>Light rail, modern high speed >inter-urban rail, hybrid buses, etc. need support because their competition >has lured away all their customers over the years through glamorous >salesmanship and appeals to the freedoms of air travel or solo driving.
Not only have these factors contributed to the decline of importance of light rail, but, also, there was a much more direct form of "competition" which, early on in the 20th century, contribued to the overall trend toward individual vehicular travel for day-to-day needs as opposed to within-city rail travel: the deliberate destruction of some rail lines and buyout of their owners by the auto and related companies. This description of GM's deliberate destruction of light rail lines (not only "alleged" but they appear to have gotten a legal conviction for it) (starting about 5 paragraphs below) was posted a few months ago in one of the EV discussion areas by one of the prominent editors. I have been meaning to bring it to the attention of other alt-fuel people so as to make sure it did not pass by un-noticed, as I think it was a good start to researching the history of these matters. >I get frustrated locally, in Portland Oregon, with demands for the bus >system to be self-sufficient. Of course we all want that, but people still >love their cars, and their is a level of investment required in making bus >transit appeal to more riders---a level of investment which won't be >recouped immediately if at all. Still, the reduction in traffic congestion, >accidents, pollution, latent road warrior hostility, etc. are rarely >considered in these arguments regarding funding transit modes. > >The car and the airplane are 20th century freedom machines and viewed as >essential to being 'merican. Yes, although there is some propaganda machine behind those concepts. Not everyone dislikes the idea of getting on a machine and having someone else do the driving (and insurance-paying and maintenance and headache and fuel-paying) to get to work. I personally have felt *far* more free, at times, when going this route then at other times, stuck in cities without any such realitic option, I have been stuck in traffic. ------------------------ The post that was made by Bruce, the editor of www.electrifyingtimes.com and moderator of about 30 groups (I think). Notice the awesome brief transcript excerpt from a Senate hearing, at the end, between a Senator who has pre-decided that supply and demand had worked the way they're sometimes thought to, and a person who attempts to bring to the Senator's attention that in this instance the markets were manipulated in an unusual and surprising way. To: ev@listproc.sjsu.edu Subject: GM convicted for destroying Electric transportation -long From: Bruce EVangel Parmenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 13:57:43 -0700 (PDT) GM convicted for destroying Electric transportation -long [POSTed to the EV List as an interesting fyi] -[Edited] Date:Sun, 20 Oct 2002 10:41:55 -0700 Subject: Need info on GM destroying US electric trollys I've been searching and can't find GM being covicted a very small fine for destroying US electric buses in order to sell their diesel buses. Any info would be greatly appreciated. - EV List members with more on this, please POST. My web searching ... links found on: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=electric+trolley+gm http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=electric+trolley+general+motors http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=electric+buses+general+motors Here are two pieces found from the above searches: - http://rapidtransit.com/net/thirdrail/9905/agt4.htm American Ground Transport* Page 4 By 1949, General Motors had been involved in the replacement of more than 100 electric transit systems with GM buses in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. In April of that year, a Chicago Federal jury convicted GM of having criminally conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others to replace electric transportation with gas- or diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transportation companies throughout the country. The court imposed a sanction of $5,000 on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of Pacific City Lines when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1. Despite its criminal conviction, General Motors continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit properties through September of 1955. By then, approximately 88 percent of the nationās electric streetcar network had been eliminated. In 1936, when GM organized National City Lines, 40,000 streetcars were operating in the United States; at the end of 1965, only 5,000 remained. In December of that year, GM bus chief Roger M. Kyes correctly observed: ĪThe motor coach has supplanted the interurban systems and has for all practical purposes eliminated the trolley (street-car)ā . . . Electric street railways and electric trolley buses were eliminated without regard to their relative merit as a mode of transport. Their displacement by oil-powered buses maximized the earnings of GM stockholders; but it deprived the riding public of a competing method of travel,ä the report asserts, and quotes urban transit expert George M. Smerk as saying that " ĪStreet railways and trolley bus operations, even if better suited to traffic needs and the public interest, were doomed in favor of the vehicles and material produced by the conspirators.ā " Progressing from the conversion of rail systems to bus transportation, new market temptations appear on the transportation scene: General Motorsā gross revenues are 10 times greater if it sells cars rather than buses. In theory, therefore, GM has every economic incentive to discourage bus ridership. In fact, its bus dieselization program may have generated that effect. Engineering studies strongly suggest that conversion from electric transit to diesel buses results in higher operating costs, loss of patronage, and eventual bankruptcy. They demonstrate, for example, that diesel buses have 28 percent shorter economic lives, 40 percent higher operating costs, and 9 percent lower productivity than electric buses. They also conclude that the dieselās foul smoke, ear-splitting noise, and slow acceleration may discourage ridership. In short, by increasing the costs, reducing the revenues, and contributing to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems, GMās dieselization program may have had the long-term effect of selling GM cars.ä But the last chapter of mass transit history has not been written and the Snell report views the present and anticipates the future as it looks at ćthe political restraint of rail transitä by the continuing efforts of auto makers. ć[The auto industry] has used [its revenues from auto sales] to finance political activities which, in the absence of effective countervailing activities by competing ground transport industries, induced government bodies to promote their product (automobiles) over other alternatives, particularly rail rapid transit. "On June 28, 1932, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., president of General Motors, organized the National Highway Users Conference [whose] announced objectives were dedication of highway taxes solely to highway purposes, and development of a continuing program of highway construction. Continued on page 5 - - http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/INCORP/interurbanrail/lost.html The Demise of the Interurban Version #1: The interurban had its heyday as long as its technological development stayed ahead of that of the automobile. Once the automobile became an effective vehicle it meshed with the American spirit of individualism. State and municipal governments were forced to yield to public demand and shift funds from the development and maintenance of interurban cars and lines and shift to paving roads. Version #2: The interurban was an effective competitor of the automobile and heavy locomotive for quite awhile. This ended when powerful companies conspired to bring the interurban era to an end in favor of diesel buses, diesel trains, and the automobile. At the end of the day the American people are consumers and can only purchase what large corporations offer to sell them. While the first version is basically the story of the demise of the interurban in many places, the second version is more true elsewhere. Where competition and general economic factors were not enough to kill off the interurban, monopolistic practices by industry behemoths did the rest. Robert Snell provides the teeth for Version #2. In 1974 Snell testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly in favor of breaking up the Big Three automakers. At the time of his testimony the United States was crippled by the energy crisis. All across the nation Americans were waiting in long lines to put gas into their big American cars. Snell testified that, led by General Motors, the American auto industry had engaged in monopolistic practices for decades that were not good for the nation. Among these monopolistic practices was what Snell called "dieselization." This was a strategy of purchasing electric transit systems and either closing them down or placing a financial tourniquet on them. Left to rust, shiny new diesel buses and automobiles seemed quite attractive. A bus and an interurban pose side-by-side to the right. GM's destruction of electric transit systems across the country left millions of urban residents without an attractive alternative to automotive travel. Pollution-free rail networks, with their private rights of way, were vastly superior in terms of speed and comfort to smoke-belching, rattle-bang GM buses which bogged down with cars and trucks in traffic...To prevent the cities it motorized from rebuilding rail systems or buying electric buses, GM and its highway allies prohibited them by contract from purchasing "any new equipment using any fuel or means of propulsion other than gas." Ultimately, the diesel buses drove away patrons and bankrupt bus-operating companies. (Snell 1868) Snell focuses much of his testimony on Los Angeles . He states that "what happened there was not unique. GM was involved in the ruin of more than 100 electric rail and bus systems in 56 cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore. St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Lincoln, Nebr., and Los Angeles" (1844). What happened to this region? General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and others, organizing holding companies which scrapped the pollution-free electric trains, tore down the power transmission lines, ripped up the tracks, and placed GM motor buses, fueled by Standard Oil and equipped with Firestone Tires, on every L.A. street.The extent of American government's disaffection with this situation is personified in Senator Roman Hruska who was quite belligerent with Snell during the hearing. After Snell had explained the Los Angeles situation in much greater detail than we have here, the senator still did not quite understand. Sen. Hruska: When nobody would ride them anymore, and couldn't because streetcar tracks didn't reach into suburbs, then no longer did they keep the streetcar companies. Snell: I'd like to point out that the Pacific Electric not only reached to the suburbs but it connected distant cities and that, in fact, there was no decline in patronage in 1940 when General Motors acquired the rails; they were moving 80 million passengers a year. Sen. Hruska: How much of an expanse is covered by that map? What is the easternmost terminal? Snell: Seventy-five miles. Sen. Hruska: Seventy-five miles? Snell: That's correct. Sen. Hruska: Isn't that wonderful. And yet it wasn't enough. It folded, didn't it? Snell: It didn't fold, Senator; it was acqired by General Motors and its auto-industrial allies and destroyed. Sen. Hruska: What? Snell: It did not fold. It was acqired by General Motors and other industrial interests and destroyed. Sen. Hruska: And what did they do with it? Snell: They destroyed it. Sen. Hruska: They destroyed it? Snell: Yes.(1857) In recent decades new electric commuter "light rail" systems have revived the spirit of the interurban. For example, the Washington area "Metro" fits Hilton's definition almost perfectly (it goes underground in the city rather than running on streets). What is left of the old interurban cars? Many have been preserved for nostalgia in museums, many of which still run on closed loops. Others have been converted to homes or diners (left). Their heyday lasts only in photos and the stories of those who remember the interurban era. - ===== ' ____ ~/__|o\__ '@----- @'---(= . http://geocities.com/brucedp/ . EV List Editor & RE newswires . (originator of the EV ascci art above) ===== Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel at WebConX http://webconx.green-trust.org/2000/biofuel/biofuel.htm List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
