Word: transition
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AMONG U.S. industries, none has a darker future than municipal transit. In only ten years, the transit companies in U.S. cities have lost almost half the 23 billion fares they carried yearly. At the same time, operating costs have soared (wages and equipment up almost 100%), and operating income (before bond interest and stock dividends) has plunged from $149 million to $41 million. Since 1947, 40 major companies have gone broke. Because of the rapid deterioration of transit facilities, downtown merchants are losing trade to the suburbs, office workers are quitting jobs in downtown business districts, and in the most...
What is bankrupting transit is, to a great extent, U.S. prosperity. The rising standard of living means less need for the cheapest form of transportation. The five-day work week has cut Saturday transit traffic by 40% in most cities, and television keeps many riders home at night. But the biggest competition comes from the private automobile. While gasoline and tires were rationed during World War II, the transit companies prospered. But since 1945 millions of U.S. workers have turned their backs on the bus lines-including even bus drivers themselves. In San Francisco recently, a delegation of motormen...
...lose passengers. Without exception, fare increases turned passengers away, and started a vicious circle. As more bus riders turned to private cars, city traffic jammed up tighter, buses moved more slowly. Slower speeds forced companies to buy more equipment and hire extra drivers to meet schedules; thus the transit companies them selves helped to make traffic still worse. (A Chicago cable car in the 1890s crossed the Loop only 50 seconds slower than a $20,000, 200-h.p. bus does today...
...sick industry, drastic cures have been proposed, from outright federal subsidies to local tax relief. e.g., Spokane has agreed to bail out its transit company with $53,000 yearly by lifting a street-use tax and snowplowing bus routes...
...smugly sitting back on their deficits, confident that city governments will ultimately subsidize or buy them out. But no city wants to take over a white elephant; most municipalities are already hard-pressed to make ends meet. National City Lines, a Chicago holding company that controls some 40 transit companies in U.S. cities, e.g., Sacramento. Baltimore, Salt Lake City, has a standing offer to sell its companies to municipalities if it can continue to operate them, has yet to find a buyer...