Interurban
The interurban is a type of electric railway, with tram-like electric self-propelled railcars which run within and between cities or towns. The term interurban is usually used in North America, with other terms used outside it. They were very prevalent in many parts of the world before the Second World War and were used primarily for passenger travel between cities and their surrounding suburban and rural communities. Interurban as a term encompassed the companies, their infrastructure, their cars that ran on the rails, and their service. In the United States, the early 1900s interurban was a valuable economic institution when most roads between towns, many town streets were unpaved, and transportation and haulage was by horse-drawn carriages and carts.
The interurban provided reliable transportation, particularly in winter weather, between towns and countryside. In 1915, of interurban railways were operating in the United States and, for a few years, interurban railways, including the numerous manufacturers of cars and equipment, were the fifth-largest industry in the country. With the widespread use of automobiles, most interurbans in North America had stopped operating by 1930. A few survived into the 1950s.
File:090925 Aigle IMG 4089.JPG|thumb|Aigle–Sépey–Diablerets railway line in Switzerland
Outside of the US, other countries built large networks of high-speed electric tramways that survive today. Notable systems exist in the Low Countries, Poland, and Japan, where populations are densely packed around large conurbations such as the Randstad, Upper Silesia, Greater Tokyo Area, and Keihanshin. Switzerland, particularly, has a large network of mountain narrow-gauge interurban lines.
In addition, since the early 21st century many tram-train lines are being built, especially in France and Germany but also elsewhere in the world. These can be regarded as interurbans since they run on the streets, like trams, when in cities, while out of them they either share existing railway lines or use lines that were abandoned by the railway companies.
Definition
The term interurban was coined by Charles L. Henry, a state senator in Indiana. The Latin, inter urbes, means "between cities". The interurban fit on a continuum between urban street railways and full-fledged railroads. George W. Hilton and John F. Due, looking back on the interurbans in 1960, identified four characteristics of an interurban:- Electric power for propulsion
- Passenger service as the primary business
- Equipment heavier and faster than urban streetcars
- Operation on tracks in city streets, and in rural areas on roadside tracks or private rights-of-way
In 1905, the United States Census Bureau defined an interurban as "a street railway having more than half its trackage outside municipal limits". It drew a distinction between interurban and suburban railroads. A suburban system was oriented toward a city center in a single urban area and served commuter traffic. A regular railroad moved riders from one city center to another city center and also moved a substantial amount of freight.
The typical interurban similarly served more than one city, but it served a smaller region and made more frequent stops, and was oriented to passenger rather than freight service.
History
Emergence
United States
The development of interurbans in the late 19th century resulted from the convergence of two trends: improvements in electric traction and an untapped demand for transportation in rural areas, particularly in the Midwestern United States. The 1880s saw the first successful deployments of electric traction in streetcar systems. Most of these built on the pioneering work of Frank J. Sprague, who had developed an improved method for mounting an electric traction motor and using a trolley pole for pickup. Sprague's work led to widespread acceptance of electric traction for streetcar operations and the end of horse-drawn trams.The late 19th-century United States witnessed a boom in agriculture that lasted through the World War I, but transportation in rural areas was inadequate. Conventional steam railroads made limited stops, mostly in towns. These were supplemented by horse and buggies and steamboats, both of which were slow and the latter of which were restricted to navigable rivers. The increased capacity and profitability of the city street railroads offered the possibility of extending them into the countryside to reach new markets, even linking to other towns. The first interurban to emerge in the United States was the Newark and Granville Street Railway in Ohio, which opened in 1889. It was not a major success, but others followed. The development of the automobile was then in its infancy, and to many investors interurbans appeared to be the future of local transportation.
From 1900 to 1916, large networks of interurban lines were constructed across the United States, particularly in the states of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa, Utah, and California. In 1900, of interurban track existed, but by 1916, this had increased to, a seven-fold expansion. Beginning in 1901, it was possible to travel from Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, to Little Falls, New York, exclusively by interurban. During this expansion, "...they almost destroyed the local passenger service of the steam railroad" in the regions where they operated, particularly in Ohio and Indiana. To show how exceptionally busy the interurbans radiating from Indianapolis were in 1926, the immense Indianapolis Traction Terminal scheduled 500 trains in and out daily and moved 7 million passengers that year. At their peak the interurbans were the fifth-largest industry in the United States.
Europe
In Belgium, a sprawling, nation-wide system of narrow-gauge vicinal tramways have been built by the NMVB / SNCV to provide transport to smaller towns across the country; the first section opened in 1885. These lines were either electrically operated or run with diesel tramcars, included numerous street-running sections, and inter-operated with local tram networks in the larger cities. Similar to Belgium, Netherlands constructed a large network of interurbans in the early 1900s called streektramlijnen.In Silesia, today Poland, an extensive interurban system was constructed, starting in 1894 with a narrow-gauge line connecting Gliwice with Piekary Śląskie through Zabrze, Chebzie, Chorzów, and Bytom; another connected Katowice and Siemianowice. After four years, in 1898, Kramer & Co. was chosen to start electrification on Katowice Rynek - Zawodzie line, after which Schikora & Wolff completed electrification of four additional lines. In 1912, the first short line was built in Katowice. In 1913, a separate standard gauge system connecting Bytom with suburbs and villages west of the town was launched. After World War I and the Silesian Uprisings, in 1922 the region was divided between the newly independent Poland and Germany, and international services appeared. In 1928, further standard gauge systems were established in Sosnowiec, Będzin, and Dąbrowa Górnicza. Between 1928 and 1936 most of the original narrow gauge network was converted to standard, which allowed a connection with the new system in Sosnowiec. By 1931, 47,5% of the narrow-gauge network was reconstructed, with of new standard-gauge track built.
A large network of interurbans started developing around Milan in the late 1800s; they were originally drawn by horses and later powered as steam trams. These initial interurban lines were gradually upgraded with electric traction in the early 1900s with some assistance from Thomas Edison. By the 1930s a vast network of interurbans, the Società Trazione Elettrica Lombarda, connected Milan with surrounding towns.
In the first half of the 20th century, an extensive tramway network covered Northern England, centered on South Lancashire and West Yorkshire. At that time, it was possible to travel entirely by tram from Liverpool Pier Head to the village of Summit, outside Rochdale, a distance of, and with a short bus journey across the Pennines, to connect to another tram network that linked Huddersfield, Halifax, and Leeds.