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Newspaper Articles:
April 28, 1897 - Hurt in Runaway Car History In 1903, Thomas N. McCarter resigned as the Attorney General of New Jersey and on May 6th of that year he organized the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey. By doing so he merged four trolley companies and a power company. The company quickly grew consolidating gas, electric and trolley companies throughout much of New Jersey. The subsidiary of the company handling trolleys was called the Public Service Railway Company. The merging of trolley companies lowered the cost of riding and also introduced free transfers across all of their trolley lines. Starting at Broad and Market Streets, you could travel to any part of the city of Newark and to any part of the company's network of lines that ran throughout the state. 14 of the 21 lines in the city cross or turn at the "Four Corners" complicating the traffic situation there. Measures were taken to try to reduce traffic congestion at the intersection. Trolleys were not allowed to stop at street crossings within a block of the intersection during rush hour and putting a "tripper service" on some of the lines. This was achieved by loading some of the cars at points a square or two away from the intersection. Also extra cars were run through adjacent streets. Statistics from 1915 show car miles of 51,873,660, the number of passengers carried exceeded 415,000,000 with a revenue of nearly $17,000,000By 1916 the company operated 882 miles of track with 2,200 cars serving a population of 2,100,000 in eleven of New Jersey's counties. Newark was the heart of the system which operated out of the newly completed Public Service building on Park Place. The system was split into six divisions, Essex, Hudson, Bergen, Passaic, Central, Southern. Separate from these divisional units, the company also operated highspeed service between Newark, Elizabeth, New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, Trenton and Camden known as the "Fast Line". In addition to the trolley cars, the company also operated two ferries, one from Edgewater, NJ to 130th Street, NY and the other between Bayonne and Staten Island. The erection of the new terminal building, costing about $6,000,000, involved an extensive amount of rerouting existing trolley routes, changes in methods of operation and installation of new track connections. Prior to the construction of the terminal, the corner of Broad and Market Streets had the reputation of being the second busiest traffic corner in the country with a total of 527 trolleys scheduled to pass the corner every hour. With the addition of vehicular and pedestrian traffic the saturation point of 502 trolleys per hour was eclipsed and maintenance was an impossibility. Below is a comparison of trolleys per hour showing before and after rerouting: Broad & Market Streets - 527 to 326 The reduction was done by directing trolleys away from the busy corners and being led into the terminal via different routes. Trolleys coming into the terminal from the east used an elevated structure to enter. Trolleys coming into the terminal from the west use a subway entrance. The ground floor of the terminal has no tracks and the spacious concourse was used for the showrooms of the Public Service Gas Company as well as the Public Service Electric Company. Above the elevated trolley floor are six office floors which are used by the employees of the Public Service Corporation. Connecting Newark with other NJ cities are fourteen lines emanating from the terminal. These lines bring workers and shoppers to and from the city. The Fast Line used a different track gauge. Cars that operated between Newark and Trenton had a gauge of 4 feet 8 and one half inches. Trolleys from Camden to Trenton the gauge was 5 feet. In Camden, the trolleys were looped at the Pennsylvania Railroad ferry. The speed attained on the Fast Line varied between 35 to 60 miles per hour depending on the number of stops. The summer months saw an increase in ridership with pleasure trips and travel to the seashore. Between Newark and Trenton the rails were laid on a private right of way, with the exception of the approaches to the cities and the stretches within the cities. A large part of the route between Camden and Trenton follows the highway. A major part of the roadbed was laid on single track with some areas on double track. Block signals run the entire system and the interurban section involves the movement of the trolleys by dispatchers' written train orders. The Brill Company supplied the company with trolley cars. In 1916, 127 new open type trolleys were put into service. The trolley service slowly converted to bus service during the 1930s and the last trolley used the Newark Terminal on May 1, 1938. Public Service Trolley Line Details 1916 Trolley Lines: Bergen Line from Gotthart Street
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Copyright 1998 - 2025 Glenn G. Geisheimer |
