BusTalk

[Mr. Linsky]

Here's an interesting piece centered around the efforts on the part of one major city to turn steel wheels into rubber tires in a big way and how GM's post war TD 4506's played an important role in the conversion.

About the pictured # 1016;

The first of Detroit's Department of Street Railways (DSR) postwar buses arrived in September of 1945 after the U.S. Navy had canceled part of a long-standing 80-coach order.

The thirty of these 35 foot long 45 passenger GM TD-4506's, built to Navy specification, that were diverted to the city were numbered from 1001 to 1030 and represented DSR's first Diesel buses and its first fleet built by GM Truck and Coach.

About # 1016's Grand River Avenue destination and Detroit's push toward rubber-tired transit;

In 1946, the DSR's Grand River line could easily have been ranked as one of the busiest streetcar lines in the city with rush hour service requiring approximately fifty of the Peter Witt style trolley cars to operate along its 14.1 mile route from downtown to Seven Mile Road.

Proponents of rubber-tired transit considered that the conversion of the Grand River Avenue line would be a major win for their cause and in 1946, U.S. Royal Tires even featured a D.S.R. Grand River express bus in a Fleetway Tires advertisement in Bus Transportation Magazine (see below in a photo courtesy of Tom's Trolley Bus Pix—Detroit stuff).

The rest, of course, is history as the Grand River would soon become the first of many major political battlegrounds where proponents of rubber–tired transportation would claim victory.

In formation courtesy of the Detroit Historic Society.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York