Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
It played out a little differently in Kingston.
Our streetcar system was largely a failure from the get go. Kingston started up a horse-drawn streetcar system (horses on tracks pulling streetcar cabs, essentially), in the 1870s (I wanna say 1878) followed by a full fledged electric streetcar system in 1891.
It was never much of a success. Back in those days, Kingston was a small enough city that one could walk from point A to point B pretty much anywhere in the city in a half hour or less, and there was never a lot of money in the city, so most people cheaped out and just walked everywhere instead of paying the streetcar fare. The city constantly gave it loans (many of which were forgiven) to cover its costs. When a fire broke out in the 1930s and burned down the garage, the city just gave up rather than buy more cars, and buses were brought in.
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That is the story of a lot of smaller city streetcar systems. Oshawa, Guelph, Peterborough, even Woodstock IIRC all used to have streetcar systems. They were never really profitable and were usually ripped out earlier than the larger city systems, which largely lasted until the 1950's, except for Toronto which was planned to last to 1980, if it wasn't saved.