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During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kansas City, Missouri, like most North American cities, operated streetcars in Kansas City as their primary public transit mode.
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Kansas City once had one of the most extensive streetcar systems in North America, but the last of its 25 streetcar routes was shut down in 1957. Indeed, all but five North American cities – Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and New Orleans – replaced all their streetcar networks with buses, including Kansas City; three other cities, Newark, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, operated rail lines more akin to modern light rail that are still in operation to this day.
Horsecar and cable car era
The first streetcars introduced in Kansas City in 1870 were horse-powered.
On some early routes the streetcars were propelled by gripping moving underground cables, like San Francisco's cable cars.
The city granted its first franchise to the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, owned by Thomas Corrigan. William Rockhill Nelson, publisher of the Kansas City Star, believed Corrigan was corrupt, and used his paper to lobby against renewing his franchise.
Electrified streetcars
By 1908, all but one of the city's streetcar routes had been converted to being powered by electricity.
When the Kansas City Public Service Company (KSPS) was created in 1925 it inherited over 700 streetcars that had been owned and operated by private companies. The streetcar routes operated by the KSPS also served commuters across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas.
The KSPS planned to replace all its older streetcars with new, state-of-the-art PCC streetcars, an order that would have required 371 vehicles. Only 24 were delivered prior to World War II, which put a hiatus on new streetcar construction. The KSPS ultimately acquired 184 PCC vehicles.
Well-known Kansas City developer Jesse C. Nichols was known for constructing streetcar lines to serve the new communities he built.
Modern streetcars
A modern streetcar was installed in 2014 and opened to the public in 2016 -- KC Streetcar. It runs a similar, but shorter, route to the last line that ran when service ended in 1957.