The private bus era: 1940–1968

1940–1968 · THE SAME MANAGEMENT, THEN NEW OWNERS

The railway company as a bus company: The reorganization of 1940 left the Northern Indiana Railway, Inc. a railway in name and a bus operator in fact. Its buses worked the converted streetcar corridors from the Notre Dame Avenue plant, and for sixteen years the property continued under the same management that had run the cars — the company's history closes its account of the arrangement with the sentence the whole succession turns on: motor bus operations continued under the same management until 1956, when the company was sold to outside interests. The buyer interest's operation is named in the transit record as Northern Indiana Transit, and the compiled transit histories give its tenure plainly: bus transportation in South Bend was dominated by the Northern Indiana Transit until 1967, and the public corporation was formed to continue operations from it.

The two cities take control: The end of the private era came the way it came in Fort Wayne the same year, and the Northern Indiana history states it in one sentence: eventually, the two cities acquired control of the operation and set up the South Bend Public Transportation Corporation, which operates the buses today under the name Transpo. The two cities are South Bend and Mishawaka — the same pairing the South Bend & Mishawaka Street Railway had joined with horse cars in 1885 — and the corporation they set up is a municipal corporation of both. The date of the public takeover is carried in the next entry, where the corporation's own officers state it.

Sources:

1. George K. Bradley, Northern Indiana Railway Inc., CERA Bulletin 132 (1998), published summary — bus operations under the same management until the sale of 1956; the two cities' acquisition of control and the setting up of the South Bend Public Transportation Corporation.
2. The CPTDB transit record and the compiled transportation history of South Bend — Northern Indiana Transit as the private operator, dominant until 1967, from which the public corporation continued operations.
3. ChicagoRailFan, South Bend transit facilities — the Notre Dame Avenue facility as the base of the bus operation the public corporation inherited.