Word: gas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is a tragic decline for a nation that emerged from the gas-rationing days of World War II with excellent mass transit. Ironically, the U.S. fell victim to postwar prosperity. As the economy began to boom, American life-styles changed dramatically. Instead of living in a city apartment and riding a trolley to work, people wanted a home in the suburbs and an auto or preferablly two. As a consequence, mass transit became caught in a vicious downward spiral: the more riders that were lost the worse the service became; in turn, bad service drove away additional riders...
Meanwhile, the powerful highway lobby- composed of the automakers oil companies, construction firms, Teamsters and building unions-exertred its enormous muscle to persuade Government to build more and more roads- until the nation became almost totally dependent on the auto and truck. Until the gas crisis began to hit home three months ago, 90% of all U.S. travel was done in private autos and 75% of all goods were carried in trucks...
...manufacturers have not yet come back to the mass transit market, although there has been a recent surge in passenger demand. During the past two years, while gas prices steadily increased, the nationwide number of travelers using mass transit has risen an average 4.4% a month over the preceding year, to an estimated 27,775,000 a day. In May, as California began taking the brunt of the first gasoline shortfalls, ridership across the U S Climbed 7.3%. Mass transit experts prediet that the June figures will show an increase "in the double digits," perhaps adding...
...several cities, notably Denver Seattle and Portland, Ore., mass transport now carries nearly 50% of all commuters. In gas-starved southern Connecticut and Westchester County, the number of passengers elbowing their way onto Conrail's already crowded Manhattan-bound trains has increased sharply...
...spewing from an exploratory well, about 57 miles off the Yucat án Peninsula, that blew out June 3 when a hot undersea drill hit a volatile pocket of oil and gas. The explosion and ensuing fire all but destroyed the rig. By last week estimates of the total loss ranged from just over 1 million bbl. to as much as 1.5 million bbl. That is much more than the previous record loss caused by the fabled Ekofisk blowout in the Norwegian North Sea in 1977, when an estimated 140,000 bbl. escaped before the well was capped after nine...