short distances cheap and convenient; thus, spurring Philadelphia's development. Until horse-drawn trolleys were introduced around 1860, omnibuses were the only city-wide public transportation in Philadelphia (Wolf 149).
The horse-drawn omnibus·a kind of stagecoach·became the first form of urban mass transit used in Philadelphia. Then came the horsecar, which provided a smooth ride on iron tracks, and the cable car, which climbed evenly up the steep hills by means of a continuously moving underground cable, a sort of steel conveyor belt (Kowinski 128).
Horsecar and cable car systems proved to be too slow and too limiti
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