Minneapolis: As with virtually all of America's urban electric railways, buses - running on publicly provided roadways - more and more came to be substituted for streetcars which had to maintain and replace their own tracks. Here, a Mack bus, substituted for the outer portion of the Chicago-Penn-Fremont streetcar line, meets a trolley in 1952. The ostensible cost advantage of buses eventually dissipated as inferior bus service discouraged ridership, and transit passengers switched to automobiles in droves.

(Photo: R. DeGroote, Jr.)