Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
February 19, 1914 In the city of Oakland within the San Francisco Bay Area, a major addition to the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sixteenth Street Station was officially opened. This station, in the years following the calamitous San Francisco earthquake in 1906, had gained ever-increasing importance for its role in helping to facilitate the renewed travel,... Continue Reading →
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, along with being a transportation-oriented protest against racial segregation practices in Alabama’s capital city, was a pivotal chapter in the larger civil rights movement in the United States. At the time of this boycott during the mid-1950s, longstanding Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation throughout the American South were very much... Continue Reading →
January 31, 2011 In northeastern New Jersey’s Hudson County, a light rail station at 40 West 8th Street in the city of Bayonne was officially opened. 8th Street station is specifically based in Bayonne’s Bergen Point neighborhood. This station is the southern terminus of the 17-mile (27.-kilometer) Hudson-Bergen Light Rail (HBLR) system in that region... Continue Reading →
January 29, 1896 The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company (TMER&L) was incorporated. The establishment of this transit enterprise took place nearly four decades after streetcars had been introduced in Milwaukee in the form of horse-drawn vehicles. TMER&L specifically came into existence when the properties and operations of the Milwaukee Street Railway Company were sold to... Continue Reading →
January 3, 2006 A light rail transit station in Edmonton, the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta, was officially opened. This station, which is part of the light rail system serving Edmonton (nicknamed “Festival City” for the various festivals that it hosts each year), is located at 114th Street at 83rd Avenue on... Continue Reading →
December 29, 2021 In the Indonesian province of East Java, a bus transit system (BTS) serving the city of Surabaya and surrounding regencies (administrative divisions) and cities was officially inaugurated. (Surabaya, the capital of East Java, is second only to Jakarta as Indonesia’s largest city.) This BTS owes its name in part to pecel semanggi,... Continue Reading →
December 28, 2006 In the Republic of Slovenia, a long-sought-after funicular railway in this European country’s capital city of Ljubljana first went into service. That means of public transit covers 230 feet (70 meters) between Krek Square, which is located near the Ljubljana Central Market; and Ljubljana Castle, a popular historic landmark that dates back... Continue Reading →
December 21, 2022 In southeastern Florida’s Palm Beach County, a rail station in the city of Boca Raton first went into regular service. Boca Raton station is part of Brightline, a rail route that runs between Miami and Orlando in the Sunshine State. Brightline, which was formally launched in 2018, is the only privately owned... Continue Reading →
December 10, 1910 The Hawthorne Bridge in Portland, Oregon, was officially opened to traffic. This bridge had been designed by Waddell & Harrington and, as part of the inaugural festivities, C.K. Allen from that engineering firm formally recommended acceptance of the new structure to the city. Portland Mayor Joseph Simon responded by declaring, “Let it open!” This... Continue Reading →
December 15, 2003 An intermodal transit hub in the town of Secaucus in northeastern New Jersey was officially opened. This 321,000-square foot (29,800-square-meter) railway station, which is operated by New Jersey Transit (NJ Transit), is five miles (8.1 kilometers) east of Newark Penn Station and five miles (8.1 kilometers) west of New York Penn Station.... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 