>>1142306Interurbans were a very particular type of electric railway built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A common definition is...
>Electric power for propulsion.>Passenger service as the primary business.>Equipment heavier and faster than urban streetcars.>Operation on tracks in city streets, and in rural areas on roadside tracks or private right-of-way....but there are cultural and historic aspects to the term too.
They were usually built to compete with steam railroads because they were cleaner, quieter, faster, used smaller rolling stock and could start/stop more easily. They also ran more frequently, and often had lower fares than the competing steam railroads did. Interurban coaches usually resembled larger, heavier streetcars (trams) and many interurban lines actually began as streetcar networks that expanded out from the cities and towns they served. Other times they were built by electric companies to spur real estate development (the companies provided power to both the interurban and the communities that grew around them). You can kind of think of it like a long tram line that connects cities and towns (between large, rural areas) and is operated somewhat like rapid transit (metro) in terms of frequency and speed.
Interurbans were all private companies. The smaller and poorly-built lines were abandoned in the 1920s when cars became more common and roads improved. Most interurban lines were bankrupted during the Great Depression and abandoned (or replaced with buses). A small handful survived after WWII and transitioned into more modern, suburban commuter services, but those eventually failed too.
There are two surviving "interurban" lines today (the Norristown High Speed Line in Philadelphia and the South Shore Line in Illinois/Indiana), but neither of them really resemble the "traditional" interurbans anymore (though both began as such). "Light rail" is considered a sort of successor, but it's not really the same thing.
