Cincinnati's first settlers made their home on the large flat basin that now includes
downtown,
Over-the-Rhine, and the
West End. By the 1850s, the city's population was too large for the basin alone, and people started moving to the city's surrounding hills. Although horsecars had been running in
New Orleans since 1835, very few other cities introduced rail transit – in the form or horse- or mule-drawn cars – until the 1850s, and in 1859 Cincinnati was still one of the first few U.S. cities with such transit service. However, horse-drawn vehicles were inadequate because the animals would fatigue and the hills were impossible to climb in bad weather. Electricity proved to be cheaper and more reliable than cable cars, which required that the cable be replaced periodically. Consequently, starting on August 17, 1889, the first
streetcars were introduced, Some of the
interurban lines serving Cincinnati also used this gauge, while others used
standard gauge track. All routes used double trolley wire, the only exception being on route 78, a portion of which outside the city limits had only a single wire for each track. On all other North American streetcar systems the rails served as the return path for the electric current collected via the trolley pole, but this requires proper bonding of the rails to prevent stray current from escaping and interfering with nearby utility lines, such as telephone lines. In Cincinnati, the primary early streetcar operating company, the Cincinnati Street Railway, chose to install double-wire starting in 1889, to comply with a City requirement not to tear up freshly paved streets to install ground return bonding on their embedded track. Later, as the syndicate that owned Cincinnati Street Railway was buying out other lines to create a monopoly, they may have leveraged alleged complaints about buzzing sounds on phone lines to file suit, through the phone company (which was owned by the same syndicate) against their competetor, Cincinnati Inclined Plane Company (which used traditional single-wire overhead). The costs of extended litigation weakened the Cincinnati Incline Plane Company, which was eventually absorbed by CincinnatI Street Railway. The city was also home to one of the country's larger streetcar manufacturers, the
Cincinnati Car Company, which produced street-, interurban and
rapid transit cars from 1902 until about 1931. This was the death knell of the incline, following complaints that it was "unsightly," cost too much, caused roadblocks, and was rendered useless by the automobile. At the time it was closed, the Mount Adams Incline was Cincinnati's top tourist attraction. were routes 18-North Fairmount, 19-John Street, 21-Westwood-Cheviot, 55-Vine-Clifton and 78-Lockland. They were converted to
trolley buses—commonly known as "trolley coaches" at that time—as had happened previously with several other streetcar lines. The city's trolley bus system lasted another 14 years, until Junel 18, 1965. A plan was put in place that would have replaced the city's cable cars with a new "super bus" system, A popular
PCC streetcar on San Francisco's
F Market & Wharves line is painted bright yellow with green stripes, in honor of the Cincinnati Street Railway. ==21st century system==