During that time half the cars on the road were electric. It is truly sad to see how we have regressed. I wonder what will happen first? Extinction of the human race because of global warming? Or half the cars being electric? ...
Tangentally, I came across this film from Market Street in 1906. There's lots of different modes of transportation in use - horse-drawn carts, electric cars, gasoline cars, cable cars, electric trolleys, and pedestrians (who were amazingly casual about dodging between everything else that was moving - the accidental death toll was probably huge)
Probably less than you'd think.
Traffic now likes to forget that while the legal rules offer redundancy 99% of the time (if only one party follows the rules the other party should be able to take action to avoid a conflict if it is following the rules that apply to it) the legal rules do not supersede physics.
I walk to work every day. Morons on foot cut off morons on bikes who cut off morons in cars who cut off heavy trucks.
You only need to see a horse turned into taco meat once or twice to learn why you shouldn't rely on other traffic's ability to pick up the slack for your dumb decisions. People learn what to do and what not to pretty quickly when the stakes are higher than someone slamming on their brakes and honking at you.
Residents of southeast L.A. County rejoiced this year at
news that a battery recycling plant that had long emitted
lead, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants would be
closed.
When I worked as a stock boy at K-Mart in the 1990s I remember a whole corner of the loading dock was kept stacked with used and returned batteries, many of them leaking all over the place. I was just a kid and didn't know much, but I knew enough to not want to go anywhere near them. Thankfully only those working at the return counter and on the loading dock handled the batteries.
Now Edinburgh has them and spent god knows how many billions on it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
Very characteristic motor sound early in the morning.
And as you say towns are now putting trams back in - though places like Blackpool did keep theirs.
There's a major push to expand it throughout downtown/suburbs. It's definitely a cool factor still at this point, but plenty of people who wouldn't ride the bus are going out of their way to ride that.
As a local, I'm excited to see it expand. They've made public transportation sexy, efficient (100% electric), and convenient in a city where the average household has two cars and everyone drives themselves.