Word: heineman
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First, though, many roadblocks must be cleared away. "Too many commuters," says Heineman, "use the train only when weather is bad, but drive their own cars to town when the weather is good. Well, if they want a $1,000,000 piece of equipment to be waiting at the station for them every day, they had better pay for it every day." The Heineman plan aims to turn the fair-weather riders into faithful, fulltime riders. To do it, the North Western more than doubled prices of one-way tickets for close-in riders, thus making it costly...
...times past, North Western commuter trains were slowed down by the necessity of making a multitude of stops within the city, many of them less than a mile apart. Heineman closed 28 stations within Chicago and the close-in suburbs. While the line thus lost 3,000 close-in passengers, it guaranteed better service to its 43,000 far-out commuters, cut their riding time to the Loop by one to 19 minutes...
...final touch Heineman tossed out the ticket-punching system that has become a symbol of the commuter. So many commuters were slipping past the conductor because he was too busy to punch their tickets on crowded trains that the North Western was done out of $580,000 yearly. Commuters will now carry "flash" tickets, which clip to the back of the seat, are color-coded so the conductor can tell at a glance where each rider must...
SOME veterans of the tradition-bound railroad industry are wagering that Ben Heineman's commuter plan will fall flat-and a few are quietly hoping it will, since Heineman is not one of their up-from-the-roundhouse breed. The son of a wealthy Wausau, Wis. lumberman who went broke in the Depression, Heineman studied law at Northwestern University ('36), set up practice in Chicago. In 1954, invited in by dissident investors, he won an acrimonious proxy war for control of the little Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway, boosted earnings fast. In 1956, with one-third of its stock...
...Heineman's fresh ideas and heavy investments have just begun to pay in 1958, a bad year for many another railroad. In the first six months the North Western lost $2,322,000. But then the North Western turned around, brought in ten-month earnings of $3,440,000-despite the $2,000,000-a-year commuter deficit. So confident is Heineman that his new commuter plan will turn red ink to black that he has ordered 36 new, air-conditioned, 161-passenger commuter coaches at a cost of $5,600,000. Says Ben Heineman: "If we can provide...