Who Shot Jacksonvilles Streetcars? The plot thickens...

[Ocklawaha]

Anyone living in Jacksonville before the days of JTA probably remembers the old cream colored buses with the forest green stripe (an almost exact reverse of the Jacksonville Traction Company's paint scheme). CITY COACH LINES, was the operator and what an operator they were. As it now appears it went something like this

General Motors was guarding it's collection of streetcar lines as in each case, with a little blackmail by threatening to divert lucrative automobile freight to rival carriers, they persuaded the railroad (according to GM's own files) to convert its electric street cars to motor buses -- slow, cramped, foul-smelling vehicles whose inferior performance invariable led riders to purchase automobiles.

As the largest depositor in the nation's leading banks, GM also enjoyed financial leverage over the electric railways, which relied heavily on these banks to supply their capital needs. According to U.S. Department of Justice documents, officials of GM visited banks used by railways in Philadelphia, Dallas, Kansas City and other locations, and, by offering them millions in additional deposits, persuaded their rail clients to convert to motor vehicles.

In January of 1933, THE MOTOR TRANSIT Company bought the franchise of the JACKSONVILLE TRACTION COMPANY. In writing the new franchise some interesting lines are noted, such as 'the rails, wire and materials are to be removed and the streets repaved with a smooth pavement.' By removing the rails they guaranteed that nobody would ever again seek streetcar service in Jacksonville. The streetcar lines were abandoned exactly as they shouldn't have been, all of the longer routes into suburban Jacksonville, routes we could use today, were the first to go, followed by the downtown lines. On December 12, 1936 Judge Barr's the last streetcar customer boarded the final streetcar, in a telltale cold rain.

Where these measures were unavailing, GM formed holding companies to buy up and motorize the railways directly. Thus, it helped organize and finance United Cities Lines, MOTOR TRANSIT COMPANY as a wholly owned GM subsidiary, as well as Greyhound, Rex Finance, Omnibus Corporation, National City Lines, Pacific City Lines, American City Lines, CITY COACH LINES, Manning Transportation and numerous other concerns, which acquired rail systems across the country, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, San Diego and Oakland.

The JACKSONVILLE COACH COMPANY, Founded by John Fletcher, Purchased the bus franchise on February 28, 1945, from the MOTOR TRANSIT COMPANY, of Detroit. Motor Transit left town after council approved the franchise  for the competitor in 1944, but the name JACKSONVILLE COACH COMPANY, wasn't used until 1947. Then in a weird corporate twist, Fletcher and Associates sold the JACKSONVILLE COACH COMPANY to one WILEY MOORE of Atlanta who then sold it a few days later to CITY COACH LINES, in October of 1949. 

With officials of Greyhound and National City, went on to acquire and dismantle railways in 80 cities. They even took out the $50 million North Shore Line, the fastest electric service in the world, providing Wisconsin's lakeshore cities and Chicago's northern suburbs high-speed rail access to the downtown loop, direct from Milwaukee. With a pack of notorious mobsters, it helped purchase and scrap the street railways serving Minneapolis-St. Paul.

IT AIN'T OVER TILL IT'S OVER! "STREETCARS COMING."

Motor Transit might have thought there would never be another attempt to create a streetcar system in Jacksonville, but they have already been proved wrong.


OCKLAWAHA

[Ocklawaha]

In doing some more discovery, it now appears that Motor Transit sold itself by region, as in Michigan Motor Transit, Atlantic Motor Transit, etc.  If they did, and if it's the same company then guess who? Today we call it Greyhound, and it was an indirect offshoot of GM

BTW the early buses used animals or things and a color or number to differentiate between each other. A passenger to Orange Park might ride the Blue Seal, while .  #7 Bayou Minette to Mobile, or the Green 8 ball. The word Greyhound got used so often that in the upper plains states it began to dominate and the system changed to run numbers. That's how GREYHOUND got it's name.

OCKLAWAHA

[ChriswUfGator]

Speaking of this history, I happen to have this lying around;