Cyr (1900-95), school buses nationwide adopted the color yellow for safety purposes. In 1939, following a recommendation by Columbia University education professor Frank W.

In 1936 the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company extended autobus routes between Center City and the Main Line suburbs. The region’s school districts instituted their first wood-framed, steel-paneled motorized school buses by the 1930s to improve safety and to phase out “kid hacks” (horse-drawn carriages) from driving students in rural areas. The Delaware Coach Company (DCC) introduced autobuses in Wilmington in 1925, and the Trenton Transit Company added bus service in 1929. By the late 1930s, buses operated on most major streets of Greater Philadelphia. ( )Īutobus service within Philadelphia began in 1923, with the Philadelphia Transportation Company’s (PTC) first service running along Northeast Boulevard (later renamed Roosevelt Boulevard) between Erie and Broad Streets. The familiar yellow school bus did not appear until the 1940s. By the 1930s, Philadelphia students were driven to school in motorized buses like the one shown here, which was in use even earlier-this photograph is from 1923-for children with disabilities. Free from the constraints of rails, motorized autobuses achieved wider geographic scope on the new or expanded roads and highways built for the region’s automobiles. With the automobile’s rising prominence following World War I, many of the private companies then serving the region’s commuters purchased gasoline-powered autobuses as a less-expensive alternative to maintaining the costly infrastructure necessary for streetcars. Prior to the internal combustion engine, mass transit relied on horse-drawn omnibuses (introduced in Philadelphia in 1833) and then streetcars, also called trolleys (introduced in the 1850s and electrified in the 1890s). Superior in comfort to the horse-drawn omnibuses of the nineteenth century and with more range and versatility than electric trolleys, autobuses offered passengers easier means to traverse the metropolitan area.

( Library Company of Philadelphia)īeginning in the 1920s, the Philadelphia region’s independent transit companies added motorized buses (autobuses) to their networks. 206 bus carries passengers toward the Margaret-Orthodox station of the Market-Frankford El. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You BackĮssay Traveling on a still-rural portion of Roosevelt Boulevard in about 1926, a No.

Old septa bus