Dayton, Ohio:
Electric Trolleybuses

Description

Like many U.S. cities, Dayton replaced its streetcars with electric trolleybuses in the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike most of those cities, however, Dayton has kept its trolleybus system mostly intact. It is now the smallest U.S. city that operates trolleybuses, the others being Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle.

This came about because the owner of the Dayton City Transit Company in the 1960s and early 1970s, W.W. Owen, believed strongly in electric transit. In 1972, Dayton City Transit turned its operations over to the public Miami Valley Regional Transit Authority, which changed its name in 2003 to the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority.

In 1977 the old fleet of Marmon-Herrington trolleybuses was replaced with a new fleet of Flyers similar to the trolleybuses that Philadelphia and San Francisco acquired at the same time. The Flyers in turn were replaced in 1998-99 with 57 vehicles built by Electric Transit Inc., a partnership involving Skoda, a Czech manufacturer of trolleybuses. The last Flyer trolleybus ran in Dayton on 9 August 1999. Two of the Flyers are now at the Illinois Railway Museum, which operates one of them on one or two days each month during the summer.

The system has also seen some extensions in recent years. The west end of route 3 was electrified in 1999, and routes 3, 4 and 8 were extended in August 2000.

• A list of routes as of 1974 and 2000.
• A route map of the trolleybus system as of September 2000, after the system extensions in August 2000.
• Front and back of a weekly pass (August 1999).
• Front and back of a transfer (August 2006).

Other Sites

• Richard DeArmond's Electric Trolleybus Home Page has several pages of pictures of Dayton trolleybuses. The first page has links to the other pages, at the bottom of the page.
• R. T. Morrow's Dayton Trolley Transit) (pictures, movie clips, and historical information)

Pictures

Note on route names: All numbered routes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8) cross the city via downtown. Each half is labeled with the name of a major street that it serves, and the endpoint of its run (e.g. 7 North Main-Philadelphia and 7 Watervliet-Patterson Rd.). Trolleys change signs at the outer ends of their route, so inbound trolleys are labeled with the other half of their route. For example, southbound trolleys on route 7 are usually signed as 7 Watervliet-Patterson Rd., on both the North Main and Watervliet halves of the route.

Third and Main

The intersection of Third and Main Streets in downtown Dayton is the heart of the trolleybus system. All routes pass through this intersection: routes 1, 2, 3, and 4 run east and west on Third, and routes 5, 7 and 8 run north and south on Main.

[picture] A southbound route 7 trolley crosses the intersection, with the old Greek Revival courthouse in the background. [August 2003]

[picture] Rear view of a southbound route 7 trolley, looking from the lawn in front of the old courthouse in almost exactly the opposite direction from the preceding picture. [August 2003]

[picture] A westbound route 2 trolley, also viewed from the old courthouse lawn. Route 2 has been extended beyond the termini of the overhead wire, and is served mostly by diesel buses. Only a handful of short-turn trips use trolleys. [August 2003]