

Route 5, Frankford and Bridge to 2nd and Bridge.Route 4, 2nd and Erie to 7th and Ritner.Route 3, Frankford and Bridge to 13th and Filbert.Route 2, Broad and Pollock to 13th and Erie.It seems the transit agency numbered the routes chronologically, demonstrated in a March 1929 transit report that lists them in order of their creation. PTC conducted several studies to determine ridership needs, and over the course of the next few decades, mapped dozens of trolley routes all over Philly and the ‘burbs. Together they authorized constructing trolley tracks on a handful of streets, including 12th, 15th, 20th, Sansom, Pine, Christian and Morris. Happily for the transit commissioner, the mayor agreed.

“And no reasonable prospect of anything better in the near future.” “There is today absolutely no choice between horse-cars and trolley cars,” Widener wrote in 1892. Philly were among the last cities in the United States to hold onto horse power as a means of public transit, and Widener was getting fed up. PTC cofounder Peter Widener wrote a letter to then-Mayor Edwin Stuart basically begging him to authorize a switch from the mechanism they used at the time…literal horse-drawn street cars. It all started in the late 1800s, when officials at the Philadelphia Traction Company - that’s what our public transit agency was called back then - started insisting the city upgrade its fleet to modern trolley cars.

A horse-drawn streetcar shown at 6th and Jackson Street in 1894 Credit: Library Company of Philadelphia City gives up holding its horses
