I forgot to mention Roz actually talked about one of the routes in particular before if you want more info on what Philly has lost. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sMmomN2b2d2VcZ8.html

The way to solve "cars in the way of trolleys" is to tow them away and make people pay fines to get them back. After people understand that's what happens when you block them they'll get the message pretty fast.

Well, as a philosophy student I‘ve heard of worse trolley problems

It does really break my heart seeing trolly lines being paved over slowly with time, especially in south philly

I remember when SEPTA trolleys cost 5 cents to ride on. Favorite SEPTA story from those days: A man got on the trolley and gave the driver a $20 bill, saying “I’m sorry, I don’t have a nickel.” The driver answered; “That’s fine; in a minute you’re going to have 399 of them!”

alan as a south philly resident and someone who rides the trolleys everyday, you really hit the nail on the head with this video. its incredibly frustrating to see other cities swoon over light rail and streetcars and race to build them, while septa just lets our unused tracks rot away, ESPECIALLY when the tracks are grade separated (like the 56). what i wish septa would look into and that no one talks about is converting more west philly bus lines to trolley...the tunnel definitely has the capacity because they did this in the past and this would legitimately speed people's rides to center city vs all surface streets

In before Europeans saying "Why don't you call them TRAMS?!?" 😆 To reactivate a disused trolley line in the US, they'd probably have to do a 30-year long EIS and economic-impact study after which NIMBYs would scuttle it anyway after they found out they'd lose a few parking spaces here or there.

Trolleybusses are so great! They are environmentally friendly as they don't require batteries or a combustion engine. recently I was filming at the largest trolleybus network of west europe which is in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Great video Alan!

Philadelphia: Switches to trolleybuses to get around parked cars that are in the way. Amsterdam: Removes the parking spaces that are in the way.

It would be interesting to see SEPTA run the old K-car trolleys up in Chestnut Hill once they complete (if they complete) the modernization project. My dad thinks that those are the original trolley tracks, would probably throw and old man fit if he found out they were renovated and never used.

As someone who uses the trolley in west philly everyday to get to work, I’m so excited for the renovations soon! The trolley cars are not great and we need so much more space. I don’t want to deal with 3 trolleys passing by my stop because they were too full 😭

In Romania, if you park on any tram tracks, you get a ticket from the police and a lot of meat in your fridge from the travelers. And if the police gets to lift your car, depending on how important that line is, you can also make it to the local news in a negative way. The worst problem we have in Bucharest are drivers that go on the tram line (something which is also forbidden at a national level, but largely ignored) which is why we started separating the tram tracks with fences to the rest of the road. This is really useful on large boulevards as it turns the tram lines into an effective emergency lane for ambulances to go through as well. They even added some bus lanes through, though this feels weird and is quite problematic when two buses going opposite direction meet in a fenced area. Unfortunately, tram systems in Romania have been quite neglected in the last 30 years, with 2 cities (Brașov and Constanța) getting rid of them completely, and another one (Botoșani) having it in tatters. There are cities, however, such as Cluj or Ploiești which have rebuilt their system from scratch, with Reșița doing the same at the time I post this comment. In Bucharest the system is both old, massive and complex, and attracts a lot of riders, despite the bad press caused by the old rolling stock (long story-short: the most widely used tram model is the V3A series, which was designed as a cheap communist copycat of a west-german tram and improved upon until today; the tram does not have an inch of low floor, except the models produced after 2000s, they are noisy, swing sideways a lot and do not offer too much to the travelers). Many important lines were completely rebuilt in the last 2 decades, but there are still 1/3 of the lines that need urgent replacement. Despite that, however, and the pressure from some politicians to do away with it, one cannot imagine Bucharest without the tram system. The bus&trolleys do not have dedicated lanes, and although we have a metro system, it does not reach every point of the city, is expensive to build and takes a lot of time and nerves of the residents, as they are usually built underground (see the M5 line which took 9 years to build a chunk of it, although they promised to build it in 3 years). So there is definitely a use-case for the tram here, even in the most "American" country in Europe (sorry, no offense).

Be glad Philly's tracks and wires still exist. Quite alot of places arn't as lucky to only have them abandoned....

I could be wrong but when I moved to Philly in 1975 there were trolleys running up and down many of the north-south numbered streets all throughout Center City. I recall at the time being told that Philly had the distinction of having the most still-operating trolley routes of any city in America. Then I saw as, one by one, they were either paved over, tracks ripped up, or left partially in place not used anymore. At some point there was talk of removing the asphalt to expose the tracks again, or rehab existing rail, or lay new ones, which I believe did happen in places. I left in 2011 and, as you mentioned, cities all over are building trolleys where none existed. What a missed opportunity.

I remember when I visited Philadelphia in the summer of 2015 and saw streetcar tracks by the Reading Terminal Market in Center City. Given that I'm from Toronto, Canada where just like Philadelphia we retained our streetcar system, I was kind of looking forward to seeing a streetcar pass by, turns out it wasn't the case. This video makes sense now as to why I didn't see any trolleys in Center City, thanks Alan!

Trams in Berlin or Prague are awesome, fast, cheap and everywhere, non of my friends even has a car anymore .... it just has to be maintained like everything ...

Philadelphia "at least it ain't Columbus", Pennsylvania

We rebuilt the Pyongyang streetcar system as the original system got significant destruction during the war, with the first line opening in 1991 as the result of overcrowding on trolleybuses. There are currently four lines, operating on both sides of the Taedong but only one actually crosses it, Line 3. Line 1 uses to cross it but it was shortened to Pyongyang railway station with points east replaced with a trolleybus. Three of the lines uses trams either made in the former Czechslovakia by Tatra or in-house, while the Kumsusan shuttle line which goes to the Kumsusan mausoleum of my father and grandpa from Samhung on the Pyongyang Metro (this service has replaced the Kwangmyong metro station that's been closed since 1995 due to the site being home to the mausoleum), uses a VBZ Be 4/4 from Zurich.

My Landscape Architecture studio at Temple did a project on Temple's Main Campus and someone from OLIN told us that there are old streetcar tracks under 12th street that are unused and there are no plans to use them. Because of laws and codes changing, if they were to be removed, they could never be put back in, so the city insists they be left there, JUST in case. I'd hope to see these surface again.

I'm 67 but I'm gonna say this like a teenager, it would be truly cool if they make the trolly trains, like the ones in Europe. I saw one of those proposed pics in your video with the middle of the street barrier and waiting stand, thats cool. Plus it upgrades all those decaying, delapidated, potholled streets, left that way because they can't repave them over the existing tracks.

Very interresting, yet very frustrating video. I really appreciate all the work you put into you videos. All are really high quality. Thank you.

Great video! Trolleybuses are great but like you mentioned Philly streets are small and double parking would still be an enormous problem. A way to fix it would be to eliminate parking on one side, but that’s a story for another time. This too is a sore spot for me as I was a child when the 6, 23, 50, 53, 56, and 60 were still trolleys. What I’ve always hoped could happen was that some west Philly bus routes were converted back to trolleys and rerouted through the subway surface tunnel. A bigger idea would be connecting some north and south Philly routes through unused tunnels like under Arch street and Pennsylvania Avenue. I think the schuylkill valley metro was to use the latter.

I will argue that the 56 trolley should come back. Very low priority project but the 56 trolley in Philadelphia does have some space for a dedicated ROW for more than half the route

Adelaide, South Australia had an extensive Tramway Network which mostly got Ripped out. Now it is slowly being rebuilt at huge financial cost.

Usually I'm all for trams/trollies, but in this case I agree with you. If the city is not going to completely redesign the city center streets to be more trolley accommodating; then trolley-buses would work better in this case.

Hi Alan. Great video. The best cure for parked cars is tram (trolley) mounted anti tank gun. They will learn very quickly!!!🙃

Appreciate the history on why there aren’t any trolleys outside of west Philly. I’m really hopeful about the 15 being the first sign of movement back toward trolleys/trolley buses on this side of the river. Additionally, I know there is near 0 information outside of the like 90 page document for the regional rail “lifestyle” transformation but if you were to try and do a comprehensive review of Philadelphia’s transit that would be an interesting discussion of “what’s next”. Pair that with a discussion of the bus revitalization project and you’d have a better story about what SEPTA is doing than they can write.

This just reminded me of the fact that when I lived in Jersey City, there's this North Hudson Health Center right across from the Supremo supermarket and I always hated going in there because it was always packed and had a long wait eating out of my day. Later on, I learned that the building where the doctor's office is now was once a trolley house as part of the North Hudson County Railway/Public Service streetcar system, and streetcars went from Palisade Ave to either go down an elevated trestle or take a funicular wagon lift to get to Hoboken. And that made me hate it more for using the space for a doctor's office instead of trolleys. Sure, Hudson County learned from getting rid of its trolleys by building the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, but it's not the same.

Torontonian here! Philly needs to improve and invest in their trams! If it got some TLC, it would EASILY rival Toronto and Melbourne. It’s honestly a real shame especially since everything seems to still exist. It’s truly a shame how many cities have removed their tram systems. It would be a really really big shame to see Philly become one of these other cities… Edit: Trolleybuses are also awesome! Much better than these fancy shmancy battery electric buses, and I wish Toronto kept its Trolleybus network. We can only hope there’s a future for the trams and trolleys of Philly!

You know you have been blessed when you refresh YT main page just to see new Alan video 30 seconds ago... Poggers

Think that's depressing? In central Indiana we have about 6 old main lines, some with existing over and underpasses that have been abandoned since the 80s. Some were lucky enough to be turned into bike paths though

Just be glad Phily has transportation. Used to live in Indianapolis and all we had was bus lines. Do you know i lived there 2 weeks before i even saw a bus? Yeah i never even considered it a reliable form of transportation even with a bus stop across the street from my house.

As a German it is funny to see the trolley almost stopping at every junction. In Germany trolleys have almost everywhere, every time the right of way and traffic lights give them the right of way when they approach.

As someone from Pittsburgh, I know what it's like to lose a robust Trolley system. The city used to have an extensive system that spread out from the heart of the city. Today we have busses that are fine but, less extensive and a lite rail system that only supports the neighborhoods and suburbs south of the city.

No, trolley bus is worst version of tram, period. Tire wear and tire is usually the main source of PM2.5 pollution causing the most health damage. As a European (from Prague), the nobrainer stuff do are: 1) fixing the tracks so that it doesn't look like something from former soviet union (think of Volgograd or Cherson level of awful) 2) get modern tram vehicles with pantographs 3) give trams a priority in the roadways rules (basically, on a intersection, tram has always the priority over cars and pedestrians because it's bigger, heavier and carries more people) 4) get to frequency of 10-12mins at worst on any line so that the network is remotely useful (half hour to hour frequency at night) 5) restore the old tracks and build new paralel/redundant routes so in case of dumbo parking on the tracks, the trams can go around skipping couple stops and having delay in 10mins at worst instead of 45mins

Trolleybuses require different infrastructure than streetcar. The former requires two catenary wires to complete a circuit, while latter uses a single wire, as the track itself is the return. So, while it's possible to convert trolley line to a trackless trolley one (streetcar line to trolleybus), it would require completely new electrical infrastructure.

thank you for including accessibility details!! ❤️👍

Maybe the 15 is a harbinger of things to come? The rolling stock is almost done and the tracks are now running along Richmond St. as of this week. We need the one going up down Delaware avenue, at the least.

Dual Track drifting.

Yes, it is sad that Septa have not followed through on the old promises. Trolley buses are a better option than diesel buses, but anything which uses rubber tires is also polluting.

As somebody living in a city with absolutely great public transport, I can tell you: Busses are absolutely not better than trams. Trams are great. And if people park on the street, they are in for a very expensive surprise. I have 8 tram lines in a 5 min walking distance, the whole public transit network in the city is HUGE, and it transports us everywhere. Trams go every 5 to 15 min (depends on the day, there are fewer on saturdays and sundays). The trams are efficient, reliable and much faster than going by car (for most routes in the city) and since the city acknowledges the importance of public transport for the wellbeing of the city, it pays part of the fees, so people only pay 365 Euro (388 US-Dollar) per person for one year of transportation all around in the city of Vienna. It is just great. I can recommend that. Maybe you could have a look and implement something like that in America too.

From what I heard the Germantown/Chestnut Hill lines didn't come back because the cost to install a new power station was to expensive.

I laughed pretty hard at 1:34 , hits close to home lol. MARTA’s street car line isn’t exactly very useful at getting people anywhere, its literally just a 1-2 mile loop around tourist spots downtown. At least they’re planning to expand it up to Ponce City Market if it can get past this NIMBY protest phase its in rn.

Great video, as always. Especially loved hearing The Cup Stacker

I remember reading a report on the minimum turning radii for Toronto and Philadelphia trams. Toronto had the second sharpest of existing systems in North America and Philly had the sharpest, by about 3 feet. Toronto could not use an off the shelf low floor vehicle and had to have on adapted to our curves. Philly would be even harder. Also Toronto had to have the centre truck powered to be able to push a disabled car up some of our hills.

Even Berlin had trolleybuses...but the last lines got taken out of service in east-Berlin as they tey tended to de-wire at railroad crossings. But yeah they're an awesome type of transportation that's very underused here in Europe...aside from the former soviet states and Poland.

Big problem with trolley trains: doesn’t solve road maintenance. Heavy weight is why trains trolleys and trams work- gliding on girders doesn’t take much maintenance. Asphalt has to be upkept replaced/recycled constantly. It’s expensive

One thing that SEPTA's current fleet of trolley buses have an advantage over the older fleet is that the buses also have a diesel engine that can be used if the route the trolley buses take is closed due to a major incident, but have not been substituted with regular buses. At the same time, much like the Subway-Surface Trolley routes, SEPTA's current Trackless Trolley routes are now just down to one, the Route 66, that operates between Frankford Transportation Center and the Frankford-Knights Circle at the Philadelphia-Bucks County Line. At one time, the system was widespread, but like the Route 23 and other surface trolley routes, were replaced regular buses. One route, Route 79 (in South Philadelphia), uses battery electric buses, but due to potential issues, is now back to hybrid buses. EDIT: I forgot that SEPTA operates two other trackless trolley routes out of the Arrott Transportation Center (the old Margaret-Orthodox station on the Market-Frankford Line), being the Route 59 to Rhawnhurst and the Route 79 to Wayne Junction and Nicetown.

As someone who lives near Toronto and uses streetcars every now and again, seeing potential reopened routes in Philly end up decaying and get built over is so frustrating! Philadelphia deserves way better than this.

In Montevideo, Uruguay you randomly see tracks peeking out of the asphalt all the time, at least we have a bunch of bus lines but sometimes I wish we had more alternatives

Bruh at least you still have trolleys there. Pittsburgh's light rail has been downsized to basically 2 crappy lines that have the utility of a minecart on a thousand acre farm.

Trolly-buses are so freaking smart, especially combined with a smallish battery bank/supecapacitor bank giving them the possibility to reroute around problems on the line and the overhead cables doesn't need to go round corners. Here they have battery busses on the short flat routes they can manage, and diesels on all other routes. Well into the city the routes merge and runs along a few streets that easily could be electrifyed

I am surprised we don't see more "trolley problem" references that are about actual trolleys.

Philadelphia has the same attitude that NYC had when it decided along with the Philadelphia mayors, and city council in not bothering to have their representatives in the state legislature and in Congress to fund the trolley lines and improve them. The last trolley line in NYC was also the last trolley line in New York State ended in April 1957, the Queensborough Bridge Railway.

dawg i been ITCHING for a new video from you . Good LAWD.

Pittsburgh can join the club. Aside from a few lines in the South Hills our trolley network was ran into the ground by Port Authority. 2 of the remaining lines might be cut as the result of a “best use study”…

All the rolling stock in the video looks like it could be replaced by a single bus. That's probably part of why that is happening (chicken vs. egg...). One point with trams is that connecting multiple cars increases capacity without having to hire a second driver.

the worst thing about the trolleys is that they share their space with cars. I live near media and it's a nightmare to drive down state st when the trolley is running, the roads are too narrow to pull over, especially because there is street parking on both sides of the road. Things would run way smoother if the tracks took up one side of the road rather than going down the middle.

Great video. Worst part of unused trolly tracks for me is how dangerous they are for bicyclist. It's why I switched to a mountain bike with wider tires.

Wow. Streetcar situation in Philadelphia is worse than ours in Toronto. But mismanagement strikes here too. They recently bought 200 cars from failed Canadian firm Bombardier transportation. But most of them have welding issues so they have to go back to the plant in T-Bay to be fixed. Another problem is we used to have 260 cars so now one or two routes are always in bustitution because there aren't enough cars. They bought another 60 cars but now Bombardier is owned by Alstom and the public doesn't really know when we're going to get them. The TTC is also always doing huge infrastructure work, new rail or my favourite "Pantograph Conversion" Which is generally a good thing. But it has left many routes on long detours or cut back for years at a time. When construction starts on the new Ontario Line subway the 501 will be detoured for probably close to 15 years, if our experience with the Eglinton LRT, which now has no completion date, is any kind of foreshadowing.

Trackless trolleys (we call them that in king county metro as well) are amazing! They are all electric and can get around obstacles! They are so fun to ride too

Love the philly videos keep them coming. Fully agree about trolleybuses, and frustrating to see Septa doubling down on battery electric when we already have the infrastructure there. We've got a crappy subway system compared to Boston, NYC, Chicago, and DC, and that's not gonna change anytime soon (my kingdom for ambitious city leadership), but we have the bones for a better transit system overall. And I def credit SEPTA for the trolley/bus/RR modernization plans - for an underfunded agency they are doing smart stuff with the money they have and (mostly) not doing vaporware nonsense I live right by the Girard station trolley stop you have pictured at 5:25. I am so excited for that street to be completely redesigned. A bonus - see the low, single story bank building behind the light rail car? That's going to be converted to an apartment block. Good things are happening in Philadelphia!

6:17 when bike lanes are so good even public transport runs over them 😑

I'd be interested to hear your analysis of the MBTA Green Line, the light rail of Boston's system. The E branch shares roadway with cars for one terrifying stretch of road, and its the last place in the system where this still occurs. But the MBTA just opened its first expansion in over 30 years, the extension of the Green Line to Medford/Tufts University. The tunnel that the green line is funneled into under downtown is the first subway tunnel in the western hemisphere!

This video really hit home with me - at the 6:22 mark, it shows the stop at Levick St. where I got off the #66 trackless trolley as the last leg of my trip home from the Philly airport yesterday morning - Airport Regional Rail to Jefferson Station, MFL to FTC , Rt. #66 to home. What outrages me is that the Airport Regional Rail has only hourly service on the weekends. That is unacceptable for a major airport. Weekday service is every half-hour, but every 15 minutes would be better. Any thoughts on ways to pressure SEPTA to provide better weekend service to the airport? I keep thinking that the airport would be better served by more frequent Light Rail service as in Portland, or more frequent heavy rail as provided in Atlanta and San Francisco. It should be possible to provide a type of fully or partially automated service that is dedicated for the airport line, using the same tracks and number of stops that exist now. I wasn't aware of the plan to modernize the present trolley system. Where can I find information on that? Thanks.

I am a 76 year old who was born and raised in Philadelphia but no longer lives in the area. I loved the trolley rides and rode the 15 and the 47 quite often. I even rode the 8 before it became a bus route. Too bad they are not all still in use.

You know what else needs to be fixed? The friggin trolley diversion to 40th St. That entire are of West Philly becomes a traffic nightmare, the transit slows to a crawl, and the trolley’s bunch up as they vainly attempt a 3 mph left turn across traffic. I realize this is supposed to be the little-used backup route, but my goodness it is terrible.

They used to have trackless trolley options in center city (the 79 & 29) but that was eliminated a long time ago

Blown to bits during WW2 and restored before 1950, the German Trams are awesome

São Paulo-SP, Brazil has trolleybuses too. They're great.

I lived near 1 of those trolley routes. They spent money upgrading the tracks and raising the bed. They ran it for about a year then went back to buses. All that new raised bed was torn up

I remember I used to go visit my aunt in south Philly (I think, it's been a while) all the time when I was a kid (around 2005-8ish) and every single time I would ask my dad what the "train tracks on the road before" or get really excited at the occasional (but very rare) trolley I would see pass by. At the very least I wish they were preserved as some sort of historical monument, make it like a route that Tourists can follow or something, but really I just want trolley buses back. Not only are they really cool, but driving in Philly is hell (that and as a poverty rate of like 30%, so it's probably one of the US cities that would be helped the most by public transportation infrastructure)

OMG! There's a Yeadon in Philadelphia. I thought that the only Yeadon was the one near me in Yorkshire. Mind you, ours is likely the original.

love my tasker/passyunk feature at the end!

That trolley looks an awful lot like a tram...

SEPTA owns the rail all the way up to Coopersburg. Man I sure was happy to find out I couldn't just take the train into philly from ABE since they got rid of that in the 80s, and then also that when I got to where I was staying near Gerard collage, the trolley wasn't running down Gerard ave anymore, and in fact the entire avenue was torn up.

Please do a video on Winnipeg’s broken transit system!

@5:13 -- I remember those street cars whenever I visited family in NE Philly in the early 60's! They'd run down Frankford Ave and we basically used them to go shopping. I don't even remember seeing buses back when I was 5 --- just those cool trolleys. (of course in later years, yeah, I saw buses, traveled on subway). Side note: the 'water ice' and soft pretzels I got there as a kid...decades later I can say, no one did those better than Philly - I still remember the glorious taste from many decades past!!!

It should be noted under said Modernization Plan there would be the following addition of track: -15 Extension to 69th Street Transportation Ctr. -34 Extension to East Lansdowne (Terminal tbd) -36 Extension to Eastwick Station -102 Extension to Darby Transportation Ctr via Street-Running on Chester Pike. -New Depot off the 36 at Greys and 41st St for all new LRVs -Rebuilt Darby Terminal with 3 tracks for the 11, 13 and 102. Personally, I'm looking forward to the 15 and 102 extensions as it would finally physically connect the City Trolley Lines to the Suburban and it would make it easier to move around cars. All of the new "bendy" trolleys who are coming in will be double-ended so they can be used universally. Also Darby, East Lansdowne and Eastwick Terminals are slanted to be regular end sidings, no Loops.

Bro it's insane how nice the tracks are on the mainline, but I never see them being used and it makes me so sad

4:49 you mentioned their trolley modernization. Please do a video explaining what they are planning on doing.

As a Melbournian living in Santiago, Chile, I've gone from a city with one of the largest tram networks in the world to a city with absolutely zero trams. The worst part is there are still tracks on many streets, but trams haven't run here since the 1950s or thereabouts. There is a pretty decent metro system here though, so that's nice. Although it gets crazy crowded so that's not so fun.

Was great seeing the 59! Used to ride that as a kid to get to school every morning back in the early and mid 90s

San Francisco retained its streetcar system. It has a tourist corridor as well as routes in residential neighborhoods. The tourist corridor (market street-Embarcadero) has amazing city and bay views.

Many years ago in my former neighborhood of Boston (West Roxbury) the old trolleys were replaced with trackless trolleys, appreciated because they could pick up at the curb. However, there was one long hill on the route, and in winter they slid out of range of their overhead wires. I was told they couldn't use tire chains (still in common use at that time) because of a grounding issue. Eventually they were replaced with noisy, smelly diesel buses.

The trolleys actually only run in West and Southwest, and Center City Philly. The Route 15 on Girard Avenue, they are talking about bringing the cars back at some point. Swpta was fixing the rails in a recent project but no set date fir the return.

Great video Alan. You’re the 🐐

could u make a video on how to make the 43 pennsylvanian better aint no way it should take 7 hours philly to Pittsburgh

Interesting to see the evolution of trolleys in Philly vs San Francisco. SF's street car & cable car turned into a modern light rail metro system with 2 subway tunnels and 6 lines. While it looks like Philly sorta kept the lines but never really improved service.

Philadelphia (SEPTA) once had the nation's longest and world's longest trolley route. The 23 Trolley. Now broken in half by two bus routes 23 and 45.

They got rid of all the trolleys in South Philly and the buses with electric trolley wires overhead! I used to live on 10th & Oregon Ave in the late 80's and early 90's where the 23 trolley would turn and be loud and would spark when turning. I'm glad they are gone the tracks make driving horrible

Their switching the whole fleet over to electric busses so what's the problem?

I find it amazing that parked cars blocking streetcars are taken for granted. Why? Why should a transit system be planned around badly parked cars? Portland and San Francisco often have painted clearance lines, parking anywhere inside is clear, anything over or outside can get you a good fine or a tow and as a result, while there are times where a blocked streetcar has to blow its horn in a quiet neighborhood to bring out the planet gang rapist to take his effin car off the clearance zone, most of the time folks know where to park, even when the “clearance line” in SF is merely a crack between the concrete underneath the asphalt and the rest of the lane. And, it would seem MOST frustrating that you have what you have when once, long before 1990, a transit system that had streetcars on 90% of its N/S streets and 50% of its E/W streets. THAT was a system! But really, STOP treating the entitlement of cars and their drivers as a given. It’s time to start demanding laws that knock some sense into drivers, and remind them that driving is a privilege not a right and they have no entitlement, tthey do not own the road and moreover, should start losing their licenses for infractions that endanger other motorists, and especially pedestrians and cyclists. Stripping motorists of their entitlement has to start somewhere and videos like this should stop treating the bad habits of drivers as some sort of law of nature.

Reminds me of when I was living in Boston... there's B, C, D, & E trolley lines, and it was super interesting to find older maps with an A line & an extended E line. Most of the trolleys run underground or in a separate area in the middle of the road, but a portion of the E line used to run in the streets. The E line originally ran like 2x as far & connected out to the main elevated/underground line, and it was really funny, they "temporarily" suspended the E line service, but then they renovated / built a whole new station for the end terminal of the E line, Arborway, that sat unused for over a decade before they started using it for buses instead. I think they finally just demolished it & are going to build a commuter parking garage. While I was there, a bunch of local businesses got really fed up with the conditions of some of the roads with the trolley lines, and just paved over the trolley lines & roads themselves, lol. The MBTA got really upset but ultimately didn't do anything. Sadder was the A line, which I researched a little bit. There's this big curve in the B line where it sharply turns, and that's where the old A line kept running straight. Turns out, they shut down the A line service, but still had to keep all of the lines & infrastructure up & running for like 20 years, because the trolley repair depot was at the end of the A line, so they were running trolleys out there all night for work... just horrible mismanagement. Nowadays, they filled in the area with some greenery in the middle of the road; which looks nice I guess, but seems like a waste of space. And there's a lot of old businesses & buildings that were obviously built along the line now abandoned or decaying.

I live in Philly now so I’m loving this content!

Philly 🤝 Boston 🤝 NOLA 🤝 SF: Keeping their trolley systems and resisting car dependency and suburban sprawl But they have to learn from the failures of other cities and continue long term investment and maintenance of them, otherwise there’s no point.

Interesting video from a European point of view. We would be horrified if tracks were ripped up, in Europe more are being installed, even in England. I wasn't aware that in the US that Trams are called Trolleys. A trolley for Brits is what you put your shopping in at the supermarket! 🙂

One of the most charming quirks of this channel is how *aggressively* Philadelphian it is, and what makes it a *great* channel is how it leverages this extremely narrow context to make excellent points about transit in general.

the city seems to have so much potential with the infrastructure in place. the neglect and under investment is letting everyone down

It would be really nice for the Philadelphia suburb rail trip times to be sped up. I took the Lansdale/Doylestown line from Doylestown and it took an hour and a half to 30th Street. Would be really nice to speed up all rail lines tbh.