Mass Transit: Turn Of The 20th Century

By the turn of the 20th century mass transit had coalesced around electric power for street railways, subways, elevated railways and for interurban railways of around one-hundred miles or less. Animal and cable traction systems had already undergone mass conversions to electricity or been abandoned altogether where the financial investment was proving unworthy. Steam powered locomotives drove long distance railroads; by 1890 there was in excess of 130,000 miles of mainline track in service.
In the thirty years leading up to 1900, hundreds of U.S. cities had seen private interests install one or more transit systems. Most systems had been built to promote real estate developments; a few systems having been built by town boosters seeking to elevate