Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1895 — Bicycles Hurting the Railroads. [ARTICLE]

Bicycles Hurting the Railroads.

The passenger earnings of many roads are not only being cut into locally by the trolley lines, but by the bicycles. Since the warmer weather set in people living out a few miles from their places of business, who have been patronizing the suburban trains, now ride the bicycle. Where there are cities but a few miles apart the passenger men say that between the electric roads and the cycle competition their local earnings are showing marked decrease. A passenger official who has just returned from Boston states that within a radius of eight to ten miles hundreds now come in on bicycles on pleasant mornings and return in the evening in the same manner, and hundreds more find the electric car quite an attraction, so that altogether the Boston steam roads are losing quite heavily on this particular portion of their incomes. He says that Boston passenger men told him that trains that were formerly crowded are now only fairly well filled, and in some instances a number of trains run for suburban business have been taken off, and those kept on are hauling fewer coaches.