American Ground
Transport*
Page
4
“By 1949, General Motors had
been involved in the replacement of more than 100 electric transit systems
with GM buses in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. In April of that
year, a Chicago Federal jury convicted GM of having criminally conspired
with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others to replace
electric transportation with gas- or diesel-powered buses and to
monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transportation
companies throughout the country. The court imposed a sanction of $5,000
on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then
treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the
motorization campaigns and had served as a director of Pacific City Lines
when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific
Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of
$1.
“Despite its criminal conviction,
General Motors continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit
properties through September of 1955. By then, approximately 88 percent of
the nation’s electric streetcar network had been eliminated. In 1936, when
GM organized National City Lines, 40,000 streetcars were operating in the
United States; at the end of 1965, only 5,000 remained. In December of
that year, GM bus chief Roger M. Kyes correctly observed: ‘The motor coach
has supplanted the interurban systems and has for all practical purposes
eliminated the trolley (street-car)’ . . .
“Electric street railways and electric trolley buses were eliminated
without regard to their relative merit as a mode of transport. Their
displacement by oil-powered buses maximized the earnings of GM
stockholders; but it deprived the riding public of a competing method of
travel,” the report asserts, and quotes urban transit expert George M.
Smerk as saying that " ‘Street railways and trolley bus operations, even
if better suited to traffic needs and the public interest, were doomed in
favor of the vehicles and material produced by the conspirators.’
"
Progressing from the conversion of
rail systems to bus transportation, new market temptations appear on the
transportation scene:
“General Motors’
gross revenues are 10 times greater if it sells cars rather than buses. In
theory, therefore, GM has every economic incentive to discourage bus
ridership. In fact, its bus dieselization program may have generated that
effect. Engineering studies strongly suggest that conversion from electric
transit to diesel buses results in higher operating costs, loss of
patronage, and eventual bankruptcy. They demonstrate, for example, that
diesel buses have 28 percent shorter economic lives, 40 percent higher
operating costs, and 9 percent lower productivity than electric buses.
They also conclude that the diesel’s foul smoke, ear-splitting noise, and
slow acceleration may discourage ridership. In short, by increasing the
costs, reducing the revenues, and contributing to the collapse of hundreds
of transit systems, GM’s dieselization program may have had the long-term
effect of selling GM cars.”
But the last
chapter of mass transit history has not been written and the Snell report
views the present and anticipates the future as it looks at “the political
restraint of rail transit” by the continuing efforts of auto makers. “[The
auto industry] has used [its revenues from auto sales] to finance
political activities which, in the absence of effective countervailing
activities by competing ground transport industries, induced government
bodies to promote their product (automobiles) over other alternatives,
particularly rail rapid transit.
"On
June 28, 1932, Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., president of
General Motors, organized the National Highway Users Conference [whose] announced objectives
were dedication of highway taxes solely to highway purposes,
and development of a continuing program of highway construction.
Continued on page 5
Copyright © 1974 by Third Rail Press, © 1999 by The Composing Stack
Inc.
Reprinted by permission. Not responsible for typographical
errors.
*Quotations in this article are taken from “AMERICAN GROUND TRANSPORT,
A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus, and Rail
Industries,” © 1973 by Bradford C. Snell. Excerpts used by permission of
the author
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