Streetcars in North America - History - Omnibuses and Horsecars

Omnibuses and Horsecars

From the 1820s to the 1880s urban transit in North America began when horse-drawn omnibus lines started to operate along city streets. Examples included Gilbert Vanderwerken's 1826 omnibus service in Newark, New Jersey. Before long Omnibus companies sought to boost profitability of their wagons by increasing ridership along their lines. Horsecar lines simply ran wagons along rails set in a city street instead of on the unpaved street surface as the omnibus lines used. When a wagon was drawn upon rails the rolling resistance of the vehicle was lowered and the average speed was increased.

A horse or team that rode along rails could carry more fare paying passengers per day of operation than those that did not have rails. North America's first streetcar lines opened in 1832 from downtown New York City to Harlem by the New York and Harlem Railroad, in 1834 in New Orleans, and in 1849 in Toronto along the Williams Omnibus Bus Line.

These streetcars used horses and sometimes mules. Mules were thought to give more hours per day of useful transit service than horses and were especially popular in the south in cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana and Celaya, Guanajuato, Mexico. In many cities single animal drawn streetcars were known as "bobtail streetcars" whether mule or horse drawn. By the mid 1880s, there were 415 street railway companies in the USA operating over 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of track and carrying 188 million passengers per year using animal drawn cars. In the nineteenth century Mexico had streetcars in around 1,000 towns and many were animal powered. The 1907 Anuario Estadístico lists 35 animal-powered streetcar lines in Veracruz state, 80 in Guanajuato, and 300 lines in Yucatán.

Although most animal drawn lines were shut down in the 19th century a few lines lasted into the 20th century and later. Toronto's horse drawn streetcar operations ended in 1891. New York City saw regular horsecar service last until 1917 (see photo at left). Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Sarah Street line lasted until 1923. The last regular mule-drawn cars in the United States ran in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas until 1926 and were commemorated by a U.S. Postage Stamp issued in 1983. The last mule tram service in Mexico City ended in 1932, and a mule-powered line in Celaya, survived until May 1954. In the 21st century horsecars are still used to take visitors along the 9-kilometre (5.6 mi) tour of the 3 cenotes from Chunkanán near Cuzamá Municipality in the state of Yucatán.

See also: Omaha Horse Railway, Hudson Avenue Line (surface), Palmdale Railroad, and Winnipeg Transit