Hamden, for example, had three lines between it and New Haven[1].
Be sure to zoom in all the way—the interurbans of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana are not restricted to the red lines, the black lines (marked up with an indication of the company running it and circles for stops) are covering the entire map in a fine mesh. Legend has it that for some time you could ride from New York to Chicago by hopping from one interurban to the next, with a gap of a few miles in-between that you would have to cover with some other mode of transportation. All those who claim that public transport is infeasible neglect that it used to be very feasible. This map does not show local streetcar lines, e.g. here's a 1940s map of Detroit streetcars: https://detroitography.com/2013/10/12/detroit-streetcar-rail...
The fixed-route nature of trolleys is not an inherently bad thing. In fact, it was the dominant (and eminently sustainable) form of urban expansion for over 75 years[1]. It turns out that fixed routes mean stability, which in turn means that businesses feel comfortable investing in long-term presence. Residents similarly find them desirable, since they can be certain that their streetcar won't be taken away from them (unlike a bus).
In my city, they haven't changed the bus routes in several decades.
Imagine if a bus had on demand stops, rather than stopping at 50 empty stops to get from point a to b. Those 49 extra stops are why nobody uses buses. It literally takes 4 flipping hours to go as what it takes 20 minutes by car, all while on a mostly empty bus, taking a fixed route, with fixed stops. Maybe it's better in other parts of the country, but in every city I've lived in, including San Jose, the nobody uses the buses, because nobody has that kind of time.
Trolleys for congested down town areas, sure.
But also: most municipalities that I know of do not require their buses to make stops if nobody is either waiting or signaling to get off the bus. NYC goes beyond that, and allows you to request a drop-off anywhere along the route during night service[1].
Maybe this behavour is very locale dependent?
That could be. Maybe they were ahead of schedule the few times I went, and the few times I observed them stopping at empty stops. This would make sense with the fact that they are almost always empty. They would come to a complete stop, open the door, immediately close the door, then peel away. It was comically discouraging. With the stop near my place, they would often just drive up, slow down to walking pace, then speed off.
Even if they were ahead of schedule, this would still mean the posted trip times were still many times greater than driving, which I assume is why they're empty.
And streetcars have no reason to be faster either. It's easier and historically faster to have a dedicated bus lane than a dedicated trolley lane, but there's just not enough will for even that.
* They make their neighborhoods more valuable to both residents and businesses, which in turn prevents neighborhood flight
* Streetcars cost less over time, after their initial cost. Portland found that streetcars cost the city roughly half as much per ride as buses do, and streetcar bodies themselves last much longer than buses do[1].
Ultimately, however, we're talking about public infrastructure. It shouldn't be beholden to the lowest cost; we should be balancing cost with benefit.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17570156/us-streetcar-trend-pu...
This is the same order of saving gained by switching high traffic bus routes to EV busses, since fuel is the main cost, (Lower EV maintenance is also a benefit shared by battery busses) so its a very weak claim to superiority for electric trollybusses or trams without batteries, and one that will, if it even exists today, erode over time as batteries improve in cost and performance.
EV busses are similarly an up front cost for continual future savings. This is already a key part of their appeal. People buying scores of busses know their way around a spreadsheet.
Basically, all the old trolley lines have a lot of trouble in the present-day context because the traffic appeared around them, and once cities succumbed to the desire for lots of parking, the die was cast - you had to also give cars most of the routes. And then it's pulling teeth to get a modest 1 MPH improvement out of some trolley corridors with careful stop alignment and signalling.
If we separate out the rights of way well it's a different story, but then we are talking about a more substantial build, and when that happens a busway becomes the way to do the mass transit cheaply upfront and get the most impact immediately.
Everything really comes back to the geometry, not the modality. When there's dedicated space the difference between rails, overhead lines, and battery is just a spreadsheet calculation. But as soon as it's mixed traffic battery shoots to the top because of its flexibility.
Can't have people believing that experts and democratic governance is capable of performing even basic functions or the next stop is communism.
1. The "experts" ain't always actually experts
2. They haven't settled on anything, judging by the abundance of trams and lightrail still in service.
The basic shape of the future is electric powered and with batteries. Even for areas with existing overhead line systems, adding batteries is a no brainer, as it simplifies complicated junctions and a thousand other annoying edge cases. And extending the system with electric busses for less busy areas is also a no brainer (which they probably already do with some other kind of bus).
As batteries plummet in price the distance between recharges can be stretched, current models have like 10km to 30km autonomous range, which means they're basically battery busses with in-motion charging.
Battery busses are a global oppprtunity, with massive cost savings over existing alternatives today and the benefits of scale will quickly make them better than the trams and trollybusses that only work in specific locations, even in those specific locations that they are great for. They'll improve, just as an offshoot of the wider EV revolution but long term they're an obvious dead-end.
In motion charging will be something you do to get even cheaper electricity costs by managing demand, not something you do because batteries are too expensive or heavy. And induction charging at stops may well prove a better investment if it can be shared with other EVs on the road.
In short, in a world with cheap plentiful batteries and electricity, full of a thousand other types of battery EVs they don't make sense. Anyone advocating for them is basically arguing against cheap, plentiful batteries existing, which if it was true, would be the real problem to solve. But it's not.