ABSTRACT
New York City has been the scene of many “firsts” in American public transit. The first horse-drawn urban stagecoach line appeared there in 1827, followed in 1832 by the first horse-drawn street railway line and in 1905 by the first motor bus line, the Fifth Avenue Coach Company. 1 By the 1920s, most large cities had transit systems featuring streetcars and buses; in 1923, however, the smaller cities of Bay City (MI), Everett (WA), and Newburgh (NY) became the first to replace all their streetcars with motor buses. In 1933, San Antonio (TX) became the first large city to do so.
