1900s. Our current 18-mile long Springwater Trail is a former rail line. The Kenton neighborhood in North Portland, built by the Swift Meatpacking Company, was anchored by a streetcar line along Denver Avenue.The blog Cafe Unknown has a great post on remnants of Portland's streetcar system here and a post about the city's fleeting experiment with electric buses in the 1940s.
Martha Bianco's dissertation, Private profit versus public service : competing demands in urban transportation history and policy, Portland, Oregon, 1872-1970, takes a comprehensive look at Portland's streetcar system and other aspects of urban transporation from a public policy perspective. It is available at PSU's library. She has also published several articles including, “The Decline of Transit—Corporate Conspiracy or Failure of Public Policy?: The Case of Portland, Oregon,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 1997: 450-474.
3 comments:
I live near SW Berta Blvd which runs on the right of way of the Red Electric interurban line. I would love to know more about and its alignment as went west. SW Multnomah Blvd was also an interurban line which ran to a junction at Garden Home near the current Thriftway store. Any info you have or can point to would be appreciated.
Don't know if you seen this information yet.
http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/red_electrics.html
http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/interurbans.html
In fact, www.pdxhistory.com has good info and great pics on many aspects of Portland's past.
To get really in-depth, I'd start with Biancho's body of work (mentioned in the post and in a couple of other spots on the blog). She has done a significant amount of scholarly work investigating streetcar systems. Even if her dissertation or articles don't have what you are looking for, I would bet her sources could give you many good leads.
Good luck!
The type of information you are looking for is the exact kind of work that I don't think anyone has done. Namely, looking at the geography of old streetcar lines and the impact on the city's urban development through time. I think its an interesting question. How has the early streetcar network affected neighborhood and transportation development in the city? We know, of course, that those old lines are no longer, but how have they affected how the city is laid out?
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