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ChineseStreetcar and walking myths debunked
[tags]pacific electric, streetcar, pedestrian, metroblogging la[/tags]
Credit: Wikipedia
Metroblogging LA has been posting popular urban legends, and the “Roger Rabbit conspiracy” places at No. 1. In short: a few large automotive companies conspired to dismantle streetcars in Los Angeles and cities around the country. The reality is, there was no conspiracy, and L.A.’s traction disappearing was more of a mercy killing by Southern Californians in the 1950s and 1960s. This is also covered in an entertaining Straight Dope column. This is also sure to stir up heated arguments, particularly among a passionate group of streetcar revanchists. They’ll probably find this entry.
The other entry is No. 6, about “nobody walking in L.A.,” although it is more whimsical than the streetcar entry.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
I hear this L.A. urban myth almost daily. I usually rely on the article Roger Rabbit Unframed: Revisiting the GM Conspiracy Theory to back me up, but I have to say, the Straight Dope puts it simply and elegantly. I am reasonably certain that cultural and economic changes had more to do with the leap to autos over streetcars than anything else. If we really want someone to blame for the demise of service on a once vast passenger rail system in L.A., we only need to look in the mirror.
I guess my mid 90’s analysis that showed places where NCL invested held onto their streetcar lines longer than those where it had no presence gets short shrift once again. FAct is GM lost money running streetcars JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
People always take the easy way out on this topic. But I bet very few here have ever looked at the historical publications of the 20’s and 30’s to see what the public and the press thought about a heavily regulated public service.
First, the private car companies had to show a profit for their investors, bond holders and to replace worn out capital assets such as the tracks and the street cars. The locals had fits when the firms tried to raise the price just a penny.
It didn’t matter that the car lines had unionized and wages kept going up. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t enough income to pay off rolling stock capital bonds. Running a good business and following solid best practices just didn’t matter.
So, the companies were hobbled without adequite income. They cut maintenance to hold down costs. It was a terrible spiral.
And then to make things more fun, the car companies were forced to pave and maintain the asphalt poured over their tracks for a free ride for the competition, the private automobile. Yet, cars paid gas taxes for road maintence.
The public and bad public policy destroyed the steet car lines. I’d be happy to go toe to toe and debate a conspiracy theorist that street cars were killed by GM and the like.
Just tell me why profitable electric suppliers were force to get rid of their street car subsidies, as the public thought that power would cost less, if the electric firms didn’t subsidize their rail operations.
And National City Lines, the company linked to the GM conspiracy theory, didn’t buy Pacific Electric’s Red Car system (which was sold to Metropolitan Coach Lines in 1953), they bought Los Angeles Railway’s Yellow Car System in 1945 from the Huntington Estate, so even the most basic facts are wrong in the so called “conspiracy theory”. If there really was any minute shred of absolute truth in all this, the urban myth would have to say GM destroyed the Yellow Cars, 5 lines of which ran until 1963, 5 years after they were sold to the first MTA, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. They had no public subsidy of any kind available to replace ancient capital assets/equipment. There was also a sincere belief at the time that the brand spankin’ new freeways would form a backbone to speed express buses throughout the city. And to top it off, diesel was not yet considered a component of smog formation. We’ve come a long way since then, and if it hadn’t have been for the massive rail infrastructure that was built by Henry Huntington, we could never have put 512 miles of Metrolink and 73 miles of urban fixed guideway in place as fast as we have. Ok, its not the 1,100 miles of Red Cars (the Metrolink of its day) or 640 miles of Yellow Cars (the urban rail of its day) but we’re well on our way back, and buses will always be a huge part of the entire system.
It’s 1946. The soldiers have come home from World War II, the cities are bursting with overcrowding and lack of infrastructure due to the war effort, and you’re a city planner who needs to accommodate new housing and transportation. You can build wide roads and insist that businesses provide parking lots and encourage people to buy cars, you can invest in a buses, or you can expand the streetcar lines and train tracks that currently only adequately serve the city center.
Ideally, you will choose the most efficient system.
However, you never get to decide. The city is going bankrupt after their disastrous price caps that drove private rail transit out of business and the subsequent decision to intervene once again in the market by taking over transit as a city service. Things look so bad you try to undo your mistakes of the past. Rather than shut down your rail lines as cities all over the US have been doing you attempt to re-privatize. You are in luck, a company called National City Lines (NCL) buys your city’s streetcar network and invests heavily while only shutting down a few lines that they replace with the popular new buses. Despite the massive private infusion of cash and new equipment this isn’t enough to do more than delay the decline that started after WW-I. It’s now 1966, and your streetcars are gone just like all the places that didn’t get NCL support and NCL has lost tons of money. Once again you are stuck providing a losing service with declining usage. Since the roads are crowded with more cars but only the suburbs are so far benefiting from the National Highway system that you’ve chosen to oppose until recently, you buy buses to relieve congestion but begin a plan that will bring back rail transit anyway.
In the newspaper, you read that National City Lines was openly funded by companies that make tires, automobiles, and gasoline - the same companies that now offer to sell you 200 new buses. Apparently they wised up. Why haven’t you?
This really happened in cities like Los Angeles and Baltimore, where National City Lines learned that rail transit is stupid. After NCL left both these cities returned to the rails with the expected poor results. Although all experts point out that the streetcars might have died out anyway, many critics attempting to revive rail blame National City Lines for the end result.
If you think what National City Lines did was unfair, attempt to streamline supply sources in order to save money, the federal government agrees.
It’s 2007. You’ve come home from the war. The freeways are bursting and overcrowding due to money being spent on the war effort instead of alternate transport modes. Cars idle on the once glorious arteries, burning the very gasoline you were fighting for. The irony is not lost on you as you sit on the freeway that a war is being fought so that you can choke on your own exhaust fumes at a rate not much greater than ones own two feet.
Now imagine you’re a city planner. You can build more wide roads, on top of the other wide roads in place I suppose. Build parking lots that hold empty cars all day instead of parks, schools, shops and housing. Encourage people to buy bigger cars because they are safer in the inevitable accidents and keep the demand for fuel high. You can invest in buses and add them to the idling traffic. Or you can expand urban heavy rail and light rail to adequately serve the entire city and build and encourage development based around these rail lines.
Ideally, you will choose the most efficient system.
Fred, that was pretty low. City planners CANNOT build enough rail to adequately serve even the growth in demand for mobility. Until you understand this rail paradox you won’t be able to do anything but recite leftist anit-Bushisms and retread transit myths.
At least you save yourself at the end by promising to build the most efficient system. Name your criteria and I’ll support any conclusion you can defend. Problem is transit, particularly rail transit is undeniably less effecient by every measurable criteria.
Alls I’m sayin’ is dawg. Alls I’m sayin’ is.
Personally, I had my heart set on the Segway being the future of efficient transportation. That didn’t work out so now I’m waiting for the tube technology to be perfected.
Or build more freeways and parking lots and stop all investment in rail. I don’t care, in 25 years I’ll be walking faster than you drive. How’s that for efficiency?
P.S. - I’ve been incredibly snarky on the internets as of late. I think I blame it on my current freelance job in Studio City… that place seriously punishes you for being on a bike or walking. Car-centric infrastructure at its finest. RAWRRR.
Fred, yeah things get testy when crossover topics stir up the pot.
All I’m sayin’ is that there just plain isn’t enough money to use rail transit for anything but a fraction of our mobility needs.
There’s lots of things wrong with centralized generation, high voltage transmission and alternating current. What say instead of expanding that system and all of its problems instead we build low voltage DC networks parallel to the existing wires. Oh and just to be extra clever we’ll tax the AC users and make sure all the DC systems we build are incompatible. We’ll get people to use the stuff by running the wires and building the plants for free and then charging 20¢ on the dollar for useage.
We’ll Call this “If Electricity Were Like Transit.”
I’m certainly not implying that ALL of our mobility needs can or SHOULD be met by rail transit. In fact, all I’m asking for is a fraction. And that fraction is Los Angeles.
Perhaps in our more densely populated areas we should build DC networks to take the load off the AC networks and there will be a savings of energy because there will be less AC to DC conversion because so many of our devices are powered internally by DC. And since we live in such a densely populated area many of those conversions are happening all the time. Sure it wouldn’t make sense to do this everywhere since it’s well known that DC loses power over long distances. But in a dense are, hell yeah, it becomes more effecient.
For example, many massive data centers are beginning to consider converting to DC power to become more energy effecient and reduce heat generation. While not practical for a small business server, massive data centers dense with energy sucking processors can see a 20% savings in consumption and cost.
Bottom line, in a relatively small an very dense area like any large city, transit can and does make sense. This is why Manhattan, London, Tokyo, etc. have urban rail transit systems and Tallahassee, FL does not.
Or as “YouSoSpecial” noted on your blog:
“I am confused by your analogy, because a system of roads and private automobiles depends on a highly dispersed distribtution network (local streets and collectors feeding into major arterials and freeways), available for use for free, built by taxing everyone whether they use it or not, and dependent on each user purchasing, maintaining, fueling and operating their own power plant.
So while I think you mean to be critical of transit, your analogy works just of well at being critical of a system dependent on private autos/public roads.”
National City Lines were not totally blameless in the demise of the streetcar systems. But they were not the only factor either. Scapegoating National City Lines is a very shorthand way of explaining a highly complex situation that played out over 3-4 decades.
FACT: GM was found guilty in a court of law of conspiring to buy up transit lines and shut them down in order to boost public subsidies for highways, increased car sales along with that. The other parties in National City Lines (Firestone et al) were found not guily. GM was fined $1.
FACT: A lot of people wanted their own cars (and, by extension, the freeway system). But a significant minority of city dwellers wanted the streetcars to remain in operation.
FACT: In cities where municipal governments took over streetcar/railways early on from private companies, they still have streetcars. I’m thinking of cities like Pittsburgh and San Francisco, as well as Toronto.
FACT: Public transit almost NEVER makes a profit from fare box revenues alone.
OPINION: Public transit is a public amenity that make a city better to live in, like a museum or a sports stadium. If it can’t make a profit, the government should operate it at a loss, a public benefit.
FACT: Street railway companies were required to repair the streets that their tracks ran on (as well as the tracks themselves), in return for the franchise of running on public streets. This cut into their profits greatly.
FACT: Power utility companies were not allowed to own electric railways after a certain year due to a court decision.
FACT: It was cheaper to drive, operate and maintain a car in the past, versus public transit. This is no longer true today.
FACT: Electric railway companies could not make a profit, therefore could not upgrade their rolling stock, leading to decreased ridership, lower revenues, deferred maintenance, old cars that fell apart, and on and on. A downward spiral leading to their demise.
FACT: The last remaining streetcar lines were removed by the MTA (first MTA) in 1963. That’s part of our county government. They had taken over the lines in 1958.
OPINION: If Los Angeles fancies itself a world-class city, it needs a world class transit system. We’re not there yet, but we’re certainly getting there over the past 20 years. We should be almost done in another 20 years.
Hey, how about making transit just like the roads: free.
Except the roads are not free. They are paid for by taxes that everyone pays, whether they use the roads or not. (I will admit that road users certainly pay more in taxes for the roads since gasoline taxes go to roads, at least partially.) But is it fair that people who don’t own cars should pay for the cost of the roads? Of course it is. The cost has to be shared by everyone. How would fire trucks get to your house if it was burning down?
Same thing with transit. The cost must be shared by everyone. Except, roads have an unfair advantage, at least in California: no road tolls.
See? Tranist has a usage fee, roads do not. And let’s not bring the cost of operating a car into this. If you ride a bicycle down the road, it’s free. If you take your bicycle on the Red Line, it still costs you $1.25.
My point is: if transit was 100% no fee up front, (100% paid by taxes), I think the freeways would thin out quite a bit. Mass transit and private automobiles would be on a more even footing. More people would ride. The lines would reach capacity. The public would demand more capacity, more lines. And, it would make sense to build them.
Scott Mercer wrote:
OPINION: If Los Angeles fancies itself a world-class city, it needs a world class transit system. We’re not there yet, but we’re certainly getting there over the past 20 years. We should be almost done in another 20 years.
My opinion: I cringe when I hear Los Angeles needing rail transit equal to or greater than New York or Tokyo to be a “world class city,” whatever that means.
When Los Angeles had the longest traction in the United States, was it world class? It was more like Tulsa with a beach.
When Los Angeles added all the stuff to really make it a world-class city (legitimate stage, art galleries, a robust convention and tourist industry), it mostly happened when streetcars were being ripped out, and matured when there was no rail transit.
If there should be rail transit in Los Angeles, here’s an even better reason: we have the proven ridership, and what we do have, we use the hell out of it. It only took us 16 years to have the sixth busiest rail ridership in the nation, and half of those were “legacy” systems. We already have the second busiest bus ridership in the nation.
New York City is the busiest with regards to buses, with about 4 million boardings a day. But it carries those boardings with about 4,000 buses. Our Metro has over 1 million boardings and 2,600 buses.
FACT: GM was found guilty in a court of law of conspiring to buy up transit lines and shut them down in order to boost public subsidies for highways, increased car sales along with that. The other parties in National City Lines (Firestone et al) were found not guily. GM was fined $1.
Scott you’ve got to stop using the internet to “research” this issue. The fine was $5000 and it was for attempting to monopolize the repair parts pipeline to service the NCL equipment.
The whole thing about being a “world class city” is a short hand statement that alludes to a larger truth: Los Angeles is probably the most populated metro area in the First World that does not (or did not prior to 1990) rely on passenger rail transit for part of its needs to move people around and through itself. There are probably some cities in the developing world that don’t have it, like in Africa or South Asia, but they could use it as well. But let’s compare apples with apples here, population wise.
Los Angeles is the 34th most populated city in the world, per 2000 census.
Los Angeles: has 78 miles of Metro Rail. (Let’s leave out the 500 or so miles of Metrolink commuter rail.)
Of the 33 world cities larger than Los Angeles, only FOUR have no subway and/or light rail systems: Jakarta, Indonesia; Bogota, Colombia; Madras, India, and Baghdad. I believe Jakarta is building a monorail system though. That means 89% of cities our size or larger have rail mass transit.
To be fair, 12 of these cities have metro systems that are somewhat smaller or substantially smaller than the system we have right now: Instanbul, Delhi, Cairo, Tehran, Bangkok (whole system is shorter than ours but the subway is a little bit longer), Tianjin China (will be longer than ours in 4 years), Rio de Janiero, and Caracas Venezuela.
Lima Peru, Calcutta India, and Wuhan China have very short Metro systems, and Sydney Australia has one short light rail and a monorail.
But my point remains: metro/subway/light rail systems have been proven, they work, they exist in 89% of world cities our size or larger.
Do we really want to be in the same league as Jakarta, Madras and Baghdad? No. Those are developing cities. We want to be in the same league as New York, London or Tokyo; or how about in the same league as Mexico City or Santiago, Chile? Or
even in the same league as Wuhan, China, which you probably have never even heard of, but they still have a subway! Why do we want to row against the tide?
Good points Scott. Now ask yourself why even those cities with legacy rail are not expanding them. Look at NYC and London and their looming multi-billion dollar infrastructure deficits. Passenger rail is an expensive luxury. Yes, it often improves QoL for the users but many luxuries do that. In a triage situation rail has to loose out.
If in the triage situation for these major cities rail loses out, why is London implementing congestion charging in its Downtown? Looks like in London’s triage, cars lose out.
Hey, Rob, not to be snarky, but you gave two bad examples to back up your contention. The two examples you bring up, London and New York, are in fact expanding their systems.
New York MTA is breaking ground at the end of this month on a project that’s been delayed for about 80 years, the Second Avenue Subway, aka the T line.
They are also doing three OTHER very MAJOR expansion projects: “East Side Access,” which will bring the Long Island Railroad into Grand Central Station, and the extension of the 7 line to the far west side of Manhattan from Times Square.
New York is also going to build the “Trans Hudson Express” tunnel, a new tunnel from New Jersey (the mainland), exclusively for rail tracks. (This is not a New York MTA project, so the state of New Jersey will probably pay for a large chunk of this project.)
London is also doing another expansion of the Docklands Light Rail, as well as expanding one of their subway lines, but I forget which one of their many subway lines is getting expanded. Can’t recall the name. So they are investing in more rail too.
All rail systems always have “looming deficits.” They don’t make profits. They’re a public benefit/amenity. They could only make a profit at $10 per ride, and then nobody would ride them. Is something useless because a profit can’t be made on it? Should all non-profit organizations (some of which actually do make profit, they just aren’t allowed to pay it out to shareholders) not exist? Of course not. The usefulness they provide extends far beyond the mere raw numbers of a balance sheet.