Transport technology and the urban pattern

Like most of the technological advances of the nineteenth century, the mechanization of urban transport was an adaptation of James Watt's invention of the stationary steam engine to a social need. Of the major transport media, it was applied first to navigation; by the first decade of the nineteenth century commercial steamboats were available. The locomotive was developed shortly thereafter, and the steam-powered railroad was economic by I830. Mechanization of urban transport had to wait another 50 years. The obvious solution of having small locomotives run through the streets hauling passengers was impractical, since the noise and noxious exhausts of locomotives frightened horses and were intolerable alike to pedestrians and to residents. Moreover, locomotives small enough to serve for street railways were relatively inefficient, and as late as I880 the great majority of urban passengers still moved in horse-drawn vehicles. The horse-drawn omnibus had been introduced in Paris in I8I9, and spread to New York in I827 and to London in I829.1 Previously, cities had been without public transport. The difficulty of navigating an omnibus through the mud characteristic of most urban streets of the time led to the replacement of the omnibus by the horse car. Although New York had a horse car line as early as I832, and New Orleans a similar line in I834, widespread introduction of the horse car dated only from the I850s. Boston was served by a line in I856, Philadelphia in 1858, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Chicago in 1859, and most major cities by I870. By the mid-i88os there were some 525 horse car lines in 300 American cities. Although the great majority of urban street passengers were moving by horse car in I880, the shortcomings of this form of