Fifty-Five (55) years ago today, the Pacific Electric Railway, once the largest electric railway in the world in the 1920s, ended operations.

It was a sad day in history because despite the perceived infrastructure cost, electric transportation can be a lot a cheaper than gas-transportation with the regular, repeated, rises in oil that have been happening over the past 40 years, especially when you consider improvements in electricity generation from sustainable sources including sun, wind, and water power that is almost free once the infrastructure has been paid for.

As this isn’t an engineering or energy blog, we won’t dive into pages of discussion as to why clean, smog-free electric streetcars are much preferable to the gas-guzzling busses of today, but simply mourn the passing of the streetcar and the great networks that used to power the great cities of North America.