BIKE: Taken for a Ride?

[alan_drake]

-- Michael Bluejay <bikes> wrote:
I'm playing devil's advocate about the film _Taken for a Ride_, which 
posits that GM conspired to kill streetcars:

	http://BicycleUniverse.info/transpo/takenforaride.html

As a rebuttal, I would like to repost a post in another forum by a gentleman that was there !  He is now in his mid-80s and still plays tennis (although not that well :-)

Alan Drake

 Some (not all) of those college professors will say anything to get
published. The truth is closer to Roger Rabbit but not quite. GM never
bought up the Red Cars. Their people bought up the Yellow narrow gauge
cars. the city system The Red cars were the interurbans on standard
gauge.
About 1926, General Motors took over New York Railways to run it into
the ground. They did a good job on it while they developed better (not
good) buses. In 1935-36, they made the switch and advertised it
nationally as a great success, which it was, given as to what they did
to the old cars. However, had new street cars been purchased. it would
have permitted a 20 percent fare reduction. See Moody's for ownership.
Pittsburgh Railways Research Department checked it out to see if they
should follow suit and found the discrepancy. B&QT and Third Avenue Ry
bought new street cars and B&QT proved it with their financial reports
In 1935, GM attacked the American Transit Association and got
rebuffed for unethical business, so they formed National City Lines,
Pacific City Lines and American City Lines with help from Philips
Petroleum, Mack, Firestone Tire snd maybe one other. At the same time
they persuaded FD Roosevelt and Congress to outlaw electric companies
providing transit service. With the Great Depression on, no one but GM
could buy large transit companies but they started with small ones. At
the same time they funded Greyhound and told railroads that they would
not ship their freight by rail unless the railroads turned over some
passenger business to Greyhound. Proof came in 1954 when GM, Greyhound
and Public Service signed a consent decree with Department of Justice to
cease and desist from monopolizing the bus business.
When the transit business picked up in 1940, Los Angeles bought brand
new street cars, both Red and Yellow, Red by state order and Yellow by
business choice. So did Saint Louis and Baltimore, National City Lines
quickly moved in to buy control of them and stop any more street car
purchases, but business was so good that the local Mayors and civic
groups demanded more new street cars so they bought some in both LA and
Saint Louis but as soon as the war was over they started closing down
lines.
In 1944, the Army assigned me to Office Chief of Transportation where
I met Major R. Stewart Moore. a former Greyhound executive who was
President of Pacific City Lines which he continued to manage from his
army office. He told me all you had to do to manage a bus system was to
get sweet with the City Councils. One thing about National City Lines,
et al is that they maintained their buses very well. They did not
maintain their street cars at all except in :LA where they still looked
like new at 15 years of age.
Their policy was to replace one 46-foot long street car with one
40-foot long bus. That either made the buses more profitable as people
were packed in tighter or else it drove them away to seek auto travel.
Either way they came out ahead.
In 1949, federal Judge Michael Igoe in Chicago found them guilty of
conspiracy and fined them. The Department of Justice prosecutor was
interviewed years later and said "they were guilty as Hell."
Also about this time, Greyhound bought control of the Chicag, North
Shore & Milwaukee RR, and took all of its loose cash to buy up bus lines
in Wisconsin and the Rail Rapid Transit line to Wasukeha. They operated
the latter without insurance, I know that because I worked there. They
immedately filed to abandon the rail line but the riders fought back and
the state said "no" Keep it running, So they sold it to a man with no
money and he could not pay Greyhound's accident bills which Greyhound
claimed went with the property, not with them.
North Shore stockholders sued for the rip off but the court said
Greyhound made a bad deal but not a criminal one.
Also at the same time, Southern Pacific RR sold the Big Red Cars in
LA to Metropolitan Coach Lines, run by a former NCL man, but did not
sell the track. Track use was priced to make rail uprofitable so
Southren Pacific made good rail profits until it was shut down.
Metropolitan Coach shut some lines down but was not allowed to shut down
the Long Beach Line.
About this time, I could see what was coming so I bought National
City Lines stock to make a capital gain when they sold the LA system to
the government,
I was too late. There was no capital gain but there were modest
dividends and a liquidating dividend.
Then iin 1951, I was asked to testify against Public Service
application to shut down the Newark to Caldwell street car line which
used the subway in Newark. General Motors did the planning for the
largest privately owned transit company in North America. In return,
Public Service agreed to buy only GM coaches. The General Manager got
a free new Cadillac every year. I knew the guy who drove it home. See
1954 consent decree above. General Motors recommended the subway be
paved for buses but engineers and the city said no way.
I testified that buses would take longer than street cars and cost
more, so would lose riders and result in higher fares, No one disputed
me. The whole case was based upon opening up the street for automobiles
and providing some exprees bus service.
We lost the case, except that the state gave us a consolation
prize. Public Service provided no transfers, You paid again. They
ordered that any bus riders who preferred street cars could get a free
transfer to what was left of the subway where four old cars were running
every 11 minutes, Within a few days of the new bus service, those
four old subway cars had been expanded to16 and they could not pick up
all the transfer passengers. The turnback capacity did not permit more
than 16 cars, A street car every 2.5 minutes could not handle the
volume. New street cars had been recommended but the General Motors
agreement did not permit that. Since the agreement was secret they had
to deny new street cars as new ones had to have a turning loop which was
not there, The City offered to build the loop so Public Service bought
30 second hand "new" streetcars from Minneapolis where the General
Manager had gone to jail for buying too many buses and financing them
for his own benefit, not the stockholders. His name was Barney Larrick
and he had been a NCL executive. With new cars they balanced the loads
out with a 90 second headway,
The bus service withered from every two minutes to every five
minutes. The street cars ran there from 1952 to 2000 when new cars were
bought. It was no flash in the pan and survived Newark's population
decline.
Then in 1956, Philadelphia hired me, and my boss advised me that
General Motors had warned them not to hire me. National City Lines had
just bought control of the Philadelphia Transit System depite the court
conviction and bought 1,000 new buses all at once. Biggest single bus
purchase in history. My boss was not pleased with GM so I got the job.
While there, when I testified as an expert witness. GM produced
seven poison pen letters they made me read from the witness stand, the
letters were from GM bus operators telling what a devious, no-good I
was, My lawyer demanded a rebutal but the Administative Law Judge said
I was qualified and did not need a rebuttal. He wanted to help GM keep
the defamation on the record. My lawyer appealed to the state and got
an order to permit rebuttal, Rather than let me rebut, NCL withdrew the
poison pen letters.
They still were not done. We loaned them $ 1.5 million to rehab the
elevated railway. They got caught using the money on other property and
using second hand stuff for what we loaned them money for.
They had to remove all of their top executives and one got jail. My
boss got fired for letting it happen but he was as innocent as I was.
His right hand man went to jail for accepting stock in the company to
look the other way.
GM got even. They got their best Philadelphia Buick dealer to be my
boss. The City Manging Director had offered my servies to the National
Capital Transportation Agency to plan MetroRail or MonoRail or whatever.
The Buick dealer told me I could not take the assignment. I told him I
had already acepted it and his boss approve it. I had him there but he
did not give up We had an electiom and the city voters
voted two to one to build a Northeast Extension of the Broad Street
subway. We started to buy land and build one station foundation before
the first major contract was awarded. The bids came in one lousy percent
over estimate. The Buick dealer said "no subway". I said we will delay
the landscaping three years down the road and come in under bid. He said
no you will not. There will not be any new subway, (the voters can drop
dead.)
A few years later that Buick dealer was convicted of defrauding the
USA.
Anyone can verify any and all of this.
E d T e n n y s o n