@1940LaSalle Interesting you call them "trolley coaches" instead of "trolleybuses". 
Is that a more local, New Jersey term for them ?
Honestly, even looking at the OTL history and fortunes of trolleybuses in Europe, it's always been a bit of an uphill battle for them. You have them as viable public transport vehicles as early as the late 1890s. Granted, they are not very fast and usually can't take too many people.
This trend continues until at least the 1920s, when I've noticed there's sort of a split in the popularity of trolleybus adoption and usage. Some place get rid of them altogether, other introduce them or keep at least updating the technology, if not the network. You get something of a trolleybus Renaissance in post-WWII Europe, but in some countries - such as the UK in particular - this proves short-lived and trolleybuses start vanishing again since the 1960s. The aforementioned UK only kept their's as working exhibits in transport museums. In contrast, there have been plenty of Western or Southern European countries that have preserved their trolleybus networks in multiple cities. Italy and Spain come to mind, plenty of examples there. Portugal has some trolleybuses. Switzerland too (it even manufactured its own trolleybus models under the Sauer brand and exported them). Some Asian countries like Iran have a trolleybus network, and of smaller anglophone countries, New Zealand seems to have remained a trolleybus stalwart, with a single network in the capital city.
For some reason, during the Cold War, the former East Block generally saw more investment into modernising and improving tram and trolleybus networks, and even expanding existing ones and building a few new ones. One could say the countries in the USSR's orbit sort of perservered with keeping their trolleybuses and trams running, even in the decades with shortages, though this might have been partly down to the dominant position of government influence in these countries. The Škoda company (not the passenger car maker, but the Škoda Works succcessor) has remained one of the bigger tram and trolleybus manufacturers and exporters in the world partly because of a continued tradition of developing new models during the Cold War. Concerning the investment into new networks, in the former USSR alone, there were even some long-distance trolleybus lines established in Crimea and in Moldova. Though it needs to be said these were one of the rarer highly ambitious projects. Most trolleybus networks in the East Block continued to be just extensions or reworkings of existing ones.
Looking at what happened to most trolleybuses and frequently also to trams - not just in North America, but plenty of European cities as well, even in cases where there was a brief post-WWII trolleybus renaissance - I think we need to identify some factors that led to the demise of favouring trolleybuses in the US, with only some US cities holding on to this type of public transport network.
Is that a more local, New Jersey term for them ?Honestly, even looking at the OTL history and fortunes of trolleybuses in Europe, it's always been a bit of an uphill battle for them. You have them as viable public transport vehicles as early as the late 1890s. Granted, they are not very fast and usually can't take too many people.
This trend continues until at least the 1920s, when I've noticed there's sort of a split in the popularity of trolleybus adoption and usage. Some place get rid of them altogether, other introduce them or keep at least updating the technology, if not the network. You get something of a trolleybus Renaissance in post-WWII Europe, but in some countries - such as the UK in particular - this proves short-lived and trolleybuses start vanishing again since the 1960s. The aforementioned UK only kept their's as working exhibits in transport museums. In contrast, there have been plenty of Western or Southern European countries that have preserved their trolleybus networks in multiple cities. Italy and Spain come to mind, plenty of examples there. Portugal has some trolleybuses. Switzerland too (it even manufactured its own trolleybus models under the Sauer brand and exported them). Some Asian countries like Iran have a trolleybus network, and of smaller anglophone countries, New Zealand seems to have remained a trolleybus stalwart, with a single network in the capital city.
For some reason, during the Cold War, the former East Block generally saw more investment into modernising and improving tram and trolleybus networks, and even expanding existing ones and building a few new ones. One could say the countries in the USSR's orbit sort of perservered with keeping their trolleybuses and trams running, even in the decades with shortages, though this might have been partly down to the dominant position of government influence in these countries. The Škoda company (not the passenger car maker, but the Škoda Works succcessor) has remained one of the bigger tram and trolleybus manufacturers and exporters in the world partly because of a continued tradition of developing new models during the Cold War. Concerning the investment into new networks, in the former USSR alone, there were even some long-distance trolleybus lines established in Crimea and in Moldova. Though it needs to be said these were one of the rarer highly ambitious projects. Most trolleybus networks in the East Block continued to be just extensions or reworkings of existing ones.
Looking at what happened to most trolleybuses and frequently also to trams - not just in North America, but plenty of European cities as well, even in cases where there was a brief post-WWII trolleybus renaissance - I think we need to identify some factors that led to the demise of favouring trolleybuses in the US, with only some US cities holding on to this type of public transport network.
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