I have not had in mind, however, for immediate use in New England the sort
of elaborate installation which the New Haven has upon the western end of
its main stem. What I meant for that road, as well as for sections of
other lines up there, was the same sort of comparatively simple electric
construction that the New Haven itself has operated for years on some of
its isolated suburban lines in Connecticut and Massachusetts. I mean,
instead of heavy steel passenger-coaches of main-line standards of size
and weight and propelled by expensive electric locomotives, electric
motor-cars of comparatively small size and weight, self-propelled and
self-contained and operated in trains of from one to twelve cars in
accordance with the immediate necessities of the traffic at hand. The New
Haven's field south of Boston, where its suburban service is at its very
worst to-day, is particularly ripe for installation of that sort. There
the once competitive interurban tradition has come to its final slough of
despond.
The traction systems throughout all New England have not been immune from
the difficulties that have beset their brethren in other sections of the
land. In fact I should not hesitate to say that their troubles have been
greater rather than less than their brethren's. More traction mileage has
probably been abandoned in New England than in any other distinctive
single locality. From Plymouth to Sagamore, Massachusetts, there stretch
twenty miles of track and trolley-wire which, like the Hampden railroad
(once built by one Charles S. Mellen for a dozen miles east of
Springfield), never has been used and probably never will be. Two years
ago the Bay State's lines in and around Gloucester and the Cape Ann
district were all abandoned, while the Connecticut Co. (a New Haven
property) constantly threatened to do the same thing in some of its larger
cities if jitney competition were not withdrawn. A prompt compliance by
the local authorities with this mandate saved these towns their trolley
service, temporarily at least. It is a grave question whether fifteen
years hence we shall have any trolley service in most of our American
towns of less than 100,000 population. But the most important abandonment
of long-distance trolley service which has come to my attention has been
that of the Shore Line Electric, along the north shore of Long Island
Sound, for sixty miles between New Haven and New London.
There have been serious deletions in the passenger transportation machine
of New England. The causes that have led to them are many and too involved
to be discussed here. The main fact is that virtually none of this trolley
mileage, outside of the city systems, is ever likely to come back into use
again. A good deal of it should not have been built but, having been
built, has become both a convenience and a necessity to the territory
which it served and its abandonment a distinct social and commercial blow
to that territory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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