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Twin City Rapid Transit Company

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The Twin City Rapid Transit Company (TCRT), also known as Twin City Lines (TCL), was a business that operated streetcars, taxicabs, buses, and steamboats in the area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. It existed under that name from a merger in the 1890s until it was purchased in 1962. At its height in the early 20th century, the company operated an intercity streetcar system that was believed to be one of the best in the United States. It is a predecessor of the current Metro Transit bus and light rail system that operates in the area.

Beginnings

Street rail transport in the Twin Cities dates back to at least 1867, when businessman and mayor Dorilus Morrison began building rails in downtown Minneapolis. He quickly joined forces with Colonel William King and other Minneapolis businessmen to create the Minneapolis Street Railway. However, the lines didn't go very far, and the railway was pretty much useless for several years.

In 1872, St. Paul saw the first successful horse-drawn streetcars by the St. Paul Railway Co. In 1875, the Minneapolis Street Railway made a deal with the Minneapolis City Council where the company would have exclusive access to street rails for 50 years if they could be up and operating in four months. The company recruited real-estate mogul Thomas Lowry, who got the line operating on September 2, 1875 between downtown and the University of Minnesota.

The streetcars became popular because they rode on smooth rails, while most of the streets of the era were just dirt or possibly cobblestone. These roads could become treacherous to pedestrians and uncomfortable to ride on in horse-drawn buggies when the weather turned foul.

File:TCRT MN State Fair.jpg
Image of TCRT streetcars at the
1910 Minnesota State Fair

Thomas Lowry envisioned linking together the various railways that were cropping up around Minneapolis. While other systems were popping up with more horse-drawn carriages or cable cars, Lowry pushed forward with electrification of the lines. Starting in the late 1880s, electric streetcars began moving in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. Cable cars quickly lost favor as they struggled through snowy Minnesota winters, and the public quickly grew weary of slow horsecars.

Growth

In 1890, the two cities were connected with a railway along University Avenue. A merger of the two city systems, the St. Paul City Railway Co. and Minneapolis Street Railway, formed the Twin City Rapid Transit Company. It went on a building spree, quickly doubling the amount of electrified track in the system.

The company continued absorbing smaller competitiors for the next 40 years. From 1906 to 1926, TCRT experimented with “streetcar boats.” Officially known as Express Boats, they were steam-powered vessels with designs reminiscent of the streetcars of the day. The boats operated between resorts on Lake Minnetonka, but slow times hit hard in the 1920s. Ultimately, seven were built, but most of them were scuttled in the lake in 1926.


“Streetcar boat” Hopkins on Lake Minnetonka

The internal combustion engine didn't escape notice, and Twin City Rapid Transit acquired several bus lines that began to pop up around the time of World War I and a taxicab company in the 1920s. When the transportation system peaked in 1931, it had nearly 530 miles of track and 1021 streetcars. Rail extended from Stillwater on the bank of the St. Croix River in the east to Lake Minnetonka in the west. For a time, TCRT was the largest employer in the area.

It is said that anyone who lived in Minneapolis was no farther than 400 yards (less than ¼ mile) from the nearest station at that time.

Decline

With the Great Depression and the rise of the automobile, the rail lines began to decline. Buses were frequently used toward the edges of the system as long routes were cut back. World War II allowed the system to bounce back for a time, since strict fuel rationing and citizens' efforts to conserve resources made automobile use rather un-patriotic. However, the restrictions TCRT itself, meaning that they could not afford to build many new streetcars. The company was forced to add more buses to shore up the system's various routes.

After the war, trolley riders returned to their automobiles. TCRT's management explored ways to upgrade the line to bring people back. Heawy wartime use meant that the rails needed to be repaired. In 1945, the company received its first streamlined PCC streetcar. The following years saw dozens of new PCC cars on the streets, although the first one remained unique in the fleet because it was the only one to have air brakes.

In 1948, a Wall Street speculator named Charles Green bought 6000 shares of TCRT stock. He expected to quickly gain profit, but found he had purchased stock just as the company decided to set forth on some major construction. Knowing this would demolish his dividends, Green contacted other shareholders and urged them to vote out the company's president, D.J. Strouse, and put him in charge instead.

Green took control of the company in 1949 and quickly started dismantling the railway system, announcing that the company would completely switch to buses by 1958. Many of the system's trolleys were sold to other cities around the continent. It was soon discovered that Green had connections to organized crime, and he was replaced as president by Fred Ossanna who continued to tear apart the system, albeit more quietly.

On June 19, 1954, four years before Green had envisioned, the very last streetcars ran in Minneapolis. The leftover vehicles were unceremoniously burned, the last one very famously photographed alight behind Fred Ossanna and James Towley as Towley presented Ossanna with a check.

Conspiracy?

Many have alleged that the teardown of TCRT's rail system was associated with actions General Motors took in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, arguably with the express purpose of destroying streetcar systems to promote bus and automobile travel. GM, along with several other companies with automobile-related businesses, formed National City Lines, a holding company that engaged in hostile takeovers of many streetcar lines. In 45 cities, this resulted in “bustitution,” the full conversion from steel-wheel to rubber-tire transit.

National City Lines did not engage directly with Twin City Rapid Transit, although Fred Ossanna had previously worked for NCL. He came to work at TCRT as a lawyer for Charles Green in the 1949 takeover of the company. However, General Motors did offer some deep discounts on buses—Ossanna once went to ask for 25 buses and was offered 525. The vast majority of buses in TCRT's eventual bus fleet were built by GM.

Still, most of the activity was geared more toward stripping TCRT of its assets to fill the pockets of owners and investors. Ossanna was later convicted of illegally taking personal profit from the company, and was imprisoned along with other accomplices.

One might even argue for later conspiracies. Eyebrows are raised whenever Minnesotans discover that Carl Pohlad, the controversial owner of the Minnesota Twins, was the successor to Fred Ossanna as head of Twin City Lines in the 1960s. He ultimately sold the company in 1970.

Aftermath

Before the dismantling began, TCRT had purchased a significant number of PCC streetcars. These were sold off in 1952 and 1953, still in very good operating condition at the time. The cars ended up in Mexico City (91 cars), Newark, New Jersey (30), and Shaker Heights, Ohio (20). (The Shaker Heights cars served in a commuter line to Cleveland). The vast majority of the older wooden streetcars, mostly built by TCRT itself, were destroyed. Out of 1240 built by the company, only about five survived to be restored and operated by rail museums.

Two of the wooden streetcars in use in the 1950s had been given away to railfan groups before the rest of the fleet was burned. They are owned by the Minnesota Transportation Museum and the Seashore Trolley Museum in Maine. One other steel-sheathed car had been sent to a railway to the north in Duluth-Superior, but it was never used. It now resides at the East Troy Electric Railroad Museum in Wisconsin. A few additional cars escaped the burn pits, but they were still subjected to harsh conditions and only one or two are restored.

One of the streetcar boats, the Minnehaha, was found by divers and then brought to the surface in 1980. After a long wait, it was restored and has been operated on Lake Minnetonka since 1996 by the Minnesota Transportation Museum. The MTM also restored one of TCRT's old PCC cars.

Some of the PCC cars once owned by Twin City Rapid Transit are just beginning their lives as museum pieces. The Newark City Subway finished operation of their 24 remaining cars on August 24, 2001, replacing the cars with new light-rail trainsets.

New Beginnings

Less than twenty years after rails disappeared from Twin Cities streets, politicians began proposing new light rail systems. Congestion was bad enough in 1972 that there were proposals to build new subways or people movers, but excessively high costs prevented any of the projects from getting anywhere until the end of the century.

In the 1970s, the bus lines (some of which still trace former horse-drawn buggy paths) were shifted to a partially publicly-funded operation overseen by the Metropolitan Council.

Politics, frustration, and certainly a little nostalgia finally culminated to bring rail transport back to the Twin Cities with the Hiawatha Line. Construction began in 2001, and the line is set to begin operations in 2004. At 12 miles long, it is only a faint echo of what was in the past, but many people in the state hope it is a new beginning. Others feel that, at the cost of $715 million, it will be a tremendous failure that the state can't afford. Still, legislation continues to be pushed for extensions to the line and for a new commuter rail service, the Northstar Line, tracing Interstate 94 northwest toward St. Cloud, Minnesota.

See also

External links

References

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