To the average person in our major cities, who had traveled mainly by horse-drawn carriage or trolley, the new electric rail cars and interurban lines must have seemed like the most exciting way in which modern technology would change the nation. The other modern technological improvement in personal transportation, however, had been the automobile; and its introduction and advancement happened concurrently with that of electric rail.
True, by 1910 there were fewer than half a million cars on the roads in this country, while the electric rail car was already established in most major cities and its feeder lines were being built out to the cities nearby. But just 10 years later, even before the last of the interurban lines were finished, America was building and selling 2.3 million out of the 2.4 million vehicles built worldwide each year.