Getting Around San Diego Certainly Has Changed in the Years From 1886 to . . . 1986

San Diego Transit--more familiarly known as the bus company--celebrated its 100th birthday Thursday from 4 a.m. until the last bus rolled in.

Back on July 3, 1886, the first horse-powered streetcar began its run from the foot of 5th Avenue (then 5th Street) to Broadway and west down Broadway to San Diego Bay. That single line of horse- and mule-driven streetcars has matured over the century into a mass transit system that on an average day carries 115,000 passengers on 52 routes spanning the most populous parts of southern San Diego County. That figures out to an annual ridership of 24 million.

Horsecar and electric railway companies proliferated over decades following the birth of San Diego Transit, creating a spider web of lines that stretched to La Jolla, National City and Otay, University Heights and up the peninsula to Coronado and the Hotel Del.

Most lines were financed by land speculators who abandoned them after their developments were established. In 1891, sugar magnate John D. Spreckels formed the San Diego Electric Railway Co. and purchased the tracks of several of the smaller firms.

By 1897, Spreckels’ lines were electrified and the horse barns became car barns. Streetcar lines peaked at 107 miles of trackage by 1925, but then faded against the competition of the automobile.

Gasoline-driven buses competed with electricity-powered streetcars during the 1930s and 1940s, finally winning out against the trolleys during World War II, when much of the streetcar trackage was torn up to supply steel for the war effort. Shortly after the war, the San Diego Electric Railway Co. and the Coronado Ferry Co. were sold to Western Transit Co., which was renamed as San Diego Transit System. In 1967, the City of San Diego bought the bus company. The city still oversees and subsidizes its operations.

The photos on this page, except the two bottom ones, are from the San Diego Historical Society.