On the bus: 150 years of Valley transportation

May 27—Public transportation has advanced dramatically in the last 150 years, the changing modes powered first by horses, then electricity and finally fuel.

Stage coaches, streetcars and buses wheeled forth over dirt, cobblestones and asphalt, hauling the Valley's transportation story into the future.

For almost the last century buses have been a consistent people mover. Noah Berger, head of the Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority, says they remain the most efficient and effective means of public transportation here in the Merrimack Valley.

"You'll hear some people talk about how the era of big buses is over," he said last week, holding a railing on the Route 36 bus in Lawrence and Methuen.

Some of these folks favor a micro-transit approach, relying on ride sharing via Uber or Lyft. But Berger says buses, as opposed to an army of cars that congest traffic and demand parking, are suited to cities.

"To get large numbers of people in and out of tight areas you are always going to need a big bus," Berger said.

Go further back in time, before Lawrence was developed in the late 1840s, and Valley people got around by foot, carriage and ferries.

Even further back, and for thousands of years, Native Americans used trail networks in what became New England to migrate and hunt, the pathways later appropriated by European settlers and eventually becoming roads that remain today.

In Colonial times there were few roads in the sparsely populated Lawrence area, though two of them led to ferry landings on the Merrimack River, located by today's Reservoir and Marston Street, says Maurice Dorgan in "History of Lawrence," published in 1924.

The ferries were discontinued after the Andover Bridge opened on Nov. 19, 1793, an occasion celebrated by dignitaries but marred by a stabbing.

A boy named Stevens was killed by a guard armed with a bayonet when the boy attempted to pass the bridge's guard station, an area reserved for dignitaries.

Stage coaches persisted after Lawrence was founded as a manufacturing center in 1847. The conveyances wheeled between Lawrence, Methuen, Andover and Lowell, Dorgan states.

But public transportation in the latter half of the 1800s belonged to streetcars, also known as trolleys, first pulled over rails by horses.

Dorgan attributed the growth of Lawrence and outlying towns to street railways.

"Not only is every neighborhood in the city, with the adjoining towns, penetrated by street railways, but the country for hundreds of miles about it is traversed by various lines," he said.

In 1867, street cars pulled by horses began service in Lawrence. The animals were plagued by exhaustion and tormented by horse flies and — none too soon — relieved of their burdens by electric power.

In 1892, the Haverhill and Amesbury Street Railway was one of the first electric railway lines in the Merrimack Valley. Boys were said to have come of age in the 1890s when the conductor let them ride on the outside running board and clutch a trolley pole.

Local newspapers reported that passengers feared the magnetism of electric trolleys would destroy the workings of their watches.

Canobie Lake opened in 1902 as a trolley park at the end of the line and became a popular destination.

The Massachusetts Northeastern Street Railway absorbed 9 companies in 1913 including the Haverhill and Amesbury Street Railway, according to a transportation newsletter from 1948 in the archives at the Lawrence History Center.

The expansion of lines and traffic increased the potential for accidents and incidents.

On Sept. 6, 1903, a Sunday morning, two trolleys collided in Pelham, New Hampshire. One was traveling 60 mph and the other 30 mph, according to newspaper accounts. Six people were killed and 40 people were injured.

Earlier that year, on the streetcar line that connected Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell and Nashua, two trolleys rammed into each other and nine people were injured.

During the Great Textile Strike of 1912 in Lawrence street cars were attacked by strikers.

Lawrence History Center researcher Kathy Flynn said Bruce Watson's book "Bread and Roses" refers to a Lawrence Tribune newspaper account of 17 trolley cars being battered and broken in the early hours of Jan. 29 at the far end of the line, away from the militia.

Anyone the strikers suspected of being a scab was removed from the car and their lunch pail taken from them.

Last fall, high school senior Maddie McAllister, who researched the 1912 strike for a project and presentation, came across an oral history given in 1982 by her great-, great-grandmother Marion Huse Morris — a witness to the strike as a little girl.

Marion recalled that her father, Alton Huse, who was working in North Andover, volunteered to get out of a trolley and switch the track to take the car to North Andover, because the trolley operator feared leaving the safety of the car.

By 1930 the Massachusetts Northeastern Railway had replaced several lines with bus service leaving only about 13 miles of trolley tracks.

Bus and train service served commuters but the nation was committed to growing its road infrastructure after WWII to accomodate automobiles.

A 1962 planning report by the Central Merrimack Valley Planning District, in the History Center archives, gives most of its attention to roads and highways.

The federal government was funding 90 percent of interstate highway construction. Urban renewal projects made a priority of providing cities such as Lawrence access to the interstates, in many instances demolishing buildings and neighborhoods to gain the access.

For bus service the Eastern Massachusetts Railway Company (Lawrence Division) was the largest of the bus companies.

The Boston and Maine Railroad provided rail passenger and freight service.

The planning report states that in Lawrence, on both sides of the Merrimack River, bus service was well provided and that Methuen was adequately served.

Bus stops were within walking distance, described as being anywhere from a quarter mile to a half mile.

Local bus service became less profitable over time.

The Merrimack Valley Regional Transit Authority was established by state law in 1974 to provide public transportation.

It is one of 15 regional transit authorities in the state, and began Haverhill service in 1976 (fiscal year). Within three years it was busing customers in Lawrence, North Andover, Methuen, and Andover. Since then the MVRTA has expanded to 10 neighboring communities.

The MVRTA user guide from 1991 lists 32 routes with full fares at .75 cents.

It's much the same service area as today with 24 routes. The fares, however, are now free through March 2024, the funding provided by federal pandemic relief money.

Ridership has risen 45% since the buses stopped charging fares, March 1, climbing from 73,680 rides in February to 106,776 in April.

The MVRTA is at about 80% of the ridership before COVID-19 arrived in March 2020, Berger said.

The goal is to eclipse pre-pandemic ridership, he said.

Berger believes fixed route bus transit can be upgraded as technology advances and rebranded to attract new riders.

Ultimately, it is "tried and true public transportation," he said.