Moving Forward with Transit

Kitchener Streetcar
(Bill Houston, K-W Real Estate News, August 6, 1973)

Rapid transit is a hot topic in Kitchener’s downtown and the Waterloo region as a whole. It was only about a year ago that the region’s council threw their lot in with a fresh new light rail system, only to be thrown out by voters in the municipal election that followed. Many seemed to agree that even if the price tag wasn't too high at $800 million, that the system would be unfair to Cambridge, which would receive a new bus system to connect to the KW rail line. To be fair, local taxpayers would only be contributing about $235 million, but even that seems like a lot to swallow. Then again, without a proper transit system to grow with the region, gridlock and congestion may grow with it.

It seems that a major problem faced by our transit system is its public perception. Today the image of our transit system is pretty poor. Many people see it as inconvenient, and why not? With nearly everyone owning a car, and streets wide enough to accommodate all of them, there’s nothing quite as convenient as pulling out of your driveway and into a parking space. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Streetcars of Kitchener's Past
(KW Record, March 5, 1977)

The transit system Waterloo region enjoys today began over one hundred years ago in 1888 by Col. Thomas Burt, a representative of its New York-based owners, and the Mayor of Waterloo, Christian Kumpf, who drove in the line’s first spike. When the system had its first run in 1889, it consisted of a single horse-drawn trolley car (swapped out for a sleigh in the winter) and a single rail line connecting the towns of Berlin (modern-day Kitchener) and Waterloo. The line’s circuit started at 6:40am and had its last run at 9:00pm. Kate the Gray Mare was the line’s first engine, and she had a bell placed on her collar to alert passengers that their ride was approaching. The line’s first driver, a former postal service man named H.U. Clemens recalled for the Kitchener Daily Record:

I remember on the last trip of the day we used to put a big bell on the horse’s collar so that people would know the trip was the final one.

Clemens could accommodate 10 to 15 people in the forty-minute trip between Berlin and Waterloo, carrying up to 400 people in a day.

After only six years of service the line was purchased by Ezra Carl Breithaupt, who updated the trolleys to run on electricity. Then, twelve years later on May 1, 1907, The Berlin & Waterloo Street Railway Company, now run by president W. H. Breithaupt, sold the system to the town of Berlin for $83,200. This marked one of the first instances in all of Canada of a publicly owned transportation system.

One of Kitchener's First Five Public Busses
(KW Record, May 1, 1959)

Thirty-two years later to the day, the city of Kitchener and the Public Utilities chairman, Harvey Graber, are set to welcome five new, bright red and yellow buses to the city’s growing transportation system. The event turns out slightly less regal than one might have expected when a pop drink is used as a champagne replacement, but nevertheless – Kitchener’s bus fleet is born!
Most passengers that day greeted the new bus drivers with a friendly, “feeling pretty smart today, eh?” But if you asked them for the timing of their route, your guess would be as good as theirs. They’d never driven their route before. No one had!
And what about the bus’s flashy red and yellow colour? Comments collected by K-W Record ranged from, “It looks like a beer truck” to “As gaudy as a circus wagon.” And that last commenter wasn’t alone, because within a year the buses were repainted with a combination of cream and green.

By 1946 the region’s transportation system hit its peak ridership with over nine million fares and transfers used on the city’s 16 trolley coaches and 45 buses.

The 1970’s saw decreasing ridership with the advent of increased car ownership. In 1977 the city ran 90 vehicles, and served a population twelve times that of the region in 1888, but it was accruing yearly losses of $2.4 million.
Then in March of 1973 came the beginning of the end for trolleys in the Waterloo region, as twenty-one trolley cars were replaced by fifteen new, diesel powered aluminum buses. The decision was made based on the advice of a $100,000 report produced by a Toronto firm which came to the conclusion that trolley maintenance costs were increasing 15% per year. When that was added to concerns about the availability of replacement parts to keep the trolleys working, the decision to switch to buses became an easy one to make.

Since then, public transportation  has become a less important part of life in the region. As Waterloo spreads outward, car ownership increases and so buses became less necessary than they were before. But now as the region continues to grow, with the downtown core receiving greater focus for future developments, it’s hard not to look ahead and think that maybe we need some more of this public transportation after all.

It’s pretty amazing when you think about it. All of this started with a trolley car pulled by a horse named Kate the Gray Mare.


SOURCES
Courtesy of the Kitchener Public Library's Grace Schmidt Room of Local History

Jankowski, C. (Mar 26, 1973). Trolleys end 25 years of profitable transit service. KW Record.

Moyer B. (Aug 5, 1976). KW Real Estate News.

Outhit J. (Dec 9, 2010). Buses are back on the table; Regional council worries cost of light-rail plan will be prohibitive. Waterloo

Regional Record.

Wickens S. (Mar 4, 1977). Transit grows over the years but so does its financial woes. KW Record.

100 minute round trip by CNR railway planned. (Feb 2, 1961). KW Record.

Berlin operating the line. (May1, 1907). Berlin Daily Telegraph.

Changing PUC transportation picture recalled on bus line's 20th birthday. (May, 1959). KW Record.

First driver of horse cars between two towns recalls experience of early nineties. (Jun 29, 1929). Kitchener Daily Record.

Patrons like new vehicles. (May 1, 1981). KW Record