocklawaha