Video: Goodbye Streetcars, Hello Silverliners!

[Alexis Kasperavičius]

Prior to the cutover from streetcars to buses in '63, Metro decided they should do something cool with the new buses to show 'em off before they were put into service (I can only assume).

Anyway, here we see the result: a Busby Berkley-esq romp of buses through the then new Dodger stadium and on a tour throughout the city.

Seeing these buses driving over streetcar tracks with "Goodbye Streetcars, Hello Silverliners!" festooned on side banners, actually makes me a little ill.

Anyway, it's history. Special thanks to the current metro librarian for finding and posting!

[carter]

At the time I'm sure people were excited for the buses. Those streetcars weren't all a picnic at the end, and the buses seemed to be a way to avoid the traffic by taking the freeways.

It's the myopia of it all that's depressing.

[bobdavis]

From the point of view of transit management, getting rid of streetcars meant that they could lay off the overhead line crew, sell the overhead wires for scrap, let the street dept. worry about the unused rails, etc. We should also remember that in 1963 a gallon of gas was about 25 cents, one could buy a serviceable used car for $100-200, there were no smog checks, and spare parts were cheap and simple.

[pithecanthropus]

I can't say much for the production values and plot development here. I thought there'd be some upbeat commentary here explaining why changeover was needed, and why this should be enthusiastically welcomed. But there was little else than buses rolling about to background music, and on roads so beautifully maintained and free of congestion that this film was almost certainly better at promoting privately owned automobiles than transit ridership.

Amazing how every lane has a strikingly dark oil-leak ribbon; you hardly ever see that today. It reminds me how people used to put cat sand or some other absorbent material on their garage floors to soak up the messy oil puddles that seemed to be almost inevitable.

I was surprised at the buses shown; I thought the models with the slanting window edges on the sides didn't appear until the late 1960s.

[pithecanthropus]

May 24, 2011 20:37:17 GMT -8 bobdavis said:

From the point of view of transit management, getting rid of streetcars meant that they could lay off the overhead line crew, sell the overhead wires for scrap, let the street dept. worry about the unused rails, etc.

I've always wondered about the comparative costs. Every bus is "responsible" for its own traction, and its engine has to be fueled and maintained. Railcars have traction too, obviously, but unlike buses the power plant is stationary and capable of powering all the cars in a particular section. Moreover, the motive mechanism seems to be much simpler on an electrically powered railcar.

You'd think that whatever the transit agency saved by firing the line crews would have been spent in fueling and maintaining the buses. Yet it must have been cheaper to make the transition, or at least seemed so, or they wouldn't have done it. Was it because the street department not only had to remove the tracks, but also assume the ongoing responsibility of maintaining the infrastructure (which they would have had to do anyhow)?

[pithecanthropus]

May 24, 2011 10:16:31 GMT -8 carter said:

At the time I'm sure people were excited for the buses. Those streetcars weren't all a picnic at the end, and the buses seemed to be a way to avoid the traffic by taking the freeways.

It's the myopia of it all that's depressing.

Depressing indeed, but also remember that in about a year the MTA and numerous other bus operators would be merged into the new SCRTD, part of whose initial mission was to design and build a heavy rail rapid transit system, hence the painfully ironic name (for younger members here, the "R" stood for Rapid). I'm sure many people were still deluding themselves that this would actually happen in a few years.

[bobdavis]

Or as some of us locals called it, the "Rancid Transit District". One of the interesting developments of the RTD was the absorbtion of some of the smaller bus operations. I went to the Pasadena City Line garage (originally built for PE's local bus service in 1923) and gathered some timetable from the soon to be merged company. RTD also went to San Bernardino and Riverside, areas now served by separate county entities and Metrolink trains. RTD even had a line that ran from Long Beach to Riverside. Now we have much of the San Gabriel Valley served by Foothill Transit.

Regarding cost comparisons--when the great "bustitution" was happening, diesel fuel was just pocket change for a gallon. I suspect that GM would arrange "easy payment terms" so PE and other operators that weren't part of National City Lines could buy buses on a "pay as you go" basis. Someone once commented that "buses make good collateral" so that if a transit company didn't keep up the payments, they could easily be palmed off on another system. Streetcars were a different matter--many were custom made for a particular operation, and by the 1950s, used trolleys were "for sale cheap". Another factor in favor of buses was that Firestone (and possibly other tire makers) didn't sell the tires to a bus company, they leased them, meaning the capital cost of six big tires (as the owner of a motor home, I can testify that big tires ain't cheap) per bus would also be on a "pay as you go" basis. This sometimes came as a shock to someone who bought an old transit bus with thoughts of making it into an RV or using it on Sundays to gather the faithful to church. The private party purchaser would have to make a separate deal for the tires, or the seller would mount old, wornout tires that you could just about see the air inside.

One more thought: with buses, the maintenance work is in centralized locations; the district doesn't have to worry about infrastructure all over town. And I'm not sure about the new buses, but the old ones were designed so the mechanics could pull an engine-transmission unit and install a rebuilt assembly fairly quickly. Refueling can be handled by workers at the lower end of the pay scale, quite a bit less than the linemen who worked on the trolley wire.

[fissure]

I thought the preferred name was "Rough, Tough, and Dangerous".