A sea change occurred in 1921, when local investors formed the Washington Rapid Transit Company to operate a new generation of modern buses on Sixteenth Street. For the first time, traditional streetcar service faced real competition. Among the features of the new buses were pneumatic tires, which significantly improved passenger comfort on paved roads, sharply contrasting with the hard metal wheels of streetcars screeching and grinding over their rails. The buses also had much more spacious and comfortable passenger compartments than their predecessors. In an advertisement in the Evening Star, the company boasted that its “[b]uses are of the latest type, well heated, lighted, and ventilated. Rattan seats, carrying two passengers each, with push buttons at each seat, with plenty of aisle room, and doors of sufficient width to permit comfortable exit and entrance.”136
The new buses leapfrogged streetcars in efficiency as well as comfort. Since they could move to the curb for boarding and alighting, they eliminated the need for passengers to wait on narrow, crowded loading platforms in the middle of the street. They also were seen as helping to relieve traffic congestion because they could steer with the traffic around obstacles. Streetcars, in contrast, were wedded to fixed routes. All of the cars on a given line would quickly be brought to a stop if just one of them developed a problem and blocked the tracks. Given these advantages, few people questioned the idea that buses were technologically superior to streetcars.
The Washington Rapid Transit Company easily found patrons and grew quickly. It carried 750,000 passengers in its first six months of operation and frequently added new buses and routes thereafter. In September 1921, the Washington Post raved about the transit revolution:
The motor bus is rapidly coming into its own. This is an age of motor development. The past 20 years has brought into existence the motor car, the most useful and necessary invention of all time. The perfection of the automobile has brought rapid and safe transportation within the reach of rich and poor alike, and it can be truly said that the motor bus “has arrived.” It occupies a secure place in urban passenger transit in the world’s largest cities. Its popularity as a utility is attested by the throngs clamoring for seats, furnishing not only transportation, but the most inexpensive recreation in any city.137
New buses of the Washington Rapid Transit Company are on display downtown on a rainy day in 1921. Library of Congress.
Rather than fight progress, streetcar companies embraced this futuristic new transit vehicle. Across the country, they began operating buses as a supplement to streetcar service. Bus lines could be inaugurated with little or no investment in infrastructure and were particularly useful on routes that were too sparsely patronized to be profitable as car lines. They might even improve streetcar profitability by bringing new customers to transfer points at the ends of existing routes.
Capital Traction and WRECo both started offering bus service in the early 1920s. They substituted buses on several less profitable streetcar routes, such as the extension of the Anacostia line to Randle Heights. In at least one case, bus service was added directly alongside an existing streetcar route when Capital Traction created a deluxe express bus service from Chevy Chase to downtown in 1925. The buses followed the same Connecticut Avenue route that had been graded and fitted with streetcar rails—at great expense—by the Rock Creek Railway in 1892. The elite new buses attracted customers willing to pay a premium to cut their commuting time and ride in comfort and style as they sped past the old-fashioned streetcars.
“A CONSUMMATION THAT WASHINGTON HAS DESIRED FOR YEARS”
Merging the city’s two streetcar companies—WRECo and Capital Traction—had been a goal for city officials for decades. One of the first moves toward consolidation had occurred in 1912, when an attempt was made to merge a raft of local street railway and electric utilities companies, including WRECo and several suburban streetcar lines and power companies, into what the Sunday Star called a “gigantic corporation,” the Washington Utilities Company.138 The ambitious scheme alarmed local officials and Congressional overseers, who feared the effects such a monopoly would have on the cost and quality of service. It is no coincidence that Congress created the Public Utilities Commission that same year. It also prohibited further consolidation of public utilities, including street railways, in the District of Columbia.139
This had left WRECo and Capital Traction frozen in place in the 1910s as competing companies. Much of the public saw them as very different entities. After WRECo’s president, Clarence King, infamously crushed the transit union’s attempt to win recognition in 1917, his company was seen as the city’s “bad” streetcar company, offering inadequate service and treating its employees poorly. WRECo was responsible for many of the city’s less-traveled streetcar routes, and it struggled to make money on them. Of the 160 miles of track it operated in 1916, over half were relatively lightly traveled suburban lines. With meager streetcar earnings, WRECo depended on income from its power company subsidiary, PEPCo, to stay profitable. In contrast, Capital Traction had the reputation of being the “good” streetcar company—well managed, profitable and offering excellent service. Capital Traction had a smaller system than WRECo, with more heavily patronized routes. Of the 57 miles of track it maintained in 1916, only 10 were “suburban” lines powered by overhead wires.140 As a result, Capital Traction was consistently more profitable. Its management made a point of maintaining good relations both with its employees and the public.
A center-door streetcar waits at a platform on F Street in 1924. Library of Congress.
As long as it was profitable, Capital Traction had little incentive to merge with WRECo. It politely participated in merger talks with WRECo management, but little came of them. WRECo made a formal proposal for consolidation in 1918, but without active support from Capital Traction, nothing happened.
Circumstances changed, however, in the early 1920s. The end of World War I brought a renewed drop in patronage as government agencies downsized to peacetime levels. The rise of competition from automobiles and buses threatened both companies, making the protection of a larger holding company more desirable for Capital Traction. After the anti-merger law for street railways was repealed in 1925, efforts to combine Capital Traction and WRECo were redoubled.
The North American Company, a utilities holding company based in New Jersey, acquired the Washington Rapid Transit Company from its original D.C. investors that same year and also gained a controlling interest in WRECo. With these two properties in hand, it set its sights on adding Capital Traction to its transit empire. The company embarked on elaborate and complex negotiations over how the companies might be merged and what value should be placed on their assets. In 1928, a deal was hammered out that met the approval of the existing companies, their shareholders and the Public Utilities Commission; much to everyone’s disappointment, however, it failed to win Congressional support.141
A woman steps off a streetcar platform to avoid snow from a “sweeper” car cleaning the tracks on Pennsylvania Avenue in January 1923. Library of Congress.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 added fresh urgency to the effort, and in early 1933, Congress finally approved the merger. All District of Columbia and suburban Maryland bus and streetcar companies were brought together as the new Capital Transit Company, and the North American Company retained a controlling interest in the firm. Everyone seemed relieved that the consolidation had finally taken place. “This is a consummation that Washington has desired for years,” the Washington Post wrote.142
Thomas P. Littlepage, president of the Washington Chamber of Commerce, wrote to John Hanna, head of the new company, praising the merger: “The newly created Capital Transit Co. is launched at a most favorable time, and has a splendid opportunity to develop a coordinated mass transportation system which should be a model for other cities.”143
In fact, the new company’s outlook was not nearly so rosy. True, it had gained some valuable concessions—it would no longer have to pay for traffic cops to
man all of the intersections traversed by streetcar lines or fund paving of sections of streets where its tracks lay—but it also faced formidable challenges.
While Washington was by no means the hardest-hit city in the nation, the Depression took a toll on area families and changed daily habits for many. Jobs dried up in the years before Franklin Roosevelt took office, reducing the commuter load on the streetcar lines. Housewives made fewer downtown shopping trips. The great movie palaces that had been built in the late 1920s—the Loew’s Palace, the Earle and the stunning Fox (Capitol) Theater—still drew many patrons but faced increasing competition from radio, which kept people on a tight budget from venturing out for evening entertainment. Those who could afford to frequent the city’s fancy Prohibition-era supper clubs—like Le Paradis on Thomas Circle, the Madrillon near the Treasury Department or the Lotus and Café Paree on Fourteenth Street—as often as not owned their own automobiles or rode in taxis.
Weak patronage meant that costs for the city’s streetcar network continued to mount. In a vicious cycle, decreasing ridership meant that fares had to be increased, which drove even more people away. In 1919, the traditional base fare of five cents per ride (extra for transfers), which had not changed for as long as anyone could remember, rose to seven cents, propelled by wartime inflation. Not long after, it went up again to eight cents. In 1929, after their first merger plan failed to win Congressional approval, Capital Traction and WRECo won approval to increase fares to ten cents, provoking outrage from a public that could little afford the increase and had long harbored resentment about the tyranny of the streetcar companies. When the new increase was first proposed in late 1928, the Washington Herald wrote that “[w]ith increased fares, the lines can continue independently gouging greater profits than ever out of the car-riders. Under a sane merger, the fare could be kept at 8 cents, overhead would be reduced, and perhaps some officials would lose their jobs.”144 The streetcar companies insisted that the increase was necessary. “We have practiced strict economy in operation,” Capital Traction president John Hanna wrote in defense of the rise. “We have hoped and believed that the inroads of the private automobile would lessen. They have not.”145
A Capital Traction streetcar is engulfed in automobile traffic at Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in this early 1920s photo. Lee Rogers Collection, courtesy of the Maryland Rail Heritage Library.
Automobiles—both private cars and taxicabs—were eating away at the streetcar business even more than buses. As the Depression deepened in the early 1930s, many workers who lost their jobs became taxi drivers. A price war among the glut of taxis in 1931 briefly drove taxi fares as low as ten cents—a private automobile ride for the same price as a crowded streetcar. The streetcar companies complained of the unfair competition but drew little sympathy from the public. “It is most pathetic the way they picture their so-called losses,” one local resident wrote to the Washington Post. “It is time now for a showdown and it is up to the [street] car companies either to give the service to the public which they are charging for or to petition the [Public Utilities] commission for permission to return to the 5-cent fare, which is commensurate with the service they now give.”146
Once established, the Capital Transit Company soon began consolidating lines. One of the first things it did in 1935 was to convert several major streetcar routes to bus service. One was the long Connecticut Avenue line that had been running express bus service alongside streetcars for ten years. There was surprisingly little contention about converting this line. Samuel C. Johnston, a city resident, was one outlier. In a letter to the editors of the Post, he warned that buses were no panacea. More of them were needed to handle the same number of passengers as streetcars, he argued, so congestion would actually be worsened, not improved. Further, buses polluted the air: “60 buses pouring out obnoxious fumes into the automobiles of those driving this route certainly is not going to add to the pleasure of driving nor to the health of those of us who have to take it.”147
Others seemed less concerned about health risks. The Post reported that “residents along the new bus route were hailing the buses as a definite boon. Those who rode the ‘cars’ reported the trip downtown was much faster and smoother than before and those who don’t ride said the buses were quieter than trolley cars.” An avenue resident quipped that one of the old streetcars made more noise than a dozen of the new buses.148 The verdict was in: people preferred buses.
Motorman Tom Marshall peers at traffic from a streetcar on New York Avenue, circa 1936. Library of Congress.
Capital Transit likewise heard few complaints when it converted the six-mile-long Anacostia route—the same line that had been founded as the Anacostia & Potomac Railway and built up with such determination by Henry A. Griswold. Attorney William A. Roberts praised the conversion, stating that it would remove traffic hazards on the Anacostia Bridge and Nichols (Martin Luther King Jr.) Avenue, expand service in Congress Heights and achieve operational efficiencies.149 Roberts served as the D.C. People’s Counsel, a position created in 1926 to serve as advocate for the public before the Public Utilities Commission.
Other streetcar lines converted to bus operations in 1935 included a line serving Le Droit Park, which had begun as part of George Truesdell’s Eckington & Soldiers Home Railway, as well as the suburban Maryland part of the Wisconsin Avenue line. After making numerous adjustments to other existing lines, Capital Transit announced in 1936 a comprehensive new system for designating streetcar and bus routes. The major streetcar lines were given numeric designations, such as the Route 40/42 series to Mount Pleasant, while bus lines were given a combination of alphabetic and numeric characters, such as the S2 service on Sixteenth Street. The same designation scheme remains in use today, although buses now serve all the routes.
“QUICKER AND SMOOTHER THAN MOST AUTOMOBILES”
Vehicle design evolved rapidly in the 1930s. Transportation designers began experimenting with stylish, Art Deco–inspired concepts that emphasized strong lines and sleek, fluid curves. “Streamlining,” which celebrated industrial power and elegance, was the watchword of the day. Smooth finishes and sleek, bullet-like shapes were exhilarating and futuristic; everyone wanted them.
Streetcar industry executives hoped that a thoroughly modernized and streamlined vehicle might have a chance at winning back patrons who had concluded that the cars were transit dinosaurs. In 1929, the heads of twenty-nine streetcar companies from around the country agreed to form a committee, the Electric Railway Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC), to develop an all-new, technologically advanced streetcar that would be able to hold its own against competition from automobiles and buses and maybe even outdo them.
Engineers spent six years perfecting the new PCC design. Before it was finalized, early versions of the streamlined vehicle were produced in limited numbers. In 1935, Capital Transit acquired twenty of these prototypical cars for its main Pennsylvania Avenue line. They were advertised as “quicker and smoother than most automobiles” and featured “luxurious leather seats, improved lighting and ventilation.”150 Several were equipped with new wheels that contained a rubber lining insulating the metal outer rims from the inner wheels, making the ride significantly quieter and smoother. An Evening Star reporter tried out one of these “silent” streetcars and marveled that riders would be able to “carry on a normal-voice conversation, even while traveling over the roughest track or the bumpiest intersection.”151
The first production version of the PCC car made its debut in New York in 1936. The New York Times admired its “sleek, boatlike exterior” and the “simplicity and cleanliness” of its interior.152 In addition to the passenger comfort improvements, the cars featured other advances, including a set of four greatly improved fifty-horsepower motors that eliminated the sluggishness of older cars. New electromagnetic brakes improved stopping distances. Operators sat in seats and controlled the cars with their feet through pedal-mounted brakes and accelerators, just like buse
s and automobiles. This was a dramatic shift from the older streetcars, where motormen stood at the front and controlled the car entirely with hand-operated levers.
A new streamlined car takes on passengers in front of the Treasury Department on a summer day in 1935. Library of Congress.
Capital Transit began introducing production PCC cars to its fleet in 1937, gradually bringing on large numbers of them through the early 1940s. The technologically advanced cars cost about $16,000 apiece—much more than previous models, which had run $5,000 in the 1920s. When they were introduced in August at the Peace Monument near the Capitol, the celebration recalled that of 1862, when the first streetcar rode on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Evening Star reported that the “$16,000 miracles” rolled proudly up the Fourteenth Street line, escorted by police motorcycles. Many dignitaries were on hand, including D.C. commissioner Melvin Hazen, who posed for the cameras at the controls of one of the cars. After reciting the advantages of the “sleek, silent creations,” the Star reporter concluded that “best of all, a mere turn of a handle raises the window.”153
The new cars required changes in operations to maximize their benefits. The performance advantages of the new cars would be lost if they were mixed in with older cars, so Capital Transit converted entire lines one at a time. The first line to shift to PCC service was the Fourteenth Street (Route 50/54) line, followed by the popular Mount Pleasant line (Route 40/42) in 1938. Unlike older cars, PCC cars could only be operated from one end, so Capital Transit also had to install “loop” tracks at the end of its routes to allow the cars to turn around. Fitting out the electrical conduits for these loops was another expensive but unavoidable investment. As more cars were acquired and terminal loops constructed, additional routes were converted to PCC service. Eventually, all of Capital Transit’s lines would use these cars.
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