From the archives, 1923: West Champaign riders walking half a mile to the streetcar hoped for a stopgap bus line

CHAMPAIGN - One hundred three years ago this week, residents of Champaign's west side were walking half a mile to catch the streetcar at Prospect and Church streets, and local streetcar men were trying to get them a bus in the meantime, according to a front-page story in the Twin City Review of Friday, Oct. 26, 1923, a Champaign labor weekly digitized by the Library of Congress. This is a historical item.

F. W. Bedard, local superintendent of the lines, spent a day in Chicago asking officials of the Illinois Light and Power company for a temporary bus line until the West Church Street track was finished. With nearly 19,000 feet of track to rebuild and only about 6,000 feet of rail in sight, the paper said west side residents were likely to wait the rest of the winter for streetcar service. Local streetcar men had also gone to Danville looking for buses but found none of the type wanted.

Rain had set back the West Church Street paving by a full week, the story said, though crews hoped to finish west of Prospect before cold weather set in.

Source: Twin City Review (Champaign-Urbana), Oct. 26, 1923, page 1, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn96071000/1923-10-26/ed-1/?sp=1