The hideousness of the unconscionable actions of General Motors and the automobile builders, tire and rubber companies, oil and gas companies and road builders to destroy America’s street and electric railways is not just “simple” fact. It has been proven time and again in articles, books and speeches, not to mention the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court verdict which found those industries guilty of conspiring to do exactly that and fined them, what, even then, was a paltry and minuscule sum, as, for the most part, the damage had already been done.
While we are not here, and the purpose of these essays is not, to give a history of what they did to corrupt transit companies management nationwide, it might be of interest to our readers to learn about what happened here “at home” in what was once “the magic city of Miami” in direct relationship to our topic, hence a bit of background might help to provide a better understanding of how (the “why” is much simpler because, simply put, the payoffs to the transit operators were too much for them to resist) all three of our Greater Miami street car operations were bustified, the last of them, the lines owned and operated by the City of Miami, being put to death in 1940. However, and as a side note, the same thing happened not just throughout Florida but nationwide.
Because so much time has passed, and so few people here in Greater Miami are still alive when the murder occurred, there are very few people who have any actual memories of the street cars in operation but, fortunately, we hold, here in and at The Bramson Archive, the largest collection of Florida street and electric railway memorabilia in public or private hands in America, hence we have the memorabilia to show, display, talk about and write about that never should have been allowed to have been destroyed mode of transit and transport.
Miami was one of the few cities in the state (and, likely, in the country, which had three of the four types of propulsion: animal powered, battery powered and electrically powered using overhead wires. Interestingly enough, there was a fourth type of real (not cutesied up buses) trolleys and in Florida only Sanford had street cars on rails which were powered with and by an internal combustion engine housed within the frame of the car and that will be included in my upcoming book, Sunshine State Trolleys: The Street and Electric Railways of Florida.
So, then, what about Miami?
We, here in Greater Miami, had three separate systems: Miami, Miami Beach and Coral Gables and one could connect between the three only on Flagler Street in downtown Miami. Miami had several lines which ran into downtown while Miami Beach had the line which crossed the County (later MacArthur) Causeway, stopped in front of the former Sears building at 15th Street and Biscayne Boulevard then came down Northeast Second Avenue to Flagler Street. Mr. Merrick, in his wisdom, built several lines serving “the Gables,” but for our purposes herein, two are notable: one operated from Coral Way south on Douglas Road (Northwest 37th Ave.) and then ran east and west in the alley next to Flagler Street, eventually moving on to City of Miami tracks on Flagler Street at Northwest 12th Avenue while the other was a high-speed interurban operation running east and west in the media of Coral Way at speeds of up to 60 MPH, then turning north to head downtown, crossing the Second Avenue bridge and onto Flagler Street..
While it is not necessary to enumerate the routes, all three systems had several distinct routes within their respective city limits, but the last streetcar, operated by the City of Miami, made its final run in 1940. And why? Because while Coral Gables’ system suffered severe damage in the October, 1935 (it might have been ’36) hurricane with a great deal of literally irreparable damage, and given that Mr. Merrick was bankrupt at the time, there was no legitimate (note that word, as “payoffs” were not and are not a legitimate reason) reason to have abandoned the Miami and Miami Beach lines.
The Miami mayor at the time tried to justify the closing-down of the Miami system by coming out with some nonsense that the trollies were old and tired and that the system was run down and in need of replacement (none of those words or phrases being factual) and with the full support of the councils (and the graft involved) the street car operations came to an end.
So, “and in closing,” and very quickly, think about this: If the streetcar operation to Miami Beach via the MacArthur Causeway had been allowed to continue, can you (the reader) imagine what an incredible tourist attraction that would have been? And then, with the Florida East Coast Railway ending operations south of the Miami River and the building of Metrorail, why in NEILGOD’s name did the powers that be not connect the south end of the Metrorail with a what is today called a light rail (the current equivalent of streetcars) line instead of paving the former tracks and building a busway? I will give them some slack this time and not accuse the late and anything but great John Dyer (first director of Metrorail with no background—none at all—in anything having to do with urban or any other kind or type of transit) of accepting “gifts,” but, actually and factually, the stupidity of not putting light rail in from the end of the Metrorail to Homestead was and is simply yet another of the unending fumbles, bumbles and absolute and utter completely incorrect decisions in the history of transit in (now) Miami-Dade County, Florida.
