June 16, 2009
Why we don’t have trains
Beginning in the 1920s, General Motors began investing in mass transit systems. According to historian Marty Jezer (and Congressional hearings held in 1974), between 1920 and 1955, General Motors bought up more than 100 electric mass transit systems in 45 cities, allowed them to deteriorate, and then replaced them with rubber-tired, diesel-powered buses. Buses are more expensive, less efficient, and much dirtier than electric/rail systems. (And of course automobiles are even less efficient than buses, by far.) In 1949, General Motors, Firestone Rubber, and Standard Oil of California were convicted by a federal jury of criminally conspiring to replace electric mass transit with GM-manufactured diesel buses; in a noteworthy illustration of justice for corporations, the court fined GM $5000 and forced H.C. Crossman, the GM executive responsible for carrying out GM’s policy, to pay $1.00.
—”Tire Dust,” Rachel #439 (Annapolis: Environmental Research Foundation), April 27, 1995
This is just the warmup. The article is actually about widespread allergies to rubber in the form of tire dust.
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!
(Via SC.)
I’ve always wondered why there was such a paucity of light rail in the US, and trans-continental rail, come to that.
Maybe the US Government should re-focus General Motors as the country’s leading manufacturer of light rail carriage stock.
You’d think that that might make sense, now, wouldn’t you? But, goddamnit, we’re Americans! We shouldn’t have to take no fucking Commie public transportation!
This country, sometimes I want to fucking smack it upside the head.
You & me both.
India, you’d really want to smack it upside the head if you lived in the back of beyond, where we have miles and miles of track but have had no passenger rail service for decades. Hundreds of Chicagoans do come out here every weekend. And each and every one drives.
And then GM killed the electric car.
So bad in so many ways… I watched an episode of “cities of the underworld” where they explored one of the original and abandoned underground subway stations in Los Angeles. It was still fairly intact and you could see where GM had filled in the adjacent tunnels with cement…. sad. I guess it is in our unfortunate nature as Americans but when will we stop moving 1 step forward, 2 steps back.
Related True Story (or Why don’t we have electric transcontinental trains?)
My late father in law in St. Louis, a one time unlikely railroad man, grew up child in Arkansas in a 3 room shack as the eldest child in a dirt poor family of 10 kids . At the beginning of WW-II he was drafted into the army. In his induction routine they gave the recruits some sort of aptitude test to see where to put them. My father in law apparently and as a big surprise to him scored off the charts so instead of sending him to war, the sent him to college at Syracruse University in New York to study engineering. At the time they had no idea how long the war would last so there existed a program to bring along new talent that might be needed to fight it years hence. He spent the war getting his engineering degree and graduated about the time it was over. Since they did not need him, he got a job with GE. He worked for them for half a dozen years working his way up into sales at an office in Appleton, Wisconsin. As was the custom of the day, he of course married and had a family. One day the President of GE decided he needed a young hotshot to head up a new division of GE that had to do with the very challenging task of taking over an existing industry using GE’s latest state of art electrical technology. To this end GE held a talent search t to identify their brightest and most promising young prospect in the country. My father in law was the person identified. To this day I consider him to have been the uber man in the Grey Flannel Suit of the 60′s. GE gave him a big raise,moved him and his family to New York City, set him up in a fancy office in the GE headquarter’s skycraper, and gave him a large staff including many scientist and laboratories. His job was to electrify America’s railroads and take the business away from General Motors, who at the time had pretty much a monopoly with their Diesel Locomotives. He tried to do this for a number of years and lead a very heady life of constant travel and high level hobnobbing. Turns out the technology just wasn’t ready and the effort really did not work out. HIs chance to be Jack Welch’s predecessor was thus squelched. General Motors, btw, had that monopoly on diesel locamotives for many years on and may still have it. Being cradle to grave in their approach to employees in those days, GE then sort of put him out to pasture heading up a sales office of a more mature technology unit out in St. Louis. That is where he stayed until he retired just as Jack Welch was taking over. His family who lived in nearby Connecticut with their horses then moved to Town and Country, MO along with their horses. That is where I met and married his daughter. His name was Clyde Chumbley and he was one hell of a nice and very smart guy. He died a few years ago. I got divorced from his daughter a decade and half ago but I always thought the most of her father. Fortunately for me, in his retirement he spent lots of time with my daughter who in addition to have been lucky enough to be nurtured by him also inherited his brains. She just graduated from USC where she went on an academic scholarship.
GM was no doubt a formidable competitor with their diesels. Your story has got me thinking that maybe they cheated on Mr. Chumbley, too. I am not a greenie, but I am sure that such folks would be happy today had Mr. Chumbley won his battle.
Thanks for the story, Tom!