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Seattle's first street railway opened in 1884, with two horses per streetcar. By 1899 ten companies operated trolleys and cable in the city--and hillside properties became prized building lots. A decade later, all but one were run by Seattle Electric Company, and their 103 million passenger ridership was equivalent to every Seattleite boarding a streetcar 435 times a year. Seattle voters approved municipal ownership in 1918, and the mayor issued bonds to fund the $15 million purchase. Bus routes and several line extensions followed, but the debt load and the Great Depression forced the system into disrepair, and the Seattle Municipal Railway converted to trolley and motor buses. Author Michael Bergman worked as a transit planner for Sound Transit and King County Metro Transit for more than 35 years. Through narrative, maps, and previously unpublished photographs, he delivers a detailed jaunt through Seattle's fascinating streetcar era.
Through a reexamination of the earliest struggles against Jim Crow, Blair Kelley exposes the fullness of African American efforts to resist the passage of segregation laws dividing trains and streetcars by race in the early Jim Crow era. Right to Ride chronicles the litigation and local organizing against segregated rails that led to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 and the streetcar boycott movement waged in twenty-five southern cities from 1900 to 1907. Kelley tells the stories of the brave but little-known men and women who faced down the violence of lynching and urban race riots to contest segregation. Focusing on three key cities--New Orleans, Richmond, and Savannah--Kelley explores the community organizations that bound protestors together and the divisions of class, gender, and ambition that sometimes drove them apart. The book forces a reassessment of the timelines of the black freedom struggle, revealing that a period once dismissed as the age of accommodation should in fact be characterized as part of a history of protest and resistance.
Plug-in electric vehicles are coming. Major automakers plan to commercialize their first models soon, while Israel and Denmark have ambitious plans to electrify large portions of their vehicle fleets. No technology has greater potential to end the United States' crippling dependence on oil, which leaves the nation vulnerable to price shocks, supply disruptions, environmental degradation, and national security threats including terrorism. What does the future hold for this critical technology, and what should the U.S. government do to promote it? Hybrid vehicles now number more than one million on America's roads, and they are in high demand from consumers. The next major technological step is the plug-in electric vehicle. It combines an internal combustion engine and electric motor, just as hybrids do. But unlike their precursors, PEVs can be recharged from standard electric outlets, meaning the vehicles would no longer be dependent on oil. Widespread growth in the use of PEVs would dramatically reduce oil dependence, cut driving costs and reduce pollution from vehicles. National security would be enhanced, as reduced oil dependence decreases the leverage and resources of petroleum exporters. Brookings fellow David Sandalow heads up an authoritative team of experts including former government officials, private-sector analysts, academic experts, and nongovernmental advocates. Together they explain the current landscape for PEVs: the technology, the economics, and the implications for national security and the environment. They examine how the national interest could be served by federal promotion and investment in PEVs. For example, can tax or procurement policy advance the cause of PEVs? Should the public sector contribute to greater research and development? Should the government insist on PEVs to replenish its huge fleet of official vehicles? Plug-in electric vehicles are coming. But how soon, in what numbers, and to what effect? Feder
This book will look at the socio-economic conditions which led to the City of Tacoma, Washington, hosting a grand Independence Day celebration at the dawning of the 20th Century. The special events planned during that week attracted guests from every corner of the state. Transportation systems were woefully inadequate for the throng that arrived, setting the stage for an epic disaster. All of those who were involved in the tragedy were ordinary folks looking to celebrate our nation's independence. In a moment, their lives were inexplicably changed.
Ever since the first streetcars rumbled through the streets of Seattle in 1884, public transportation in the Puget Sound region has been a wild roller-coaster ride, replete with scandals, triumphs, and momentous turning points. A complete rail transit system crisscrossed the region during the trolley days, only to be dismantled by 1941. After seventy years of turmoil--and traffic congestion--a new system, Sound Transit, arose in its place. The story is not just about trolleys, trains, and buses--it is also about the making and breaking of mayors and the way that Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett developed from the 1880s to today.
In the 1850s, Baltimore's 170,000 residents had few options when it came to getting around town. Before the decade's end, however, the omnibus--an urban version of the stagecoach--emerged as Baltimore's first mass-transit vehicle. Horsecars followed, then cable cars, and ultimately electrically powered streetcars. Recognizing the need for cohesion, the city's myriad transit providers merged into a single operator. United Railways and Electric Company, incorporated in 1899, faced the unenviable task of integrating routes being served by inadequate, incompatible, and often obsolete equipment. Over the next seven decades, privately run mass transit in Baltimore survived bankruptcy, a name change, two world wars, the proliferation of private automobiles, a takeover by out-of-town interests, and a plethora of new vehicles. Arguably a unified system of privately operated mass transit was no closer to being a reality in 1970, when it reached the end of the line and was taken over by the state.
On Christmas Eve 1917, an overcrowded, out-of-control streetcar exited the Mount Washington tunnel, crashing into pedestrians. Twenty-three were killed and more than eighty injured in the worst transit incident in Pittsburgh history. The crash scene on Carson Street was chaotic as physicians turned the railway offices into a makeshift hospital and bystanders frantically sought to remove the injured and strewn bodies from the wreckage. Most of the victims, many women and children, were from the close-knit neighborhoods of Knoxville, Beltzhoover and Mount Oliver. In the aftermath, public outrage over the tragedy led to criminal prosecution, civil suits and the bankruptcy of the Pittsburgh Railways Company, which operated the service. Author Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt explores the tragic history of the Mount Washington transit tunnel disaster.
This is Volume III of a 3 volume set. It chronicles the history of Streetcars in New Jersey, from the first horsecars to the modern trolleys and light-rail cars. this volume covers the Metropolitan Northeast portion of the state. Photographs are included as well as routes and rosters for each company.
For most people in the United States, going almost anywhere begins with reaching for the car keys. This is true, Christopher Wells argues, because the United States is Car Country—a nation dominated by landscapes that are difficult, inconvenient, and often unsafe to navigate by those who are not sitting behind the wheel of a car. The prevalence of car-dependent landscapes seems perfectly natural to us today, but it is, in fact, a relatively new historical development. In Car Country, Wells rejects the idea that the nation's automotive status quo can be explained as a simple byproduct of an ardent love affair with the automobile. Instead, he takes readers on a tour of the evolving American landscape, charting the ways that transportation policies and land-use practices have combined to reshape nearly every element of the built environment around the easy movement of automobiles. Wells untangles the complicated relationships between automobiles and the environment, allowing readers to see the everyday world in a completely new way. The result is a history that is essential for understanding American transportation and land-use issues today. Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48LTKOxxrXQ