1940s & 1950s (the Last Decade of Streetcar Service)
In 1941, four streetcar lines ended service.
- Monday, April 14, 1941 - routes 1-William and 18-Jefferson cease streetcar service.
- Late September, 1941 - routes 15-Seneca and 16-South Park cease streetcar service.
After these dates, World War II had set in, creating a six-year gap in the escalation of lost streetcar routes, due to the shortage of manpower to fix the newly implemented buses, and from the scarcity of precious metal that was being used in wartime production of supplies.
At this time, the International Railway Company encouraged the riding public to return to the use of streetcars and support them in their cooperation with the war cause.
In 1947 and 1948, removal of streetcar service began again.
- Thursday, February 6, 1947 - route 12-Utica ended service.
- Friday, February 20, 1948 - routes 2-Clinton and 6-Sycamore ended service.
In 1950, the final six streetcar routes ended service, replaced immediately by buses.
- Sunday, June 18, 1950 - all Cold Spring Depot streetcar service ceases (Rts. 8-Main, 9-Parkside/Zoo & 13-Kensington).
- Saturday, July 1, 1950 - all Broadway Depot streetcar service ceases (Rts. 4-Broadway, 23-Fillmore/Hertel and 24-Genesee).
After the end of passenger service, the Niagara Frontier Transit Corporation spent approximately six months removing the remaining 175 streetcars from the Cold Springs and Broadway streetcar barns over the remaining streetcar trackage on Broadway, Fillmore Avenue, Main Street and Hertel to the Military car barn where the outer bodies were removed and burned.
The streetcar tracks were usually covered up with asphalt, and occasionally during major road work, construction crews may dig up remains of tracks that have been buried under mere inches or feet for the past fifty years.
At the present time, Main Street (NYS 5) is undergoing extensive reconstruction of the roadbed and in areas of roadway that were not dug up during the construction of the Metro Rail line (using tunnel boring instead), the tracks are being brought back to the surface and dismantled.
Read more about this topic: Routes Of City Of Buffalo Streetcars
Famous quotes containing the word decade:
“More than a decade after our fellow citizens began bedding down on the sidewalks, their problems continue to seem so intractable that we have begun to do psychologically what government has been incapable of doing programmatically. We bring the numbers down—not by solving the problem, but by deciding it’s their own damn fault.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)