“Give our fair city a break and kick the damn squealing, howling, grinding, rumbling trolley cars out of it and substitute buses,” a man named Harry Lee wrote to Lansing's mayor in 1931. “Try living on a trolley street, especially near a corner and see how quickly how you will go crazy.”

Lee scribbled the words on an editorial he clipped from the Automotive Daily News, entitled “The Trolley Must Go!” The editorial complained that trolleys, which traveled in the middle of the street and made frequent stops, were slow-moving vehicles that obstructed traffic. “If there is any anachronism more firmly blocking progress in city transportation today than the trolley car,” the editorial read, “we should be glad to hear about it.” {mosimage}

But the souring romance had a rosy start more than 40 years earlier. When Lansing's new electric street railway launched on Aug. 26, 1890, the Lansing State Republican declared it “a red letter day in the history of the capital city.”

Electric trolleys, which typically traveled at speeds of 20 miles per hour, were much faster than the horse-drawn trolleys they replaced. Lansing's horse-drawn railway (the rails helped horses navigate Lansing's muddy streets) had been in existence a mere four years. The wooden tracks were uprooted and heavier, iron tracks were laid in their place. 

The electric railway followed the same two routes as the horse railway: One track ran along Washington Avenue, from the Grand Trunk Railroad Depot north to Franklin Street (now North Grand River Avenue), then east to Cedar Street, while the second track ran east along Michigan Avenue to the city limits.

The first electric trolley, the “Dauntless,” made its trial run on Aug. 26, 1890, with owners H.L. Hollister and M.D. Skinner on board.

More tracks were soon laid. By 1895, trolley passengers could travel as far west as Logan Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) and as far east as the State Agricultural College (now Michigan State University). City transportation seemed to have reached its golden age.
But problems soon followed; Hollister and Skinner defaulted on their loan, and in October 1892, New York City investors took over the Lansing City Electric Railway Company and let the equipment run down. By the early 1900s, Lansing's street railway service was deemed the worst in Michigan, if not the nation. James Hammel organized a public campaign for improvement, and ownership changed in 1903.

A series of extensions, including electrifrication of an existing steam line from Lansing to St. Johns, led to the 1906 consolidation of Lansing and other Mid-Michigan lines under the rubric of the Michigan United Railway. In 1916, the Michigan United leased its lines to the Michigan Railway Company, which operated an interurban network that ran through Michigan's lower peninsula.

Electric interurban trains were slower than the larger, more familiar steam engine railroad trains. But unlike the railroad trains, the interurban trains were designed for short-distance travel. They went some places that railroad trains couldn't and made more frequent station stops.
Interurban service continued to expand in mid-Michigan, with service between Lansing and Mason added in November 1908, from Mason to Leslie and then to Jackson the following year, and between Lansing and Owosso in 1911.

By the early 1920s, the electric railway began to recede as automobiles, buses and touring cars competed for passengers. The Michigan Railway Company went out of business in 1929, officially ending mid-Michigan's interurban era.

{mosimage}Trolley service continued within Lansing for four more years, but calls to end electric railways — like the frustrated letter from Harry Lee — mounted. Electric railways once brought faster and easier access to all areas of the city. Now, they were largely deemed a hindrance to motor vehicles. 

Trolley service officially ended in Lansing on April 15, 1933, replaced by bus service.

Lansing's trolley era lasted 43 years, from 1890 to 1933. Residents cheered when it arrived and cheered again when it departed.
(Robert Garrett is an archivist at the Archives of Michigan.)