Part I: by Richard C. DeArmond
I am often bothered by the way some people use the term "interurban". It is supposed to refer to systems that connect real cities, not to connections between cities and suburbs, which should be called suburban. If the primary function of the line is carry commuters to work and back home, then it is suburban. In some cases the distinction seems to become blurry. The South Shore is often called an interurban, but most of its traffic is commuter and hence suburban. S. Bend, Indiana is becoming less an independent city and more a dependent satellite city of Chicago. The term interurban brings to mind the images of the heavy rail trolley-pole operation of cars screaming across the plains, prairies, and fields at speeds up to 80 miles an hour (145 kpm). Some interurban never could get up to speeds of that sort, of course. I'm thinking of those on the coast hampered by hills and mountains, and the east hampered by densities that wouldn't permit such high speeds.
Most "suburban" electric trolleybus routes were in reality urban routes that just happened to cross a city boundary: Milwaukee and Boston come to mind. Boston is hard to classify since the four remaining routes are very urban in character and run entirely in the suburbs (mostly Cambridge). Even Vancouver's #19 Metrotown line comes to mind, though you pay through the nose to cross the line into Burnaby. Suburban lines typically have/had limited running in the big city areas. If Vancouver's Hasting Express had been extended into Burnaby, it would have been a true suburban line having express track running in Vancouver. Sadly, it died an urban express route. Hence it is hard to find a N.American electric trolleybus line that was suburban in this sense. Boston is unique in that many of its former routes and its current routes are suburban feeders--in reality urban feeders. Pawtucket, RI had a self-contained electric trolleybus system, that become linked to two through running routes to Providence, but the Providence lines were urban lines that crossed a border and ended in the center of this suburb. A unique situation, as far as I know. Since the same company operated the Pawtucket and Providence systems, they have been considered a single system. Another oddity was the Weston line in Toronto. It was partly owned by Weston, though operated by the TTC (as an urban system). Wasn't there some odd way of collecting fares on that line?
I never saw the Thun system, so I can't comment on it. The only true interurban line is the famous (to us) Semferopol--Yalta line. And, it is treated as such. What this new line in Venezuela is going to be is uncertain, though Allen calls it an inter-urban system. I am anxiously awaiting to learn more about this system.
Part 2: From Don Gal:
It is a grey area. Twin Cities Rapid Transit had a habit of calling the University Avenue, Como and Selby-Lake streetcar lines "interurban" because they connected St.Paul and Minneapolis, even though they were entirely urban or suburban in character.
And what about "intercity?" My old Des Moines Railway map - the one with a picture of a "curbliner" on the cover - proclaims itself "intercity" because it embraced Des Moines, Urbandale, Fort Des Moines, Windsor Heights and West Des Moines (a latter-day, high-falutin' name for Valley Junction.). And served these various cities with etb's, no less!
Besides Providence and Pawtucket, how about Fort William and Port Arthur? Kitchener and Waterloo? Careful, now, unless you want to make somebody angry. For that matter, how about the two Kansas Cities. One ETB route was not only intercity but interstate.
Anyway, we need to be careful about assuming the North American meanings for "city" and "suburb" - the words have rather a different meaning to Europeans.
Part 3: From Richard C. DeArmond:
It is indeed a gray area. Most of the lines that Don mentions above seem to be urban lines that meandered into an adjacent community. More curious is the Fort William and Port Arthur systems. At one time they were totally independent with one line from each system meeting at the city boundary. Later there was through running on the lines. How do we classify this? It was totally urban in character, but did connect two cities. Same would hold for the Minneapolis--St. Paul streetcar lines. The Covington, KY system would be a truly suburban electric trolleybus system as it had its own prw in Cincinnati and had no physical connection with the Cincinnati electric trolleybus system.
Then there's the term "intercity" (see Wolfgang Auer below). This would be more appropriate term for urban lines that link two close cities. For me, "interurban" has the historical sound to it discussed above.
Part 4: From Wolfgang Auer:
Interestingly, there's no actual equivalent to "interurban" in the German language, at least not in common use. People tend to refer to those type of transit operation as "Überlandbahn" or "Überland(o)bus", i. e. literally "overland trolley" or "overland (trolley) bus". Those terms apply to all kind of operation that uses rural sections, no matter where the line comes from or leads to.
Furthermore, the decision whether to call a line interurban or not is not only based on the type of the line per se, but also on the type of the used vehicles. The heavier the cars are, the more overlandish they are seen. I have seen many pictures with heavy trams and the caption "Ein schwerer Überlandwagen" (i. e. "A heavy overland car"). This classification is not much influenced by the scenery of the picture; it doesn't matter if the photo is taken in the heart of a city.
By the way, to make things even more difficult, we have a "Vorortelinie" (suburban route) here in Wien. But it does not radially lead to one or more suburbs, but connects them tangentially with each other...
As Don Galt pointed out in another email, the terms "city" and "suburbs" probably differ in their meaning in Europe and North America. Furthermore, as far as I can judge from literature rather than from personal perceptions, the percentage of actual commuter traffic with passengers doing the same trips in and out every day (how boring) surely is much less here; if a transit route leads to a suburban centre (or a small neighbor city or town), there always is an important flow against the main stream, too.
However, the Rhein-Ruhr-area is an accumulation of many more or less connected cities of a few 100,000 inhabitants each, varying not too much in their size and importance. So I'd call the Solingen route 683 an actual interurban route, as well as most of the non-intercity tram routes.
And to once more refer to Don Galt: The term "Intercity" *exclusively* applies to big high speed trains here that stop only in large cities rather than everywhere. People would be totally confused if they'd board a tram or a trolleybus that is brought in touch with the term "intercity"!
Languages are a great thing, full of small and tiny nuances, with many
small words that lead to a whole bunch of associations...
Part 5: From John Day:
Dale mentioned the Thun system which was glorious but it was really an inter-_village_ system with only one town of significance, Thun itself. Trivial point: Thun actually had some OB overhead switches instead of the usual K&M stuff. The Vevey-Montreux-Chillon-Villeneuve system really is urban, serving an almost continuously built-up area. But what about true RURAL systems, the last example that I can think of being the Swiss Val-de-Ruz nowhere-to-nowhere line? This was classified as "interurban" but there was nothing "urban" about it. Perhaps before the connection to the Neuchatel system was cut (late 60's, early 70's) there was an urban component but after that, nothing much was there, just a beautiful green valley in the Swiss Jura. A fourth Swiss "interurban" line was at Altstatten in the Rheintal; IIRC it was a bit of a mish-mash of urban, suburban and rural bits.
Wasn't the Cincinnati, Covington & Newport an interstate line? Probably best described as a "suburban" line.
What about the British systems which had joint workings between urban centres? IIRC Manchester and Ashton-under-Lyne was one such pair. There were others, I believe. Brighton Hove & District ran trolleybuses once but I don't know what the route characteristics were.
And some systems usually classed as "urban" had significant rural sections; Rheydt, the German system famous for its automatic rewiring at grade crossings, was a small town to start with but the outer ends of its routes traversed some pretty sparse territory (i.e. farmland). A Geneva route (to Bernex?) did the same; I haven't seen that route in many a year so I don't know if it has been infilled with development but I'd be surprised if it had. And even Calgary's routes ended in the middle of fields near the end of operations, although they have long since seen housing built.
(Ironically, as Calgary's system was being closed, the remaining routes received long extensions into non-existent suburbs).
The Czech Republic has a relatively new inter-city system; sorry, can't remember the name. I think it opened around 1994.
"Suburban" is a word that means different things in different places. I don't think that anyone would argue that any of Vancouver's system is anything but "urban" now, even the route into Burnaby is "suburban" only by virtue of the existence of an arbitrary municipal boundary. But with the exception of the west end lines, it would be not unreasonable to classify the routes as "inner suburban" and have this make sense to English speakers outside of North America. Here we tend to use the term "suburban" to apply to routes extending beyond the historic limit of urban streetcar systems, simply because those systems represented a certain state of development prior to the proliferation of the automobile suburb, forgetting that there were suburbs before automobiles that were admirably served by the now-vanished tramways.
The point is, classification is difficult. Any operation of etb's in other than an urban environment is unusual and noteworthy; those examples which do exist are likely to become scarcer as abandonments ("Rationalizations") occur and as development, partly inspired by the existence of the etb route itself, takes place.
From Wolfgang Auer:
But, unfortunately, I virtually know nothing at all in regard to abandoned Swiss trolleybus systems, apart from their very basic dates and data and some personal "amateur" impressions. It seems that Swiss people do silently and spontaneously *use* public transport rather then writing books, booklets or other information materials about their systems. Transit is no issue, it simply is there. When speaking with Zürich people about their transit system, which I would rate to be one of the best in Europe, they just take this level of quality and service for granted and would bitterly complain about any worsening!
In Germany and Austria, planners, authorities, governments, residents and passengers make quite a fuss about transit improvements like the opening of tram or trolleybus routes. In Switzerland, they just *do* it!
(Why not say "inter-urban" (not "interurban") since "inter-city" seems to cause confusion. Don Galt.)
And how about the term "overland", if I may propose that despite being not an native-speaker?
From Don:
>Why not say "inter-urban" (not "interurban") since "inter-city" seems to cause confusion.
From Richard:
Because "inter-urban" would be just as confusing as the "interurban". Why not "inter-town", if the line just merely connects two towns, cities, villages, but is not a real interurban as described in previous messages? As far as I know, most of the "inter-whatever" N. American systems were local urban routes that crossed boundaries. I really don't know the character of European "inter-whatever" routes. Why don't we start from scratch: were these European lines local urban lines that meandered into adjacent towns and villages, or were they urban with limited stop running in urban areas, totally rural, a mixture of the above, or truly interurban as in the Semferopol--Yalta line, which has express wiring in Semferopol, but not in Yalta.
("And how about the term "overland", if I may propose that despite being not an native-speaker?" from Wolfgang.)
Unfortunately, this term is not used in transit discourse as far as I know--hence it would not be very clear.
From Don:
"Trolley news" (TB Mag, Mar/Apr 1997) has a picture of Lausanne ETB 753 serving the REOPENED route 60. The caption, BTW, calls it "interurban." I'd be almost willing to bet that in Lausanne itself they say "trolleybus interurbain."
I'll repeat my suggestion: "Interurban" is a N.American word which has metamorphosed as it has gone international. If we use it now, we'll have to accept that Europeans don't give the word its traditional meaning. So maybe we can compromise, and say "inter-urban" (take care to insert the hyphen.)
Alternatively, we could take the German prefix "überland-" and call route 60 an "overland" trolleybus line. AHA, on reading my mail further I discover Wolfgang making the same suggestion. Of course, for Americans this word carries the image of the first transcontinental railway - sort of the "intercity" problem in reverse.
Of course, we could just say "rural."
TO RICHARD:
"guideline: this topic has generated into a chatter topic, not a facts and news topic" RCD
Not chatter. Square on topic. And edifying. Part of our problem here is a degree of linguistic insularity, something we in N.America are famous for.
The bottom line is: no need for a language gestapo. What we need is to make ourselves clear.
Richard:
I agree with Don here. This discussion is above chatter, but it is a linguistic topic rather than one of electric trolleybuses per se. And we do need to make ourselves clear. This is what triggered this whole discussion. I'm still not quite sure what an "overland" system is: urban, suburban, or rural? I think "interurban" would be appropriate where a system connects two or more cities, such that none of the cities is a true suburb (American sense) of the other. If both cities have their own local transit systems, and function of the interconnecting system is to link the city centres and possibly major connecting points and not local urban traffic, then "interurban" would be appropriate. (Note that the true N. American interurbans of Red Rocket and North Shore fame did not have local service. They often entered towns on local streetcar system tracks, and if they got caught behind a local streetcar, they had to follow it and wait when the local stopped. In Chicago the North Shore entered on the El tracks but it could not serve local traffic.) Given this definition. I think that there were a couple British systems that were interurban and not suburban or rural extensions.
From Irvine Bell
I have followed the international discussion on ëinterurbaní, etc., etb systems or routes with interest.
Without wishing to get into a discussion about terminology as such, I thought I would briefly outline some characteristics of [former] British systems.
British etb systems were mainly ëurbaní i.e. contained within built up areas and running on roads with urban speed limits [mostly 30 miles / hour].
They were mostly owned by the local municipal authorities [London was an exception, as was also Hastings].
Interurban services around a town and to adjacent towns were usually provided by company owned motor bus operators.
Some etb route terminuses were on the outskirts of the towns or cities they served, just into [what was then] open country e.g. the Gosforth Park terminus of the Newcastle system.
Some [municipal] systems ran out of their own local authority area into that of an adjacent authority. An example was some Newcastle routes running out through Gosforth.
Some adjacent municipal systems were linked and operated joint routes. Manchester / Ashton and Wolverhampton / Walsall both came into this category. In neither of these examples could there to said to be anything much in the way of open countryside between the towns!
Brighton was a slightly odd situation. The system basically belonged to Brighton Corporation, but because of local agreements, the local bus company, Brighton, Hove and District, owned a handful of etbs that were operated on the system.
There were three company operated etb systems in Britain, that did venture out in [then] open country and linked smaller town and [often colliery] villages together. These might perhaps be classed as ëinterurbaní.
All three were linked to urban municipal systems. The three were: Mexborough and Swinton [linked to Rotherham]. Notts and Derby [linked to Nottingham]. South Lancashire Transport [linked to St Helens and running into Bolton].
In the case of South Lancashire, the proposed new Merseyside [Liverpool] etb system poses an interesting possibility. It would become theoretically possible to travel all the way from Bolton to Liverpool by etb, provided one started the journey in Bolton about 1955 and did not mind waiting 50 years or so for the connection at Prescot!
From Richard and Don:
R: Interurban has a rather strict definition on this side of the Atlantic.
D: Do all suburbs count as cities? <<
R: The interesting thing about all this discussion to me is that it fits right into my profession: linguistics. I often talk about how words can have various meanings, and sometimes about how this can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, fights, perhaps even wars. It is a problem that cannot be resolved. It is a nature of human language. This sort of thing occurs in all natural human languages.
D: "Don's objection" is to North American semantic insularity. If for the sake of mutual understanding we have to sacrifice the old-fashioned American meaning of "interurban," well then, maybe that died half a century ago. N.America is not - certainly the US is not - the happening place for public transit.
R: True. But let's restrict the meaning of certain terms.
Inter-urban heavy rail = high speed electric passenger-dominant rail linking independent cities using emu cars. (This excludes Amtrak and other passenger train rail system in the world.) (One meaning of "inter-" is between)
Inter-urban trolleybus: trolleybus system linking two cities (not satellite or extra-urban municipalities). (Currently only one system exists: Yalta-Semferopol).
Extra-urban: any transit system linking a city with satellite communities by means of a route segregated from urban routes. ("extra-" means beyond, outside of).
Intra-urban: any system operating primary within a city with possible extensions of local service outside the boundaries of that city. ("intra-" means within).
Hence:
extra-urban trolleybus (Don't know if any exist)
extra-urban heavy-rail (e.g.,. BART, some of Atlanta's MARTA, WDC, and London operations, RER (Paris))
extra-urban light rail (Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Portland, Los Angeles-Long Beach)
extra-urban streetcars (there must be some in Europe)
extra-urban commuter trains (almost all commuter trains)
inter-urban trolleybus (Yalta - Semferopol)
inter-urban heavy rail (RDCs and so forth)
inter-urban heavy rail train (Amtrak, other rail systems world wide)
inter-urban light rail (I think Bonn is connected to Köln by this mode)
intra-urban commuter trains (Chicago has one--maybe the only one)
intra-urban heavy-rail (many subway systems)
intra-urban light rail (Muni, Buffalo, many European systems)
intra-urban trolleybus (vast majority of electric trolleybus systems).
At first I objected to "inter-urban" with the hyphen. It would be pronounced the same as "interurban" (in N. American English). However, since we communicate by e-mail, not by voice, the hyphen imposes a stricter meaning. "Interurban" causes confusion and squabbling; hopefully, "inter-urban" won't as long as used as defined. (Of course, we can squabble over the definition.)
D: As for "suburb," only here does that imply a separate municipality. Historically, it meant an area outside the old city walls, perhaps long ago independent but often as not long since folded into the central corporation. In Vancouver terms, Fairview, Grandview, Kitsilano - even, perhaps, the West End - are all suburbs in the European sense. If we insist on the criterion of municipal separateness, then the goal lines will always be changing as boundaries expand.
R: Note that N. Americans tend to use the term "neighborhood" for the European sense of suburb. If a city annexes a suburb or an unincorporated area, the political situation changes, and sometimes transit can be affected. In the past an annexation often meant that the streetcar or bus system had to expanded into that new area. It took Seatle ten years to do so when a large area to the north was annexed and it destroyed 3/4 of the electric trolleybus system, since the STS did not want to extend one line.
We should give up the use of the term "suburb" and its lexical derivatives in our discussions here. This term will continue to lead to confusion and to a lot of discussion and squabbling. I suggest the term "extra-urban" where "extra-" means outside of, beyond. I don't know how European extra-urban areas work, but here, the political line means a distinct city council, police force (or it may share with a county police force (USA) or the RCMP (Canada)), sometimes libraries, garbage collection, and so forth.
In the past urban transit systems often did not cross a municipal boundary or they did not venture far beyond the boundary. The Seattle Transit System was barred by law from operating outside the city limits. This changed when Metro was created, to serve the county. Today Metro runs intra-city trolleys and buses, and extra-urban buses. Most lines that go past the city limits are true extra-urban buses, though some are extensions of local lines (into areas immediately adjacent to the city). Muni still operators within SF; the #14 Mission wanders about two blocks into Daly City (in search of a turning loop). Maybe one or two other motor bus lines do as well. The Bay area is a system of county run transit systems (SF is a county as well as a city) plus BART (3 counties) and CalTrans (3 counties). Many county systems run extra-urban lines into downtown SF. The New York area is a similar mess. The subway and bus system is intra-urban , the rest are county run or agency run (Path crosses the state line, and NJ Transit crosses the stateline focussing on Penn Stn., and some Metro-north lines serve Connecticut. Travelling outside of NYC is a mostly a nightmare as is travelling outside of SF proper. Seattle's new RTA is distinct from Metro, since the former will operate in 3 counties. (No wonder so many people stick to their cars).
D: Londoners would gasp if told that most of Greater London didn't qualify as suburban.
R: I've never understood the London urban system. For a long time I though it was a gaggle of boroughs jointly called London, but with no political unity. Now, there is a new mayor of London, which includes some or all of its boroughs. Is there a political municipality now which covers so many boroughs, but not the further out ones? At some point London ceases to be London, but I have no idea where.
D: Did Toronto's suburbs suddenly become urban with its amalgamation?
R: In one sense yes. There is a central government that can tell them what to do, unlike before.
D: (Yes, corporate identities did remain, but that has nothing to do with any differences between Rosedale and Leaside.) San Pedro, Wilmington, the San Fernando Valley, have since the '20s lain within corporate Los Angeles. The PE lines that served them were not suburban, even interurban?
R: I never rode the San Pedro line. But as Charlie (?) commented, Most of the PE lines started out as "inter-urbans" (as defined above) and evolved into "extra-urbans" (as defined above). (If the San Bernadino line were still running, it too would have evolved into an extra-urban, as Metra (extra-urban heavy commuter train) now serves the San Bernadino area.
D: By prescribing narrow meanings for words we too often paint ourselves into corners.
R: Worse is the eternal confusion and misunderstandings when a word has two distinct but closely related meanings where the meaning is determined by the culture. It is this latter case we should avoid as I am suggesting above.
D: As for trying to define the word "interurban" as it was used in the era of the American interurban - all three decades of it, all but over six decades ago - good luck. In its own time the word never did have a single meaning.
R: For some people it did and still does.
