![]() In other words, the transcontinental railroad was in the real estate business as much as it was in the transportation business. ![]() Perhaps the experience of the transcontinental railroad, where whole towns sprang up along its owned right-of-way, spurred the idea. Smith and his partner believed that rail transit could support development along its rights-of- way, a natural symbiotic relationship: create the destination and then transport people to it. ![]() (His company’s logo, the 20 Mule Team wagon, was by then nationally famous.) After settling in Oakland in the late 1800s, he began to think of new enterprises, and he saw an opportunity in the transportation business, although his venture into mass transit had more to do with real estate development than simply wanting to help people move from place to place. Among them was Borax Smith, who had built a fortune from his namesake cleaning product, Borax. While it served many of the same areas that SFOSJR had, it eventually ceased operations and sold much of its equipment to SFOSJR long after that operation had been redubbed the Key System.Īs part of its transit mix, the SFOSJR owned a fleet of ferries to provide transbay service for commuters to San Francisco. Eventually, IURT converted to electricity and became the East Bay Interurban Electric Railway (IER). Its primary competitor at the time was the Inter Urban Rail Transit Company (IURT), which began service in the late 1800s and was still a steam operation. ![]() The Key System first began operating on October 26, 1903, as the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR), founded by Francis Marion “Borax” Smith and a partner, Frank C. ![]()
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