Ask a historian: What happened to Brooklyn’s trolleys?
Constance from Bay Ridge asks: “When did trolleys disappear from Bay Ridge?”
I think that topic can be broadened to: “When did the trolleys disappear from Brooklyn?”
But first, a short history of the original light rail. Trolley cars — or street railways or trams, in Europe — were the basic public transportation in Brooklyn. They were so important that a baseball team was named after them (before the Brooklyn Dodgers were the Brooklyn Dodgers, they were the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers).