It was an ordinary day. Reading about the earliest Uber drivers that at one time offered rides for a nickel. All began on July 1, 1914 when an enterprising motorist named L.P. Draper picked up a man who had been waiting for a streetcar in the city of Los Angeles. He took him a short distance in his Model T Ford and charged him five cents for the ride. At the time, most streetcars charged the same amount so Mr. Draper was paying the same rate for his ride as if he had waited and hopped on the streetcar. But, he was dropped off at the exact location where he wanted to go instead at a streetcar stop. And, since Mr. Draper had a chauffeur's license, he was within the law in Los Angeles. Wasn't long before other enterprising drivers did the same. The cars they began using were known as jitneys, after a slang term for nickel. Many drivers offered rides on their way to and from their own jobs. Made sense to me! Seems that at the time there was an economic slowdown and the drivers were using their free time to shuttle people around the city to make a few dollars to feed their family. Wow, sounds as if this story could be about today's economy. Word got around fast that people could flag down a jitney driver for the same amount as waiting for a bus.
 |
| An early Motel T Ford Jitney |
The jitney drivers often drove a Model T and would cruise the main streets looking for passengers to ferry to and from their jobs. Wasn't long before the phenomenon spread across the United States and prompted drivers and riders in all cities to try out the new craze. The number of jitneys went from zero to 200 in a few weeks, carrying 25,000 passengers a day. By the summer of 1915 there were 62,000 jitneys operating in cities across the U.S.A. The jitneys offered the convenience that the streetcars didn't. And...the jitneys could go anywhere and had no schedule to follow. Some offered door-to-door service and continued to run late at night, after the streetcars and traditional taxis had stopped operating. The jitneys represented "a new page in the history of locomotion when convenience and economy came together." At the time there was no legislation controlling jitneys. The Electric Railway Journal denounced them as "a menace" and as "this Frankenstein of transportation." They argued that jitneys should be licensed just as taxi cabs and buses since they both had to pay taxes to operate on the same streets as the jitneys. Makes sense to me! Not only that, but the jitneys caused extra traffic on the streets. Accidents in the city of Los Angeles went up by 22% due to the jitneys. And the jitneys led to robberies, rape and acted as getaway vehicles. Some suggested that the jitneys had to have insurance. Well jitney drivers eventually had to get insurance, purchase a jitney license and couldn't pick up riders at streetcar stops. After about three years, the jitney experiment was over. But, the decline of jitneys led to very crowed streetcars and taxis. The decline in jitneys led to private car ownership which in turn led to a variety of many other problems, but that's another story for another day. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy,
No comments:
Post a Comment