Friday in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was this article by Phoebe Neidl, “The Trolleys We Didn’t Dodge”, covering some of the dangerous history of those famous trolleys.
The first electric trolley ride in Brooklyn was on April 19, 1890. The new method of transport allowed people to travel to all corners of the city on the cheap. By 1919, there were 40 different trolley lines in Brooklyn, an abundance that inspired the nickname “trolley dodgers” for Brooklynites (a certain famous baseball team took this as their name and then shortened it to simply The Dodgers).
But the electric lines quickly proved more dangerous and accident-prone than their horse-drawn predecessors. In 1893, subway commissioners called for safety measures to be applied to the new lines, such as speed limits. There was public debate over the trolley system and its dangers versus its advantages. Who was responsible when people were struck and killed by the trolleys? The operators? The owners of the companies?
Via Dodger Thoughts, who also has the story on Peter O’Malley’s visit to Brooklyn over the weekend.