Taken for a Ride: The assault on public transport in the U.S

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Taken for a Ride: How the American auto industry engineered the demise of city public-transit systems. (1996)



tl;dw: In the 20th century General Motors and a few other sketchy companies conspired to destroy much public transportation in the U.S., particularly streetcars that ran on electrified rail in order to get everyone driving cars or at least motorised buses and increase their profits. The general method involved buying out a company that dealt with public transport, firing a ton of staff, lowering levels of service, generally running it into the ground. When passenger numbers dwindle under the new management, use that as an excuse to shut everything down and permanently rip up the infrastructure.

Also covered is lobbying and underhanded tactics used by GM and various companies involving the construction of the interstate highway system. There were some successful attempts to punish GM for their actions, but it was too little too late.

I believe a similar conspiracy was afoot in the UK involving the later disgraced Ernest Marples and Richard Beeching who fanatically tore up much of the ancient railway system using similar excuses, but it has not been looked into the way GM has.

I have always lamented the erosion of our railway system.

I rode Amtrak on vacation a few years back.I’d travel that way all the time if it was an option.

Yes. The trolleys and street cars of America all got junked in Fifties by a band of car companies, and lobbies for car and tire companies. Washington DC still has rails in the streets, and other remnants of its trolley system. We had to build a subway system to replace our trolley system in the late Seventies. And that system doesnt serve many parts of town that still have old trolley tracks embedded in the streets that show how those parts of town WERE served by the old trollies.

Same thing happened in LA. They trashed the cities well functioning street car system in the fifties. The demise of the system was spoofed in the early 90's movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?".

I looked into Beeching. Dr Beeching actually put forwards a few proposals that we see in use today which saved things. The big issues were that the railways here in the UK were losing far too much money. From the time the recession hit Britain in the 1930's onwards (A knock on effect of the American 1920's recession but hit us here in Britain in the 1930's) the railways had been making a loss. They had just started to ecover whrn the war hit and after the war, thousands of returning troops were coming home, many having lost their previous factory jobs which had been taken over by women who did not want to give up their new found freedoms, so as most of these soldiers had learned how to drive the army trucks, and many of these trucks were available at real cheap prices as the UK were selling them off as no longer needed, many turned to start in the transport business themselves. Britain also had a major road network improvement scheme and it was desparately needed, as here in the UK the roads before the war were an afterthought and even today we have roads which only 20 years ago had their first coat of tarmac. Back in those days even some A roads were made from fine gravel. It is why the UK built its cars with decent ground clearance and used narrow tyres which could cut through the mud. Due to these road improvement schemes, they made road transport more practical for most areas of the country. Before the railways the principle ways of transport was the sea, larger rivers and the canals. Roads were more like mud tracks, hence why the very early cars were designed the way they were. It was pointless making them do 80mph because where would they be able to use it except for a racetrack?
Understandably for Britain the railways became of major importance and at their peak, it was said that nowhere in mainland Britain was further then 5 miles from a railway. (They didn't say passenger carrying railway. If one looks at all the narrow gauge railways as well this statement was not too far off as being true).

Now after the war Britain had to nationalize the big four railway companies. They had in mind to do this in the past and started with "Grouping" in 1922-23 where many smaller companies had been merged into four large companies, but they were not able to go any further with their plan as it would have cost too much money, so it was easier to have the smaller companies merge (Which many were in favour of doing) then for the government to buy them all out.
After WW2 it was pretty easy as the four big companies were scarcely surviving, so the government in its day decided it was the right time.

And here is what lead to the UK's future downfall and I am not talking so much about the railways, but as the UK's wealth. As Britain needed to borrow money to pay for rebuilding after the war, the only organization large enough to borrow from was the IMF (International Monetart Fund). They were given terms that seemed amazing to them in their day but later regretted it.
The IMF was an organization formed from the worlds wealthiest people who came together to make a profit from lending their money to countries that needed it. Sounds ok so far doesn't it?
They borrowed huge amounts of money at 0% interest. So what is the catch? Rich people who are in business to make more money do not lend money for nothing. These ultra wealthy people knew what they were doing!
The sting in the tail came in the form of conditions known as "Conditionality policies". When the IMF decided it was the right time, the IMF could call in these policies which future governments who had borrowed money had to adhere to, which just so happened to be called in during Margaret Thatchers term in power, and you've guessed it. Their terms were to sell off the countries assets so the country became weak and easy to control or to take over, but now we are straying away from the railways so lets go back to the railways.

The government had borrowed huge loans to try to rebuild the railways and they needed to try to make them cost effective as the railways could not go on making a loss. They also wanted to modernise the railways. They first started to take the best design ideas of locomotive as they had a locomotive shortage on their hands, and form new designs from those ideas. These locos became the B.R. standard classes, but they still faced a dilemma. They soon realized that 60% of the coal being mined was directly going to run their steam locomotives, many if which were employed to transport the coal from the mines to the depots and they realized that if they chaned to use diesel or electric traction, they not only cut out a whole lot of man hours in running them, but they could cut down on the number of mines they were running which by then were also government owned, so they could start to save the country some money.
At the same time the government realized that this alone was not the solution, and the government wanted to fine an efficient and viable means to answer the countries transportation needs as a whole. So this included looking at shipping, roads, railways, canals, aircraft... The lot.
It is not true that Dr Beeching was against the railways. He was a financial advisor to the government group. He realized that the railway network had many duplicated routes and some routes which were far more costly to keep open where if money were used in roads instead, they would be cheaper to maintain and still allow the goods and passengers to be transported to their destinations.
Where the goods or passengers were in a significently large number, the railways were the ideal answer.
Dr Beeching came out with some proposals and ideas to make things work more effectively and save money. One of his ideas was to make more use of containers, and those freightliner containers were designed to be used on the British railways taking advantage of the railway loading gauge, which could also be taken on the back of lorries and ships. Ports and whole ships were re-designed. The savings of unloading and loading of ships alone was of huge benefit, and the idea became so successful that it was quickly adopted around the world using the UK's railway loading gauge for the standard container sizes, as the UK's railway loading gauge was slightly smaller then in most other countries, so it was the most oractical choice.
It was from then on that large container ships started to become the norm. While the idea itself was nothing new, the standardization of container sizes to be used on roads, railways and ships was Beechings idea.
Another of his ideas of saving money was block working of trains, as by having an overview of all the costs, he reaconed that block working would save a lot of delays and costs in keeping so many marshalling yards open and having to continually sort wagons, but as some wagon shunting was still neccessary, hump shunting yards were to be opened, or extended. (Hump shunting is where wagons would be uncoupled with their brakes isolated (If they were fitted. They all had handbrakes) and a loco would slowly push wagons over a hump. When wagons started moving downwards they would part from the train one by one and go down into the yard. Staff in a large control room would then quickly change the points to sort the wagons into the right order and the track had brakes built into it so the staff could slow the wagons or bring them to a controlled stop. Other staff would then couple the wagons in their new formations and unisolate any brakes etc).
The issue was that the newly formed British Railways tried to separate itself from government, and one can understand this but it did end up wasting the country huge amounts of money. The unions had a lot to do with this as well and whilst they stood up for the rights of their members, they also singlehandedly brought about the demise of a lot of good jobs due to their rigid unwillingness for change. Many station staff and firemen and other positions were no longer needed due to the changes that were needed to save money, and the government tried to get the railways to fit their staff for other work, but the unions kept trying to prevent this, so many staff lost their jobs which was a position that the government was trying to avoid.
The new station rebuilds were based on the principle that passengers could come by car or bus where there would have large free carparks and decent bus stops outside. The carparks were supposed to remain free for railway passengers to use. Unfortunately since the railways were privatised again in the late '80's to the early 1990's, many of these carparks were sold off to private car park companies who charge for parking which I think is a crime, as parking had only ever been charged at the few city or large town stations that were so congested that they had to charge to prevent too many motorists parking for other needs.
One of the issues where the railway and the government did not get right was where the government comittee was forging ahead to cut certain lines that were no longer needed, whilst the railway was refusing to work with the government and therefore they were ordering new diesel locomotives for use on routes that had been cut.
Things like this on the railways were nothing new under British Rail (Origionally British Railways) as even in the 1980's huge blunders wasting millions of pounds were done simply because staff in one office had a grudge and refused to work with staff in another office, and I know of two cases... One when an entire fleet of 130 unfitted wagons were upgraded and rebuilt to have continuous brakes so they could do another 20 to 30 years of service at an exceedingly great cost but it was cheaper then ordering new, where another independentlynoperating department looked at the age of the wagons and sent the entire newly converted fleet to be scrapped. The same thing happened in the latter half of the 1980's when an entire fleet of elderly DMU's had an entire stip down to the frames rebuild with new floors, new interiors, new engines... No expense spared rebuilds, so the entire fleet was ready for another 40 years in service, and the other department then scrapped them which not only caused great expense (We are talking about millions here) but for a few years there were services cut as they did not have enough trains in service to cater for the passenger needs! (It was why the classes 141, 142, 143 and 144 were made which were ordered in a hurry and were based on developments of the class 140. B.R. had such a sudden shortage due to the refusal of communication between departments that these budget units had to be ordered in a hurry, and fair play, I must say that out of all the units I used to work, I always enjoyed working the 143's and the 142's (I preferred the 143's), because they were so easy to work for the guard and all except one door was visible, that they were a sheer delight to work).

Now to blame Beeching for the cutting of the railway infrastructure is jumping to conclusions. Incidently, more railways were cut from the UK's national network as a direct result of the late 1980's recession then at any other time in the UK railway history which goes to show how hard hitting that recession really was. If one looks at the milages cut at that time due to the 1960's, the 1990's had 30% more. Passengers may not have noticed as a great number of frieght lines were closed, as many of the UK's heavy industries one by one closed.

You know your stuff Mountain Goat. I am somewhat familiar with the official version of the story, still I am convinced there may be more to it - particularly surrounding Ernest Marples. He very much reminds me of the modern revolving door between the government, financial institutions and the media.

Beyond the obvious conflicts of interest, there's just a certain virulence behind many of the line closures that makes me suspicious. If we take the argument at face value that we're losing too much money - fine, you can shut down railway lines, but in many cases the lines weren't just shut down, they were torn up, sold and built over. Not a single thought spared to the idea that perhaps they might be useful again someday. It's all just a little too short-sighted even for a British government, like closing an unprofitable farm and then immediately salting the earth. It's like someone wanted to make sure the lines could never be practicably reopened in many cases.

The loss of the Red Car Line is one of those stories everybody around here seems to know, and that nobody wants to talk about.  It used to be that you could ride the Red Car non-stop all the way from the San Gabriel Valley to Huntington Beach (a.k.a., Surf City) and beyond.  Now, even the drive is not worth the effort.

The Red Car Logo

Two issues. The first was that they assumed the public would drive or go by bus to the main stations having closed stations inbetween and it largely did not happen as most people on their daily commute decided to take their journeys directly once they had their own means of transport. The second issue was that they also assumed that most businesses which had been rail served until then would simply take advantage of the grants being offered them at the time and switch over to containers, but by the nature of these containers, the container terminal outlets to take their containers werw often no where near them or their destinations. In the past, the smaller containers used by the "Big Four" were smaller and not so heavy so could be lifted by ordinary yard cranes.
Three more factors came in which the government was not to know or had not anticipated which at the time the outcome which hit the rail hard, and one came from the press jumping in and not understanding farm animals and their safety (If one speaks to a farmer or a truck driver who has to transport cattle you would know), so the public with the press put pressure on the government which then banned cattle travelling by rail. The second was actually the cause of the outcry because staff were so protected by the unions that tey could get away with virtually anything, so it was common for some staff to send cattle wagons over the hump on hum shunting yards or send a tanker which would crash into them (No tankers were allowed over the hump as the brakes in the track would not hold them) and the result crash would cause disaster which would take a day or two to clean up, and these "Disasters" were well known to be organized just before rugby or football matches. Now such events involving the welfare of animals were obviously a concern as well as fly shunting which banged them into other vehicles. They also said the cattle were crammed in but this is the only safe way to carry cattle by train or by road. If they are crammed in the cattle don't fall over. If they don't do this it is common to have deaths which are actually more common by road then they had been by rail as rail does not generally have so much movement.
But anyway. In 1958 cattle was banned by rail though even today a single item of livestock is allowed if I recall when I read the rulebook correctly. Strangely, and it has been known, radioactive items are allowed to be taken back and fore on passenger trains, but anything containing petrol is not. This inclides little radio controlled cars etc.
But the cattle ban was a big blow to the rail industry which turned a lot of branchlines into making a loss when they had previously been holding their own. Add to this was when they decided to try to control the rabbit population and had introduced mixermatosis. Some branchlines like the Whitland and Cardigan line were taking one and a half van fulls of rabbit meat a day from there to London to serve their restauraunts.
But one of the largest blows to hit the rail industry happened after the cuts, and this as again a result of the strong unions which kept calling strikes for days at a time, and this one industry lost a lot of money so it abandoned rail transport in 1975 to 76 and that was the milk industry. Some smaller lines like the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth line where the upper end was closed in the Beeching years (This line was supposed to be kept open as a through route and the Heart Of Wales line was supposed to have been closed, but just before they were going to carry out these plans the tunnel at Strata Florida not far from Aberystwyth collapsed which would have cost a fair bit to repair so their plans changed to close the upper half of this route instead) and a branch off this line and the lower section was kept open to serve the dairy. When the milk traffic left the railway the line was shut which was around 1975-6.

Incidently, in all the years that British Railways (Or British Rail) was running as a national railway network, it had made a loss but it started to make a profit in the early to mid 1980's which were the Thatcher years, but then since privitisation took place, the railways have had to be supported by the tax payer again, especially since the laws were changed and we opened ourselves up to the "Claims culture industry". Due to this, the insurance costs hit the roof, and we now have a system where the train ticket prices cover just the insurance for the journey and the railway operating companies survive on publically funded grants! A crazy situation that can only be corrected again if we change the laws back to where they once were which both the legal and the insurance industries would strongly object.

I think the argument about profitability is too lightly examined too, I think expecting a direct profit from railways may be wrong-headed in the first place. The non-financial incentives aside, financial benefits from a well run railway system often appear elsewhere in the economy, rather than the accounting books of the train/rail operators and are difficult to measure. And it's not like roads aren't heavily subsidised either.

It is fair to point out that while public transportation may be the better option insofar as the environment is concerned, using public transportation between my home and my office takes about 2-1/2 hours.

The same trip takes only 37 minutes by private car.

Railways in Britain have rarely ever made money out of passengers. It was and is the freight that give them their profits. The only exception to this is London where every other train is packed to the brim with people.

Having used public transportation exclusively to get to employment I can attest to the major disadvantage it is. If your bus is five minutes late and you miss the connection the next bus might be half hour later. Saying your bus or train was late only lasts so long before you are taking public transportation to unemployment office.

And there is the matter of waiting and waiting out in the elements.

I never forget when I was working the trains and a large family had come over from Ireland. They saw the train on the platform, looked in and said "There's no tables".
I asked where they were going, and they were going to London, and that service at the time connected with the London train at Swansea which was about an hour and a half away or less as our train did not stop at any of the smaller stations as it was classed as an express. Swansea was our fourth stop away.
They were ademant they would wait for the next train. This was in the early afternoon. There were only two trains a day into the Ferry terminal so I said to them that it was not too long before they would be on a train with tables if they got on ours first. I could not get them on our train. I did tell them that there was a 12 hour wait. The thing about it is I don't think the next train would have tables either as our company was using the sets without tables as there was far more space in them for luggage as that service always carried a lot of luggage.
Some people do not make it easy for themselves do they?

If your city had more and better public transportation, it would likely take much less than 2-1/2 hours, wouldn't it?

I can literally walk to work faster than the local bus can take me, not counting the time waiting for the bus. The closest train would take me away from where I am going (work), so that is not a good choice either. I do not mind walking except in icy weather. At least I get in exercise that way.

My city?  Do you really think every city is like New York, with people stacked on top of each other in their human habitrails?

This is the West Coast, where it is not unusual for people to commute more then 50 miles each way, because our real estate is spread out, not up.  There would have to be a rail line every hundred meters, and a bus line on every street in at least three counties, and they still would not come within a couple of miles of my mountainside office.

And speaking of these things called "mountains" (not at all like those hills you have), we Californians cannot even get a single high-speed rail line constructed between Los Angeles and San Francisco!

While you may think you have an answer for everything, try finding out what is really going on before you pass judgement elsewhere.