I recently started researching the historical Twin City Street Car system for a future project. Having moved back to the Twin Cities from New York fairly recently, it’s hard to prevent tears from flowing, when you see the following article from the July 1954 issue of the Mass Transportation Magazine posted in a short by informative article at Eyeteeth:
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
Needless to say, the local public transportation system hasn’t really recovered since the death of the Street Car. Still there are glimmers of hope. The Hiawatha light-rail line is a great start, and I hope they hurry up and build the Minneapolis-St. Paul link already! Then there is the tantalizing 2007 Street Car Feasibility Report. It took some 70 years for the Twin Cities to build a world class Street Car system. It took less than 3 years to dismantle it. How many years (if ever) before we can have a system as extensive as this again:
Map by Brett McKean. Click to enlarge
by Tom K
the destruction of the twin cities street car system is very depressing. have you ever read lost twin cities? it’s a book about all the beautiful old buildings that were torn down. mostly after world war 2 for the purposes of building down town parking lots.
Yep, I love that book. The parking lots that surround the Metrodome are some of the most depressing places in town.