With the automobile still only for the rich, the trolley was the mode of city transit for nearly everyone in the early 1900s.

foreclosed, and was sold to new owners organized as The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co. In 1896, the Milwaukee Street Railway Co.

The Commerce Street Power Plant, constructed in 1892, supplied commercial power to downtown as well as the street railway system. By 1894, all horse car lines were converted to electric operation with new, larger cars. Consolidations continued into the 1890s, with the Milwaukee Street Railway emerging as a leader by 1893. 1890 brought electrification to Milwaukee, with the first electric car operated on the Wells Street line of the West Side Street Railroad Co. Rapid growth west of downtown led to the creation of yet another horse car line in 1874, the West Side Street Railway Co., with a line on Grand Avenue and Wells Street from the river to 22nd Street, and later to 34th Street to the west, and the C&NW depot to the east. Cream City pioneered heated cars in winter, girder rail and automatic switches in the city. A South Side line ran to a second carbarn at Mitchell Street and Kinnickinnic Avenue. Their first line ran from downtown to the Farwell Avenue carbarn. Eastsiders organized their own horse car company, the Cream City Railroad.

New owners in the 1870s and ̈0s moved the original Water Street line to the west side of the river. Westsiders demanded their own street railway, so in 1865, the Milwaukee City Railway Co. The first, the River & Lake Shore City Railway Co., opened in May, 1860, along what is now North Water Street. Street railways in Milwaukee began with the horse car.

Milwaukee bus