This is Seattle, in 1940...my Dad was 17, ready to graduate from Franklin High...my mom would have been 13 here, attending Holy Names Academy. In early 1941, my dad and his best buddy decided to join the Army...less than a year later, he was fighting in Europe and also N. Africa!...After he was discharged, he met my mom when he returned to Seattle, and was visiting his parents, who lived in Yesler Terrace...my mom lived with her mom, in a next-door apartment!...It was love at first sight, and they married in early 1946..I showed up in December of 1946! Mom and Dad had over 60 years together...they bought a home in the N. Greenlake area, in 1950--for $7000dollars!...They lived there for their 60 years together. Dad died at 82, my mom is still living at age 96...I am going to show her this amazing "time capsule" film...she will be amazed, and nostalgic I am sure, as she loves talking about how nice Seattle was to live and work in! Before meeting Dad, she had lived for awhile in W. Seattle, and rode that "trestle" many times! I am so proud of my family "Seattle Roots"...My mom's grandpa moved to Seattle in the late 1890s. Dad's family moved to Seattle in the early 1920s.

I also must note, that one of my best neighborhood friends had a daddy named Frank Falsini....Frank drove btrolly/buses for Seattle Transit, for over 50 years, and was likely the most senior driver when he retired...He loved his job so much!

Wow.

West Seattle aint getten shit! Trust me Sound Transit has done nothing but lies since day-1. Its what they do best. Look at how much they spent just to steal the floating bridge & place 320,000 lbs of train plus passengers on a floating bridge designed for no more than a semi truck of 80,000 lbs. its a disaster waiting to happen and Sound Transit spent billions to fix. But how do you fix what hasnt happened? Yet?

When the West Seattle bridge was out, buses could use the short bridge, but cars couldn't. That is probably one of the very few times around here when transit was faster than driving. Right now the buses travel in their own lane, so when traffic is heavy, it is faster than driving. When light rail gets to West Seattle it will be similar, but the vast majority of riders will have to transfer, negating the savings. In other words, for a lot of people, a transit trip will take longer than it does today.

Back in the mid 1960s...Seattle tried to get its citizens to vote for a "Forward Thrust" bond, that would have financed a new city transportation system, similar to BART in San Francisco. But the citizens were too tight-fisted, so Seattle has had to plod ever since in the mediocre traffic ever since!...We had our chance!

Frank Leonzal They were slow, useless, poorly maintained, loud, and antiquated method of transportation as this video clearly emphasizes.

As always, maintenance is required for transportation... that would include quieting them. Major traffic routes benefit more for dedicated streetcars with reliability and well defined paths, whereas negotiating bus routes is generally incomprehensible except for defined commutes. Only need to look at the successful integration of u-bahn and s-bahn trains with bus routes in any major and densely populated German city.

Transit systems of the era were private companies and by the end of the 1950s they couldn't raise enough money from fares to maintain and upgrade their systems. The film shows the condition of the tracks; also wooden cars and cable cars were obsolete even at the start of the 1940s. Also, Seattle is VERY hilly, and rail vehicles don't do well with grades of 3% or more, unless they are cable cars, and that's 19th century technology. Trolley buses powered by the new hydroelectric dams at Grand Coulee and Bonneville were a good upgrade; Seattle still uses them. There's also an elevated and underground light rail system that's used a lot; especially since the population has about doubled in the last 20 years.

@@552mustang but they could be renewed. They could buy new ones like todays trams smooth rides 60mph max speed and comfort and bigger than any bus. These things on the video are tin cans with wheels. As seen in the video the system was made to be that shitty. It looks like it was abandoned many years ago even when the video was made. Take any bus diesel bus. Run it for 15 years and you'll see time and time again that after 15 years it will be garbage. Imagine running it for 30 years. Ive seen busses disassembling while on the move! It's half the job to design and execute the plans for a transportation system and the other half to maintain it to standards of your company and your competition, in my opinion of course

@@552mustang Looks like this system was deliberately ruined by little or no maintenance. Those 30 year old streetcars could have been replaced with modern 1940 PCC streetcars. They were both quiet and fast. The tracks could have been replaced. This is a propaganda film by GE & Twin Coach ( a maker of trolley buses), so they made the streetcar system look hopelessly useless and junky.

They make them sound and look as junky as possible.

Should have kept the barn at 14:38 , would have been great to build a modern car barn, but Metro was consolidating facilities within the city, and sold the property to Seattle University.

At age 77, I relish seeing glimpses of many of the downtown stores and movie theaters, which I frequented as a kid, back in the 1950s and early 60s. Such innocent times, compared to now!

Read a recent book, some tried to save it, even add some mileage by making one last move to purchase Seattle and Rainier Valley Interurban. A study was done on a bare bones purchase, just the tracks and power substation, existing SMSR rolling stock and car barns would be used.

David Tosh Metro and Sound Transit both serve King County

They also removed the line out to Madison Park, but it probably became less necessary after the ferry shut down. They added the route across NE 45th from the u district to Ballard though.

Yes. There 😮has to be additional footage, as shown on Channel 9 when they closed out the broadcast day...

also known as "The Silver Slug"!...the name was an Indian name, meaning "flying bird". It was sleek, but kinda slow, not a large capacity ferry, and would shudder when turning!..The vissel had been built upon a refurbished deck, that had been the underside of another vessel that had burned up!...It is interesting, that despite the Kalakala being such a Seattle icon, no private person was really able to salvage it, or refurbish it. Our society does not venerate it's past!

Troy P electric = yes, overhead wires = no. The overhead wires in streets are so ugly and distracting.

@@bthemedia I remember, that many a trolley driver had to step out of his drivers seat, and re-connect those funky leads to the overhead wires--they would frequently lose grip on the wires when the vehicle was turning. What a hassle!

Promotion for the new "track less trolleys" replacing the old streetcars in ca.1940.

I like turtles 🐢

@@jkae206 yes so I'm

Move out

@@jkae206 yes

Interesting. And thank you...food for thought.

That one thing doesn't make trolleys bad.

@@brushcreek42 how about the enormous capital cost to build them? The inherent inability to alter routes over time? The danger of rails to bicyclers? The only pro rail arguments put feelings over facts and transportation isn't an art installation. We need results.

@@MrWolfTickets The whole idea is to get people out of their cars and take public transportation. People would much rather ride modern fast, smooth, quiet streetcars than buses. I commuted on a bus in Chicago for a year and hated every pothole bouncing minute of it. If someone doesn't have the ability to ride a bike over a streetcar track they shouldn't be riding a bike. Every major city should have a blend of streetcars, rapid transit and buses.

@@brushcreek42 the whole idea is to move the most people for the least cost. Period. Streetcars aren't fast and they cost way too much. Just look at cost per passenger mile and go from there. If you think cost doesn't matter, you really don't have an argument to make.

I wish we were America junior. We're now a socialist state.

Canada is a grand country with fine people, that should not be called "America Junior". We here in the Disunited States of America are the infants... Or at least our pea-brained politicians are.

Buses may be flexible but who wants to ride them?

@@brushcreek42 The problem, for years now, is that the ridership is mostly riff-raff people, mental cases and potentially violent criminals! Our society does not deserve a good transportation system anymore.