GM Must Re-Make the Mass Transit System it Murdered

[Joanne98]

by Harvey Wasserman

Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?

First let them remake what they destroyed.

GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.

GM met the rise of the hybrids with "light trucks."

GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all.

GM now wants to market a $40,000 electric Volt that looks like a cross between a Hummer and a Cadillac and will do nothing to meet the Solartopian needs of a green-powered Earth.

For this alone, GM's managers should never be allowed to make another car, let alone take our tax money to stay in business.

But there is also a trillion-dollar skeleton in GM's closet.

This is the company that murdered our mass transit system.

The assertion comes from Bradford Snell, a government researcher whose definitive report damning GM has been a vehicular lightening rod since its 1974 debut. Its attackers and defenders are legion. But some facts are irrefutable:

In a 1922 memo that will live in infamy, GM President Alfred P. Sloan established a unit aimed at dumping electrified mass transit in favor of gas-burning cars, trucks and buses.

Just one American family in 10 then owned an automobile. Instead, we loved our 44,000 miles of passenger rail routes managed by 1,200 companies employing 300,000 Americans who ran 15 billion annual trips generating an income of $1 billion. According to Snell, "virtually every city and town in America of more than 2,500 people had its own electric rail system."

But GM lost $65 million in 1921. So Sloan enlisted Standard Oil (now Exxon), Philips Petroleum, glass and rubber companies and an army of financiers and politicians to kill mass transit.

The campaigns varied, as did the economic and technical health of many of the systems themselves. Some now argue that buses would have transcended many of the rail lines anyway. More likely, they would have hybridized and complemented each other.

But with a varied arsenal of political and financial subterfuges, GM helped gut the core of America's train and trolley systems. It was the murder of our rail systems that made our "love affair" with the car a tragedy of necessity.

In 1949 a complex federal prosecution for related crimes resulted in an anti-trust fine against GM of a whopping $5000. For years thereafter GM continued to bury electric rail systems by "bustituting" gas-fired vehicles.

Then came the interstates. After driving his Allied forces into Berlin on Hitler's Autobahn, Dwight Eisenhower brought home a passion for America's biggest public works project. Some 40,000 miles of vital eco-systems were eventually paved under.

In habitat destruction, oil addiction, global warming, outright traffic deaths (some 40,000/year and more), ancillary ailments and wars for oil, the automobile embodies the worst ecological catastrophe in human history.

Should current General Motors management be made to pay for the ancient sins of Alfred Sloan?

Since the 1880s, American corporations have claimed human rights under the law. Tasking one now with human responsibilities could set a great precedent.

GM has certainly proved itself unable to make cars that can compete while healing a global-warmed planet.

So let's convert the company's infrastructure to churn out trolley cars, monorails, passenger trains, truly green buses.

FDR forced Detroit to manufacture the tanks, planes and guns that won World War 2 (try buying a 1944 Chevrolet!). Now let a reinvented GM make the "weapons" to win the climate war and energy independence.

It demands re-tooling and re-training. But GM's special role in history must now evolve into using its infrastructure to restore the mass transit system---and ecological balance---it has helped destroy.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/11/16-6

[Hawkowl]

1. Indeed

I think when people talk about letting the auto makers die, what they really mean is firing all the top management. This definitely needs to be done. Then the "auto" industry needs to be transformed into the vehicle industry. Making all sorts of electric, rail, hybrid vehicles.

It is time for payback and we need to really make an effort to make the hydrocarbon burning vehicle obsolete while preserving the jobs and manufacturing base.

Letting the "free market" decide economic and social policy at this point is suicidal.

[PM Martin]

2. Agreed!

[navarth]

3. I've been saying it for years: they should re-tool and make trains.

Or train tracks. Or solar panels. Whatever!! The greed and short-sightedness at the top has managed to destroy untold jobs, ruined the economy of my beloved city, and turned the American auto industry into a joke.

[wtmusic]

4. GM would excel at making an overweight, underpowered and

expensive rail system with planned obsolescence that relied on GM Delco(tm) parts extensively to keep running. No thanks.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Well, I doubt if we in the UK could rise even to that.

[Dr.Phool]

17. Actually GM used to make some pretty good locomotives.

I don't know if they still do or not. But I operated some that were new when I started on railroad in 1971, and they were still running over 30 years later.

Produced by GM's Electro-Motive Division.

[jaybeat]

19. Not so fast. GM actually makes great trains.

GM's Electro Motive Division (EMD) was a pioneer in diesel-electric locomotives. In the US, they basically proved the concept in the 1930s and have dominated the market, on and off, ever since. (As much as we all love steam engines, diesels could basically pull twice as much for half the cost.)

Of course, the *management* of GM certainly considers EMD a pimple on the great, swollen gut of SUV drivers that have funded their personal fortunes for the last 20 years. BUT, GM also has partnerships with car and engine makers overseas that could point the way to the future we all need. (The Isuzu D-Max and Chevy Colorado--outside the US, mind you--sport a four-cylinder diesel engine that keeps winning contests for the most fuel-efficient car; of ANY size. A four-door pickup! I say, take the folks who designed this and let THEM run the company!)

[wtmusic]

20. Did, anyway.

They spun off EMD some years ago, IIRC, in another feat of staggering shortsightedness.

[Sherman A1]

5. Agreed

They bought up all the Street Cars in St. Louis and they were replaced with buses, so I am all for it.

[gateley]

6. I saw a documentary on this several years ago. If they could still

get away with pulling something like that, they would.

[formercia]

7. GM executives were involved in the plot against FDR.

What's good for GM is good for America, they used to say.

[MichiganVote]

8. Its not as if GM didn't have help. Americans love their cars and have shown it over and over.

[happyslug]

9. Be Careful with Bradford Snell's 1974 piece, it has several weaknesses,

The chief Weakness is the claim that New York City started to convert from Streetcars to Buses do to GM. The problem is GM was NOT making buses when the conversion started in 1936 (GMC First bus was about Two years later). The conversion of New York City to Buses seems to be more do to the Politicians of New York City wanted to stop hearing from their wealthy friends about being bogged down in Traffic do to the Streetcars stopping at every corner. When such car drivers where stopped in traffic, most often they could NOT see the cause for the blockage, but could see the rails on the road and thus jumped to the conclusion that it was caused by the Streetcars NOT that they were to many AUTOMOBILES. Getting rid of the Streetcars in New York City Removed that reminder (i.e. removed the rails). Thus automobile drivers started to blame other automobiles NOT the buses, they did not see. Remember the problem with the Streetcars was NOT that they were seen blocking Traffic, but when traffic was block, car drivers could see the tracks and the wires and those would remind them streetcars ran on the same road, and thus the blame went to the Streetcars. When Buses replaced Streetcars these "advertisements" i.e. Rails and Wires, that public transit operated on the same road was removed. No Advertisement that the traffic jam was being caused by transit, less complaints. Thus the Politicians of New York City fell in love with buses, less complaints then from streetcars, NOT because the buses caused less traffic jams, but when Traffic Jams occurred, unless the driver saw the actual bus, there was nothing to remind the driver that some traffic jams were caused by buses. Please note the opposite is also true, this can be seen in transit estimates between light Rail and buses since the 1980s, when buses are introduced the estimate number of riders is almost always below pre-bus estimates, but when light rail is introduced the number of riders is HIGHER. No one can explain why, the reason is most transit people do NOT understand Advertisement. Advertisement is MORE then buying ads in newspapers, junk mail or even TV, it includes the package the item is sold in. The same with Transit, advertisement is MORE then saying "Take Transit" it also seeing the bus going down the street. In the case of Streetcars, you see the Streetcar, the tracks it operates on and even the wires that provide it power. Even if no streetcar is seen, the tracks and wires tell you it is there. This advertisement and in transit it seems to be more effective then ads on TV, radio or bill-boards.

Here is a paper I wrote in 2005 (It needs re-written and I will get around to get someday). It goes into how suburbs occurred and the rise and fall of the Street car system:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=266x203

Please go to my third posting on that site to see the references as to the GM and the take over of the Streetcar systems in the US.

An attack of Snell from a PRO_CONSPIRACY STE::
Part 1:
http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/03_April/paving_the_way_for_buses_the_great_gm_streetcar_conspiracy.htm
Part II
http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/04_May/paving_the_way_for_buses_the_great_gm_streetcar_conspiracy.htm

Other pro-conspiracy sites:
http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/index.html
http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-a-ride.htm

Some pro-GM Sites (I try to be even handed):
http://www.coachbuilt.com/bui/g/gm/gm.htm
http://www.lava.net/cslater/TQOrigin.pdf#search=\%27GM%20%20Trolleys%20Streetcars\%27

The big thrust is GM was NOT in a position to even start to replace Streetcars till after 1943 when it took over Yellow Bus Company (Which had used GM engines for years, so not much of a takeover, but then Yellow Bus had only started to dominate the bus industry in 1938, prior to that the buses that existed consisted of elongated cars or trucks like modern days School buses).

The big change is that after WWII the US had strong currency controls (for example people could NOT finance a car for more then 18 months, but Federal law, to prevent the Depression from coming back). Into this mix, GM had made a huge profit from being the largest producer of Vehicles during WWII (More GM 2 1/2 ton trucks were produced then even the Jeep, which was produced by Willys AND Ford). GM was into Diesel engine production, both for trains and ships, it produced Aircraft and weapons out of some of its Automobile factories. Thus GM was flushed with cash right after WWII when this Credit Crunch occurred. GM was willing to take installments payments on its buses, when no one else wanted to or could loan money for new Streetcars. Thus only the most profitable streetcar lines purchased the then new PCC series of Streetcars (Streetcars where and are capable of hauling more people then buses, last twice as long, and can go on narrow streets, thus most cities that could afford the new PCCs kept their streetcars but many cities did NOT have the funds and thus open to GM's offer.

[starroute]

10. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is actually about that, in a warped way

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/34/rogerrabbit.html

The Judge becomes the substantive visionary for a future that Eddie, Eddie’s girlfriend, and Toons scoff at. Eddie assumes that the highway won’t be needed because the city already has an efficient and profitable trolley-car system: "Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel." The "Red Car" was, in reality, a profitable public transit system in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, and would cease to exist in 1961 because of a corporate conspiracy led not by Judge Doom but by three major corporations, General Motors, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, that had a vested interest in seeing the automobile proliferate. The conspiracy was proved in court in the 1950s, and the three companies paid nominal fines but were not compelled to resurrect the trolley system. In Roger Rabbit, the judge’s company, Cloverleaf Industries, has bought the trolley system and plans to dismantle it.

In the Spielberg/Zemeckis film universe, however, good guys must prevail. Judge Doom and his gang are themselves dissolved by the Dip (don’t have to worry about them after that) and Toontown is saved — Acme’s will leaves it to the Toons. The highway can wait. Forget the historical parallels. Who would want to spoil the carefully conceived fantasy with even a mild social critique? More than the realist in me chafes at the ending. Zemeckis gets on and off the historical reality. Just as the parody caused a breach within our initial humorous response, the historical parallels, from the demise of the Red Car line to the apartheid treatment accorded the Toon, suffer from the happy ending.

[happyslug]

12. The problem is mass transit is rarely profitable.

Even today you can hear economists who look into fiance of the Airline industry and once examined they question if ANY airline had even been profitable (Had profitable years, but those years and profits rarely if even overcame the losses the airline incurred in other years let alone the government subsidies the airlines incurred do to the Post Office shipping mail on space available basis AND Airports NOT being taxable).

The Chief reason rail cease to operate passenger service is when such service no longer paid for the train itself. If you include maintaining the tracks or other overhead, passenger trains rarely, if ever, made a contribution to such maintenance and overhead (And NO one built a railroad for Passenger service, the key was would the train be profitable on its FRIGHT side? if yes the line was built, if no the line was not and once fright could no longer pay for the use of the right of way it was abandoned, thus the various rails to trails throughout the US and the rest of the World).

As to the Red line, it was built so that real estate developers of about 1900 could sell real estate out of the line. The developers rarely cared if the Streetcar line was profitable, the developers main source of profit was selling real estate for housing. Once the land was sold, the transit system was on its own (And the people who ended up running them found out quickly how unprofitable they were, the chief reason the City of Pittsburgh was the last City in the US to convert from Streetcar to buses was it filed bankruptcy three times from 1900 to 1960, no one could find a way to make the line profitable and the only reason it has NOT filed bankruptcy since 1964 is that it was taken over by the County). The Red line suffered the same problem as the Pittsburgh Rail line, a lot of years where it lost money (and many years when it made a profit but not enough to buy new equipment). Prior to the 1960s Local Governments did NOT want to subsidize mass transit. With the failures of many lines do to the low price of gasoline in the 1950s (The lowest the price of fuel would ever be) something had to be done. Thus the movement in the 1950s and 1960s for local governments (Generally at the County Level) to take over mass transit.

Sorry, but my point is simple, no one has, long term, run a transit system without some sort of subsidy. It may be frights (like the Rail Roads), it may be Federal (Direct Postal subsidy till the 1930s and space available mail since the 1930s), it may be private (Generally land development providing the money till the land was sold) or it may be direct (As has been the practice since the 1960s). We can make the same statement as to the highways. The taxes we pay to maintain the highways are collected by gasoline stations. The State and Federal Government just piggy back their taxes onto the Gas station owner's cost of collecting the cost of buying gasoline. This saves a huge amount of money. If the Government would demand that you pay your gasoline taxes SEPARATE from paying for the gas, the cost of collecting will be about 30% of what ever the tax is (Piggy backing onto the gas station saves the state and federal Government that 30% cost). The problem is mass transit has to collect its fee from the cash box and thus still has that 30% cost of collecting, counting and depositing it into the bank costs.

[Demeter]

14. Public Service Is NOT SUPPOSED TO GENERATE PROFITS!

If we ever get single payer health care, some asshole will complain that it doesn't "Make Money".

[happyslug]

15. My point was simple, to refute his statement on why people would NOT opt for a Car

Let me quote what I was responding to:

.....assumes that the highway won’t be needed because the city already has an efficient and profitable trolley-car system: "Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel."

My point was the trolley-car system was NOT profitable and never really had been. The is true of almost any form of transportation of people (Freight is another story). The writer had said something that was historically wrong and that is all I wanted to point out.

As you correctly pointed out, Public Service are services that we can NOT afford to be "profitable". Once profit becomes the main object, it will wipe out any other object even if that means the service is ended (as what happen to the Streetcar lines, replaced by less costly buses, less costly from a purchasing point of view, even through the streetcar would be more profitable over the life of the streetcar). That is what happened to the streetcar system, it was less costly to local government if everyone took their automobile for the State paid for the highways systems while the locals had to pay for losses of the Streetcar System (and often the state would NOT take over a local road with a streetcar tracks on it, but would do so if the tracks were removed, through I suspect, this was result of lobbying by GM then any other factor i.e. GM lobbying the State Highway Departments that Streetcars were obsolete and the State Highway Departments should NOT take such roads over till the streetcars were replaced by buses).

The problem has been that state legislators view highways as profit centers, i.e. people drive on them and buy gasoline which includes a gasoline tax that pays for the highway. Many states (including my home state of Pennsylvania, have state constitutional provisions that forbid the state from spending gasoline tax money on anything other then highways). Such stupid rules should be overridden (The Federal Government can do so, by requiring all states to pay so much of their r own gasoline tax money for public transit, federal law is superior to even state constitutional provisions or if Congress does NOT want to do that just tax gasoline directly and pay the states the proceeds to be used for mass transit only).

As to a Single payer system of Health care, the federal Government can force it down the states throats either as a direct requirements or do it how Social Security was done. Social Security is NOT a true Federal Program, in the 1930s there was some question whether the Federal Government could do Social Security so the Congress set it up as a State program. Each State had (and has) the right NOT to participate in Social Security. Subsequent to passage of the Social Security Act each state had to give the Federal Government the authority to act in the States name for purposes of the Social Security Act. Today, all a state has to do is withdraw from Social Security is repeal that law, and all payments to people on Social Security would end for that state. The trick was, and is, that Congress then passed a separate Social Security TAX, which the Federal Congress can clearly pass under the Constitution. Thus the states all had the right to deny their residents Social Security payments (Unless the needed state law was passed) but each person in the country HAD to pay the state whether their state had pass such authorization act or not. Thus the state can DENY you your Social Security payments, but the taxes still are due and collected. Every States in the 1930s passed laws giving the Federal Government the authority of the STATE to act in the name of that STATE to implement and pay Social Security Benefits.

My point is Congress can do the same with Universal Health Care, just make it part of Social Security, or a similar Federal-state system.

[Tansy_Gold]

16. I think there's a difference, though, between not being profitable and

operating at a counter-productive loss.

We might instead make a comparison to other "public" services, such as police and fire protection, municipal water and waste-water operations, infrastructure such as roads. What's the cost vs. benefit, and at what point do we cut expenditures and at what point do we increase subsidies?

I think it's possible to treat the accounting of public service entities in the same manner as one accounts for private for-profit ventures but not look only at the bottom line.

Tansy Gold

[AdHocSolver]

21. The cost to Americans of their "love" of the automobile is much greater than relying on mass transit

The issue is not whether mass transit is "profitable". The automobile is heavily subsidized through road construction, oil company subsidies and give-aways, not to mention the wars that have been fought over oil.

The issue is whether the cost to consumers of buying, maintaining, and repairing automobiles, building and maintaining roads, buying insurance, buying gasoline, and paying extra for food due to the insane practice of using corn to produce ethanol is greater than would be their share of subsidies to support a well-designed mass transit system.

Besides being significantly cheaper to maintain, mass transit is far less polluting of the environment. The automobile "culture" is the most extravagant, wasteful, environmentally destructive economic system imaginable.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Hear, hear! Great OP! Thanks for posting!

It's time for heads at the 'top' to roll, and for the people who actually create wealth--the workers, the engineers--to take over!

And what a great project--rebuilding the rail system that GM destroyed! They ripped out all the tracks that criss-crossed Los Angeles, and mothballed the "Red Cars"! Damn them to hell!

This article is so right on!

"In habitat destruction, oil addiction, global warming, outright traffic deaths (some 40,000/year and more), ancillary ailments and wars for oil, the automobile embodies the worst ecological catastrophe in human history."

[nxylas]

24. I already posted this in the Public Transportation & Smart Growth Forum

Just thought I'd get in a plug here. Click on the link in my sig line to go to the forum.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. That's what happened in the Twin Cities ca. 1954

All the streetcars were either burned or sold to Mexico City, and the tracks were gradually torn up. One line used to run through my neighborhood. The bus line that replaced it frequently gets stuck in traffic.

[AdHocSolver]

22. The book "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black details how GM and others got rid of mass transit.

The book also describes the popularity of electric cars in the early 1900's. Quiet, non-polluting, and cheap to maintain, electric cars held great promise to become the dominant form of transportation in America.

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were collaborating in designing and building an electric vehicle. A mysterious fire broke out at Edison's laboratory complex destroying the prototypes for the electric vehicle. They abandoned the project.

Electric vehicles, besides being quiet and non-polluting, require fewer parts, are inherently much more efficient, and require little maintenance.

Whereas gasoline engines contain hundreds of parts, electric motors contain only a few dozens of parts. Gasoline engines only run properly at high operating temperature which requires burning gasoline just to maintain that temperature. Electric motors turn off when the vehicle is stopped.

At the same time, this excess heat generated in the gasoline engine has to be removed by the cooling system to prevent the engine from overheating and seizing up. Electric motors can be air-cooled, and produce no heat when turned off.

Gasoline engines produce little torque at low RPM's so they require a complex transmission to convert high RPM's to the torque necessary to move the vehicle. This adds cost and weight to the vehicle and wastes energy. Electric motors can be designed to produce high torque at low RPM and so require only a simple transmission.

Electric vehicles need no mufflers, no tune-ups, no regular oil changes, no complex cooling systems, are more efficient, save weight, are practically non-polluting, have fewer parts, and would cost the consumer far less money to own and maintain.

For performance enthusiasts, the Tesla electric car can go from zero to sixty MPH in four seconds.

The "downside" is that the auto companies and the oil companies could not hold you hostage to their desire for huge profits.

The auto companies claim that they can't make electric cars as cheaply as gasoline-powered cars. That is a specious argument. Once a factory would be tooled up for production, economies of scale would make it no more costly to build electric vehicles than any other kind.

The overall cost to consumers would be far less for electric-powered cars as maintenance costs would be far less.

Widely available mass transit and electric vehicles would, at the same time, reduce pollution and reduce transportation costs for Americans.

[Raster]

23. But if Detroit designed and built a GREEN, cost-effective electric vehicle...

...how would exxon and the rest of the Texas Petroleum Mafia rack up their record-breaking profits?