One slushy March evening, about 100 people gathered at a bus lot in Cambridge, Massachusetts, directly to the north-west of Boston, to commemorate the end of a transportation era.
The guest of honor? Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s trolleybuses – sometimes called trackless trolleys – which have poles connecting to overhead wires that draw electricity to run their motors. The buses, along with the 86-year-old network of wires that support it, were being decommissioned after serving the Boston area faithfully for the past two decades, in part because they were getting difficult to maintain. As the trolleybuses grumbled along for one last evening, participants onboard reminisced, running off at various intersections to take photos of their ride making turns it hadn’t made in years.
