It's hard to believe, but it wasn't all that long ago when you could get around Lorain by taking the bus.
Mom talked about it once in a while, and how convenient it was for her when she was going shopping Downtown. Unlike my father, she didn't remember the streetcar era too much, which immediately preceded the buses.
And sixty years ago this month, the Lorain Employee Transit Lines was celebrating its 25th anniversary of serving the city. As the article below notes, "The bus line received its franchise March 7, 1938, from city council with the stipulation that operation be instituted May 1, the day the street cars of the old Lorain Street Railway Co. stopped running."
"The buses first operated from a vacant lot in the 1900 block on Broadway, near Rudy Moc's photography studio. Later the present garage was built at 219 N. Broadway," according to the article.
As part of the anniversary celebration, the bus company was offering free rides on all city routes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Merchandise certificates valued at $1 each for various stores were to be given out every ten minutes on the buses.
It was only about eight months earlier in Sept. 1962 that Employee Transit Lines had added eight new buses to their line (which I wrote about here).
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It appears that in 1967, Employee Transit Lines was purchased by William W. Cumming of Indianapolis, a retired Cleveland district sales manager for Ford Motor Company. New management was installed at that time.
By the early 1970s, the well-remembered SBS Transit was providing some local bus service, making trips from the Loop in Downtown Lorain out to South Lorain and then to Midway Mall and Elyria, and then back.
Today, at least there is the Lorain County Transit, which I'm sure helps some people get to work or school. Its website includes information about its Fixed Bus Route Schedule here.
4 comments:
Growing up in Pennsyltucky, the only busses we had were for skool.
As a kid, I couldn't understand why *anybody* would ever want to ride a bus.
Another side effect of this was that I could never understand the big deal city parents made about "bussing" kids to even out racial disparity in education. Heck... We rode an hour on the bus each way. What's the big deal?
That’s my grandfather, John Kerchinske, in the center of the group. He was proud to be a bus driver, and would tell us great stories about the experiences he had during his career. Thanks for featuring this article, Dan!
Charlie Marko
I had two relatives who were Lorain city bus drivers: Tony Sparaino and John "Boots" Butrey ( who was married to Tony's sister, Connie). I have an early childhood memory of being fascinated by the 4-panel pneumatic doors, the gearshift and the farebox of the old 1950s buses.
My fondest memory is when "Uncle" Tony (actually my cousin -- but he was a generation older than me) dropped me off right in front of my home on West Erie even though there wasn't any bus stop there. All against regulations, of course, but as they say "Family comes first!"
I rode the bus a lot in the late Eighties/early Nineties, taking the LEO loop to Elyria and Oberlin, and the Midway Mall route , then transferring to the LC3 Shuttle out to the college. Good times, conversation and company with regular riders and drivers, scenery, familiar but not boring, just pleasant.
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