"History Was Made Last Week in Springfield, Mass.," announced the Electric Railway Journal on April 23, 1927. Charles Gordon, the Journal's editor and outspoken proponent of an industry rebirth through modernization, applauded the successful testing that week of the Springfield Street Railway's new worm-drive car, soon to be known as "Miss Springfield." "Performance of the experimental car," he reported, "exceeded every reasonable expectation."

Borrowing heavily from the latest automotive technology and styling, the car was quick, sleek, comfortable, and quiet. It represented the first major departure from forty years of traditional streetcar design in America. More important, Miss Springfield signaled the awareness of this once monopolistic industry that it could no longer ignore America's growing love affair with the automobile.

Gordon's assessment of the event and its historical importance would prove remarkably accurate. The experiment came to be regarded as an early, significant step in the development of the revolutionary kind of car that he and others felt was necessary for the street railways' survival. When that car, the Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC) car, finally materialized in 1934, it was the product of four years' concentrated research and development by the industry-created and financed Electric Railway Presidents' Conference Committee. No less an effort was needed, a reality Gordon may well have intuited.

In his editorial, Gordon recognized a certain heroism on the part of Miss Springfield's creators. The Springfield Street Railway was modest in size and would have to spread its research and development costs over fewer cars than a larger company would. Moreover, a recent change in ownership threatened to negate any benefit the company might ever see from its effort. Yet it persevered with the experiment, to the benefit of the industry as a whole, if not itself.

Miss Springfield was yellow and cream with red belt rail and gray roof. The Springfield emblem symbolizing Court Square was red. Photos above: Ken De Celle collection.

That the event was little noticed by the general press is not surprising. This was 1927 -- a banner year in America. A year that would see Charles Lindbergh make his historic solo flight across the Atlantic, Babe Ruth hit his long-standing record 60 homeruns, Al Jolson star in the first talking picture film, The Jazz Singer, and French fashions seize imaginations and headlines with their scantiness. Riding a crest of popularity, President Calvin Coolidge would "choose not to run" for an unprecedented third term. At year's end, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon would report that "during the last year the country as a whole attained a fairly high level of prosperity....The fiscal year 1927 closed with a surplus above all expenditures chargeable against ordinary receipts. During the year the gross public debt was reduced by over a billion dollars...." Further, he would recommend a tax cut for 1928 and see it pass in the House by 366 to 24.

Simply put, Americans had reason to feel good. There was prosperity, heroic achievement, technological advancement, and an expanding sense of personal freedom. For many, the private automobile embodied this new spirit.

The first production PCC car, Brooklyn & Queens 1001, entered service in May 1936. Photo: Alfred Barten collection.

In a modest way, 1927 held promise for the beleaguered street railway industry as well. At year's start, Lucius B. Storrs, Managing Director of the American Electric Railway Association, reported in his annual statement: "In contrast with every other year since the war, there was a gradual traffic increase in the industry as a whole in 1926."

Still, the cloud that had hung on the street railway horizon since the war must have loomed larger than ever for attentive managers. In its Sunday, January 9, 1927, edition -- the day it published Storrs's statement -- the New York Times devoted two full sections -- 40 pages -- to the automobile. The pages were filled with exciting news of the latest models, all stylish and available in a variety of colors, and of events calculated to fan the flames of enthusiasm. Of the 27,500,000 motor vehicles registered worldwide, the paper noted, 22,330,000 were in the United States. Of these, 19,520,000 were passenger cars.

In another part of that Sunday paper, though, was a revealing article entitled “All Our Cities Struggle in Traffic Tangles,” which covered an entire page -- about 5000 words.

Summarizing, the Times said:

Street hazards and highway congestion in larger American cities, resulting from the rapid multiplication of motor vehicles, have created extraordinary problems for municipal officials. The very growth of cities has been threatened by the conditions that have arisen.

To overcome this situation drastic measures have been proposed. In some cities huge sums have been voted for widening old streets and cutting new thoroughfares through built-up sections. Ultimately it may be necessary, it is believed, to rebuild some cities with boulevards in concentric circles connected by radial streets. These and other radical plans for relief are being considered in cities where traffic congestion has become so great that no less costly solution seems practicable.

In all cities the problem for the moment seems to centre on the issue of traffic control. Mechanical means such as the system of regulating traffic lights, as it is done by New York City, are being employed in other cities in the country.

Parking is more and more coming to be recognized as a leading cause of the increased congestion. City regulations are being enforced more strictly.

The United States, it is now estimated, has about 22,000,000 motor trucks and pleasure cars in operation, and a total 4,500,000 more is expected in the current year, which, it is further estimated, means three new cars for each one retired. The grim estimate of 25,000 fatal motor accidents for the year is also put forward as sufficient explanation of the immediate and growing necessity of coping with the traffic problem.

Footing the bill for this reconstruction of the cities and for the increased labor devoted to control of traffic and the handing out and processing of parking tickets were, of course, the cities themselves. If the cities felt obliged to accommodate unquestioningly the automobile and its convenience for the individual, they were less consistent in their efforts to sustain the street railways, which so ably filled a public need. In January, 1927, for example, a bill was introduced in the New York State Legislature that would permit cities to collect from street railway companies the expense of improving streets between and on either side of the rails, whereas in February a bill was introduced in the New Jersey State Legislature granting street railway companies relief from such obligations.

It is interesting to note the Times's referral to the automobile as a "pleasure car." Street railways, though taken for granted, were still considered the backbone of urban transportation. And while it was true that street railway companies were substituting buses on less traveled routes, Storrs in his January statement could confidently report: "Independent bus operation is decreasing, because buses cannot operate profitably and charge electric railway fares...."

Storrs went on to emphasize the streetcar's inherent superiority to the bus in terms of purchase cost vs. operating and lifetime costs. He might better have focused his concern on the automobile. It was the private auto that changed people's riding habits, siphoning ridership from streetcars while clogging the very streets that were formerly the streetcar's domain. It was only when streetcar ridership dwindled, because of the auto, that companies found it expedient to substitute buses. In doing so they not only avoided the expense of making overdue repairs, but relieved themselves of the provisions in their original charters that required them to maintain streets, or at least their portion of the streets. In some cases, even snow plowing had been required.

Having clogged the city streets with their cars, motorists now complained long and loudly that streetcars slowed traffic and rails in the streets caused poor riding conditions for the auto. Increasingly they pressed for complete elimination of streetcars, thinking mistakenly that substitution of buses would reduce congestion and improve driving conditions. (Ironically, today's drivers in Toronto have noticed that following a streetcar in traffic can be a time-saver because the streetcar clears a path that the bus never could.)

The streetcar's image was reaching new lows. The enthusiasm with which the public had greeted the newly invented electrics in the 1890s and welcomed the building of new routes through the 1900s vanished just as quickly when Henry Ford's Model T brought the private car within reach of the masses. Postwar inflation and the encroachment of the automobile took their toll on the streetcar industry, which at best had been only marginally profitable during the glory years of the 1900s. Deferred maintenance of cars and rails, and antiquated design, left the riding public with cars that were dirty, crowded, noisy, and "old hat." When many lines sought to cut costs by converting to one-man operation, the once proud team of motorman and conductor became a single, sometimes surly, sometimes preoccupied, motorman, overworked and frustrated by traffic congestion. If the street railways were to survive into the future they would have to recapture the public's imagination by providing a convenient, attractively packaged, competitive service. It was just this effort that Gordon had argued so fervently for and that Clark V. Wood, President of the Springfield Street Railway, sought to achieve with Miss Springfield.