Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
thanks for all of the historical pics centropolis, but most of that stuff looks way more inter-urban (which every city had a lot of back in the olden days). i want to learn more about the grade-separated "super-streetcar" routes of st. louis that would have functioned more like chicago's el system as intra-urban mass transit. got any old maps, timetables, brochures, etc. of those routes?
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we have to remember that a lot of transit lines back in the day sort of functioned in their own world as if other transit systems and authorities didn't exist before we had more clearly defined parameters like what a "metro" system means, and st. louis was an incredible privatized hodge-podge at the end since it didn't get its act together with a rapid-transit system to bring everything under one authority/funding.
depending on your destination/distance from city center you took whatever made sense. the illinois industrial satellites were a functioning part of metro st. louis (with the dirtiest industrial intentionally downwind of the city),the streets of which were often laid out by st. louis city engineers. the system serving that industrial corridor was a bit more than a typical interurban system it seems like. it should have been wrapped into some kind of regional rapid transit system, of course, but it wasn't, and this is how these various lines evolved out after the early 1900s
after not being wrapped into a CTA or METRA type system. because these lines weren't all brought under the control of one authority they all sort of stayed within their own "transit worlds" before shutting down.
another tier/station type (within city limits), which should have been wrapped into a st. louis version of metra or el.
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