1920s PHILADELPHIA TOKEN LOT PTC DELAWARE BRIDGE PITTSBURGH RAILWAY TRANSPORT PA

Pittsburgh Railways was one of the predecessors of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. It had 666 PCC cars, the third largest fleet in North America. It had 68 street car routes, of which only three (until April 5, 2010 the 42 series, the 47 series, and 52) are used by the Port Authority as light rail routes. With the Port Authority's Transit Development Plan, many route names will be changed to its original, such as the 41D Brookline becoming the 39 Brookline. Many of the streetcar routes have been remembered in the route names of many Port Authority buses (e.g. 71 series).

1895 to 1905 was a time of consolidation for the numerous street railways serving Pittsburgh. On July 24, 1895 the Consolidated Traction Company was chartered and the following year acquired the Central Traction Company, Citizens Traction Company, Duquesne Traction Company and Pittsburgh Traction Company and converted them to electric operation. On July 27, 1896 the United Traction Company was chartered and absorbed the Second Avenue Traction Company, which had been running electric cars since 1890.

The Southern Traction Company acquired the lease of the West End Traction Company on October 1, 1900. Pittsburgh Railways was formed on January 1, 1902, when the Southern Traction Company acquired operating rights over the Consolidated Traction Company and United Traction Company. The new company operated 1,100 trolleys on 400 miles (640 km) of track, with 178.7 million passengers and revenues of $6.7 million on the year. The Pittsburgh Railway had over 20 car barns located around the city as well as power stations. 1918 was the company's peak year, operating 99 trolley routes over 606 miles (975 km) of track.

Unfortunately the lease and operate business model proved hard to support and the company declared bankruptcy twice, first in 1918 lasting for 6 years and then again in 1938, this time lasting until January 1, 1951. Costs to the company rose in the early twentieth century. PRC faced constant pressure from the city to improve equipment and services. Workers walked out when a pay raise was rejected.

On July 26, 1936 Pittsburgh Railways took delivery of PCC streetcar No. 100 from the St. Louis Car Company. It was placed in revenue service in August 1936, the first revenue earning PCC in the world.

Large scale abandonments of lines began in the late 1950s, usually associated with highway or bridge work.

----------------------

The Benjamin Franklin Bridge – originally named the Delaware River Bridge, and now informally called the Ben Franklin Bridge – is a suspension bridge across the Delaware River connecting Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Camden, New Jersey. Owned and operated by the Delaware River Port Authority, it is one of four primary vehicular bridges between Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, along with the Betsy Ross, Walt Whitman, and Tacony-Palmyra Bridges. It carries Interstate 676/U.S. Route 30.

It was dedicated as part of the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. From 1926 to 1929, it held the record of the longest single span of any suspension bridge in the world.

Plans for a bridge to augment the ferries across the Delaware River began as early as 1818, when one plan envisioned using Smith/Windmill Island, a narrow island off the Philadelphia shore. But it was only in the 1910s that visions began to approach reality. The Delaware River Bridge Joint Commission (now the Delaware River Port Authority) was created in 1919.

The chief engineer of the bridge was Polish-born Ralph Modjeski, the design engineer was Leon Moisseiff, and the supervising architect was Paul Philippe Cret. Work began on January 6, 1922. At the peak of construction, 1300 people worked on the bridge, and 15 died during its construction. The bridge opened to traffic on July 1, 1926, three days ahead of its scheduled opening on the nation’s 150th anniversary. At completion, its 1,750-foot (533-meter) span was the world's longest for a suspension bridge, a distinction it held until the opening of the Ambassador Bridge in 1929.

The name was changed to "Benjamin Frankin Bridge" in 1955, as a second Delaware River suspension bridge connecting Philadelphia and New Jersey was under construction (Walt Whitman Bridge).

The bridge was closed to vehicular traffic on July 1, 2001 to allow pedestrians to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

------------------

The Philadelphia Transportation Company (PTC) was the main public transit operator in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1940 to 1968.

A private company, PTC was the successor to the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company (PRT), in operation since 1902, and was the immediate predecessor of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA).

PTC was established on January 1, 1940, by the merger of the PRT and several smaller, then-independent transit companies operating in and near the city. It operated a city-wide system of bus, trolley, and trackless trolley routes, the Market–Frankford Line (subway-elevated rail), the Broad Street Line (subway), and the Delaware River Bridge Line (subway-elevated rail to City Hall, Camden, New Jersey, and now part of the PATCO Speedline) which became SEPTA's City Transit Division. Most suburban transit lines were operated by other private companies, such as the Philadelphia Suburban Transit Company, rather than by PTC.

Among PTC's first actions was to begin modernizing the aging vehicle fleet. In 1940, the company placed orders for 130 PCC streetcars, 50 trackless trolleys, and 53 motor buses. Although the rapid transit lines in urban Philadelphia – principally the Market–Frankford Line and Broad Street Line – were operated by PTC, their fixed infrastructure was owned by the City of Philadelphia and leased to PTC.

In 1955, majority control of PTC was acquired by the National City Lines holding company, which had a reputation for favoring buses and abandoning trolley lines in other cities. In 1954, the PTC trolley system included 45 lines, using more than 1,500 trolley cars. Between 1954 and 1958 alone, three-fourths of the trolley lines were abandoned, and 984 trolley cars had been scrapped, replaced by 1,000 new buses. PTC's network also included the Philadelphia trolleybus (trackless trolley) system, which was much smaller, along with numerous bus lines.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) was established in 1964, as part of efforts by the Pennsylvania legislature to coordinate government subsidies to various transit and railroad companies in southeastern Pennsylvania. The provision of public transit service was becoming increasingly unprofitable in the 1950s and 1960s, and cities across the country were municipalizing their transit systems or creating regional public transit authorities. SEPTA acquired the Philadelphia Transportation Company in 1968, taking possession of PTC at noon on September 30, 1968. The total price paid to PTC stockholders for the purchase was $47.9 million (equivalent to $325 million in 2015).