While street cars generally ran on rails embedded in the city streets, interurbans used private right-of-ways in the open expanses outside the city limits. They offered an alternative to the more expensive and more rigidly-scheduled steam lines and had the advantage of street access in the city.
The car seen here is using the northbound Woodward street rails. South of the growing suburb of Royal Oak (11 miles from Campus Martius), it will turn up Main Street (Livernois) to go through Royal Oak, Troy Township and on to Rochester. From there it will switch to a private right-of-way to Lake Orion, and finally to Flint, Saginaw and Bay City; or it will continue up Woodward to Birmingham, then on another right-of-way to Pontiac.
Seen here is a stretch of Woodward just south of 10 Mile
Road near Royal Oak ca. 1922. The Interurban right-of-way is to
the left, on the east side of the street. When the Interurbans stopped in
the late 1920's, the right-of-way was quickly made over for automobiles.
Unlike the city street rails, the interurbans had no horsedrawn predecessor; the distances covered by the interurbans were economically feasible only with electric traction.
While the interurban routes averaged less than 60 miles, the system was so widespread by 1919 that it was possible (theoretically) to go to Toledo and Cleveland and from those places connect to other Midwestern cities.
In addition to the Woodward line, routes originating in the city center ran out Gratiot to Mt. Clemens and Port Huron; out Jefferson to Grosse Pointe and St. Clair Shores, then connecting to the Gratiot route; out Grand River to Farmington or Plymouth; out Michigan Avenue to Dearborn, Ypsilanti, and Ann Arbor; and out Fort Street to the downriver suburbs then on to the Toledo connection.
More luxurious than their city cousins, the interurbans served the
more prosperous clientele that could afford suburban life. Sporting a
steel frame and heavier suspension, the car seen here was state-of-the art
in light-rail technology (a term not then in use), yet it carried a
wood-burning stove in case the car lost power on an open-country run in
winter.
Interurbans died more quickly than streetcars, and the last private operation went bankrupt in 1929. City streetcars held some advantages over automobile transportation that the interurbans did not. City streetcars offered cheap transit for the tens of thousands of new (and auto-less) workers lured from the countryside and overseas. Where traffic was heavy, even the prosperous free-wheeling automobile owner found himself hemmed-in, slowed-down, and without a parking place. Under these conditions, the streetcar was a hassle-free commuting alternative.
But the interurban offered none of these advantages to suburban riders. The automobile was and is most appealing on the open road, where the freedom from timetables and fixed routes makes every driver the master of time and place.
Correctly predicting the growth of the suburbs, investors flocked to the interurbans in the 1890's, and the system spread rapidly. Analyzed logically, it seemed like a safe bet. However, the same impulse for suburban development that was supposed to make rich men of the interurban investors found a better match in the automobile. Men like Henry Ford, with a more radical view of the future, became rich instead.
Save for some streets laid out over the interurban right-of-ways, there are few traces of the system in contemporary Detroit. Freight railroads took over the more useful railbeds, and suburbs added a great many to their road networks. Michigan grasses and wildflowers now conceal the remainder. An exception is the Woodward line right-of-way between Rochester and Lake Orion. Running ten arrow-straight miles between these two affluent Oakland County suburbs, it serves as a the Paint Creek Trail bike path in the emerging Rails to Trails movement.