First of 600 New Street Cars Arrives in City

The first of the city’s new green and cream colored 1946 streamlined streetcars, which will be in use by the end of the month on the Clark-Wentworth line, was inspected yesterday by management officers of the Chicago Surface lines.

The management group of four trustees and Federal Judge Michael L. Igoe, who has jurisdiction over the reorganization proceedings of the Surface lines company, were taken for a ride in the streamliner, the first of 600 cars on order.

Several new features captured the fancy of the inspectors. Coming in for the most praise were the crank operated windows. For tall persons, windows have been placed above the regular side windows.

Aisles are three inches wider. Another innovation is a no glare windshield which eliminates need for the curtain behind the motorman.

In addition to the Clark-Wentworth line, the cars will also be in use on Broadway-State, Western av. and 63d street lines.

NEWEST STREET CAR WILL BE IN SERVICE IN LOOP FOR 2 DAYS

Loop visitors will have an opportunity today and tomorrow to inspect Chicago’s first post-war street car which the Chicago Surface Lines has received out of 600 ordered. The new car will operate during the two days in an area bounded by Wabash av. and State, Lake, and Harrison sts.

The public has been invited by surface lines officials to make short trips free of charge to get firsthand information on the new car. It will operate from 9 a. m. to 9 p. m.

The new car, which will be placed on the Madison st. run soon, seats 58 persons and operation is all-electric. The heating system uses only the high temperatures generated by braking.

THE STREET CAR IS DEAD

About all that has happened to the straphangers of this city in the last year is that the Chicago Motor Coach drivers went out on a strike nearly two months ago and are still out. The bus riders, who are a small minority of local transportation passengers, seem to be getting to and from work, tho not without greater inconvenience than they suffered on the buses. Instead of sardining themselves into buses, they sardine themselves into street cars or the “L.”

If the latter systems were offering anything like acceptable service to the public, the strike might prove fatal to the bus company. Its patrons would learn that they could get to work for 8 cents on the street car instead of a dime on the bus. As it is, they undoubtedly will be back on their old corners the first morning they read that the bus strike has been settled.

There isn’t a single form of local transportation in Chicago whose service today isn’t disgraceful. The street car service is the worst altho some elevated patrons might dispute this. The surface lines are, insofar as service to the public is concerned, leaderless. They remain in their second decade of federal court receivership. The court evidently thinks the management is running the company, and the management seems to think the court is. The physical properties are run down, and, still worse, are obsolete.

The street car is dead. With the exception of a few long haul, heavy traffic routes, street cars, which came in before paved streets, are obsolete. They should be replaced by buses. The surface lines themselves recognize this in their extensions of lines. They put in buses because property owners will no longer consent to have street cars run past their doors.

Street cars depreciate property values on every street on which they run. Buses improve them. That has been the almost universal experience in New York, where the street car has virtually disappeared from Manhattan. The deteriorating effect of the street car has been demonstrated in Chicago. The beneficial effect of buses has not been so well proved here for lack of substitution.

street cars, experts assert, can carry more people over a given route than can buses. Very well, then, keep the street cars on perhaps a half dozen heavily traveled routes. The new, high speed, relatively quiet cars that the company is now buying can serve those routes and the thousands of old rattletraps that it is using elsewhere can be junked and replaced with buses. Trolley buses can be justified if they are cheaper than gasoline buses. Their use on certain streets might be permitted, but they, too, are a detriment to adjoining property, altho not as great a one as the rail cars.