With electric and hybrid vehicles beginning to make a dent in the automotive market, more Andersonians are depending on electricity to get from place to place.
What most younger folks don’t realize is, the concept is nothing new.
During my early years in Anderson in the 1950s, downtown streets were stripped of layers of pavement as the city completely resurfaced Meridian and Main streets and those that crossed them in the downtown area. One long-buried feature appeared that probably predated the memories of most Anderson residents: rail lines. Long before diesel engines, streetcars provided the main mode of public transportation in the Madison County seat.
The first generation of electric vehicles, of course, did not carry their own sources of electricity as do today’s battery-powered cars. The power came from overhead trolley wheels that pressed against an overhead electric wire. The cars ran on rails, like a train, meaning passengers had to board and disembark in the middle of the street; today that would cause major congestion in an auto-oriented society.
Streetcars are older than electric technology, though. They used to be pulled through the streets by horses in much the fashion you find at Walt Disney World and similar theme parks.
The cable cars in San Francisco are the last vestige of streetcar transportation. Big cities still have variations that are out of the traffic stream, such as subways and elevated train lines. But streetcars were common in my youth, and I loved to ride them whenever we visited Minneapolis and St. Paul during my boyhood in Minnesota. The electric motors were much quieter than the diesels common on buses today as well as back then.
As best I can remember, the last time I rode a streetcar was when I was 11 years old. My cousin Joan Geske and a friend of hers took me to a Minneapolis Millers baseball game in the old American Association before Minnesota had a major-league team.
During vacation trips I occasionally encountered a strange variation: Trolley buses. They were electric-powered buses with the flexibility to pull closer to the curb to load and unload passengers, but they were tethered to the overhead electric lines by swiveling trolley arms.
For electric transportation to be feasible in that era, trolley systems were essential. Today’s high-powered, long-lasting, rechargeable batteries were decades away. It seemed as though my dad went through a car battery about every year during my boyhood as Minnesota winters took a tremendous toll on those lead-acid batteries that you had to keep filling with water for them to work.
The idea of seeing a bus cruising silently down the street with nothing powering it except electricity would have been something out of a science fiction movie.
But we still have a long way to go before electrics will be ready for cross-country trips during summer vacations.
Jim Bailey’s reflections on Anderson’s past appear on Sunday. His regular column appears on Wednesday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey @earthlink.net.
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Jim Bailey: Electric transportation goes full circle in Anderson
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