North America
In North America, especially the United States, trams are generally known as streetcars or trolleys; the term tram is more likely to be understood as a tourist trolley, an aerial tramway, or a people-mover.
Streetcar lines were largely torn up in the mid-20th century for a variety of financial, technological and social reasons. (See also the Great American Streetcar Scandal.) Exceptions include New Orleans, Newark, Seattle, Philadelphia (with a much smaller network than once had existed), and San Francisco. Pittsburgh kept most of its streetcar system serving the city and many suburbs until January 27, 1967, making it the longest-lasting large-network U.S. streetcar system.
Read more about this topic: Tram And Light-rail Transit Systems
Famous quotes containing the words north america, north and/or america:
“I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
—Mother Jones (1830–1930)
“To-day there is hardly a woman of intelligence in all America ... who is not definitely and actively concerned in some social interest, who does not recognize some duty besides those incident to her own blood relationship.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)