Nobody rides in El-Lay
Monday was a fun commute. Right before arriving at work Monday morning, I heard wonderful squealing from my car EXCEPT when I was using my brakes. Initially while driving home to Ontario I didn't hear it, but within a few minutes I was hearing it again.
So that car was out of commission until I could get the brakes fixed.
I couldn't use my wife's car, because she needed it to go to Los Angeles County on Tuesday.
I was going to borrow my father in law's car, but when he went to start it to get it to me, it wouldn't start.
Enter Metrolink. In the ideal world, I'd hop on the Ontario train that went straight down to Orange County. Southern California is not the ideal world. With the employment centers spread out all over the place, I don't see how you can design a system that gets from every residential area to every employment area.
So I had to hop a ride to the North Main Corona station, and select the correct train to get me to my location in Orange County. (Luckily, my work is just a short walk from one of the train stations.)
It all worked out...except that on Tuesday morning I got to North Main Corona a minute too late, and therefore missed my train. Had to wait about an hour at North Main Corona, which (at least for a walker) is in the middle of nowhere, service-wise. Even the Williams, Arizona train station had a fake Starbucks - North Main Corona has nothing.
Yet it all worked out, I had no problems getting home Tuesday evening, and I did make the train Wednesday morning.
Now I just have to get my brakes fixed.
Perhaps I should blame the car companies for my mass transit difficulties:
The reality is that the transportation problem in most parts of this country, and Los Angeles in particular, has a long history. Prior to World War II...Los Angeles...had the largest electric train system in the world....
Suffering from the economic slump of the Depression and far from being secure that the "car culture" would catch on, large auto companies began targeting mass transit systems as enemy No. 1 in the hopes of selling more cars. General Motors was the first, forming a front company in 1932, called United Cities Motor Transit, with the intention of buying out cities' transit systems and running them aground. Through GM's efforts, New York City's massive trolley system was dismantled in only 18 months.
After being caught in Portland, Ore., GM joined together with other automotive industry players, including Greyhound Bus Lines, Firestone Tire and Rubber, Mack Manufacturing, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum. Together, they formed a new company called National City Lines (NCL), and poured some $10 million into its development by 1937. It was worth the investment for them; NCL eventually destroyed the transit systems of more than 45 cities in the United States. Most importantly, it firmly established the automobile as the primary transportation vehicle in the rapid economic expansion of the postwar years.
By 1955, only 12 percent of streetcars remained across the nation that had been running in the mid-1930s.
For the skeptics waiting for me to pull a Kennedy assassin out of my hat for my next trick, this particular conspiracy is well documented, if not well known. These companies were eventually convicted in federal court of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by engaging in an illegal conspiracy.
Unfortunately, justice was not served by the slap on the wrist each received in penalties. Each company was assessed a $5,000 fine, and each individual official implicated was fined a single dollar....
It is argued that this episode is still relevant. Although the text below was written in 1974, we can't say that the auto/oil situation has improved since then:
As auto development and marketing progressed, the street railway industry didn’t stagnate....[In] 1936...the efforts of the Presidents’ Conference Committee (PCC) produced the fi[r]st batch of 100 modern streetcars, which represented the greatest single advance ever made in electric rail transportation. More than a mere cosmetic facelift of old equipment, or a series of minor improvements in previous technology, the PCC car set a new standard of comfort, performance and patron acceptance through technical innovations still used in the design and manufacture of rapid transit and light railway equipment throughout the world.
Yet, just 20 years after that huge forward step, the street railway had all but disappeared from the American scene. Why?
A casual observer might well ask whether that question has more than historical significance in today’s auto-dominated world. His answer would be a definite yes. We have reached a crossroads in national transportation policy, where our future way of life may well depend upon decisions which may be better understood in the context of recent transit history.
Rather than scrapping mass transit, the report implies that GM simply wanted to substitute different mass transit, at least initially:
On June 29, 1932, the GM-bus executive committee formally resolved that ‘to develop motorized transportation, our company should initiate a program of this nature and authorize the incorporation of a holding company with a capital of $300,000.’ Thus was formed United Cities Motor Transit (UCMT) as a subsidiary of GM’s bus division. Its sole function was to acquire electric street-car companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell the properties to local concerns which agreed to purchase GM bus replacements. ‘In each case,’ [GM General Counsel] Hogan stated, GM 'successfully motorized the city, turned the management over to other interests and liquidated its investment.’ The program ceased, however, in 1935 when GM was censured by the American Transit Association (ATA) for its self-serving role, as a bus manufacturer, in apparently attempting to motorize Portland’s electric streetcar system.”...
In 1936, GM caused its officers and employees to form National City Lines, Inc. (NCL) the report alleges, and continues: "During the following 14 years General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire, and two other suppliers of bus-related products, contributed more than $9 million to this holding company for the purpose of converting electric transit systems in 16 states to GM bus operations. The method of operation was basically the same as that which GM employed successfully in its United Cities Motor Transit program: acquisition, motorization, resale. By having NCL resell the properties after conversion was completed, GM and its allied companies were assured that this capital was continuously reinvested in the motorization of additional systems. . .
"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."...
Progressing from the conversion of rail systems to bus transportation, new market temptations appear on the transportation scene:
“General Motors’ 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 diesel’s 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, GM’s dieselization program may have had the long-term effect of selling GM cars.”...
“[T]he National Highway Users Conference [now Highway Users Federation for Safety and Mobility (HUFSAM)] has compiled an impressive record of accomplishments. Its effect, if not purpose, has been to direct public funds away from rail construction and into highway building. At the State level, its 2,800 lobbying groups have been instrumental in persuading 44 of the Nation’s 50 legislatures to adopt and preserve measures which dedicated State and local gasoline tax revenues exclusively to highway construction. By promoting these highway ‘trust funds,’ it has discouraged governors and mayors from attempting to build anything other than high- ways for urban transportation. Subways and rail transit proposals have had to compete with hospi- tals, schools and other governmental responsibilities for funding.. Prom 1945 through 1970, States and localities spent more than $156 billion constructing hundreds of thousands of miles of roads. During that same period, only 16 miles of subway were constructed in the entire country.”...
And, ironically, the GM presence extends even to these promoters of transit—“Due to its position as the Nation’s largest producer of bus and rail vehicles, it is a major financial contributor to both the American Transit Association and the Railway Progress Institute. It is also an influential member of the Institute for Rapid Transit.”
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