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I know bus and train service still exist but no where near what they once were. I wasn’t around prior to the interstate highway system being built. Was the interstate highway system the development that hurt bus and train travel the most? I’ve traveled by bus once and it was fine for shorter routes if you didn’t have your own vehicle, unable to drive, don’t trust your vehicle for such a trip, or don’t want to put those miles on your vehicle. But for longer distances a bus takes far longer than if you drove yourself. I tried mapping out a trip by train and was surprised by how long the trip was going to take as well as how much it would cost compared to flying to the same destination. That brings up another factor. Did the lowering of cost of airline travel impact bus and train service more than interstate highways or were they equally hurtful to bus and train service?
What made bus & train travel disappear, and urban public transit systems less efficient, was the organized dismantling of those systems in the 1950's by the petroleum and auto industries, together with the highway lobby. This consortium bought up urban transit systems around the country, ending some of the service, switching others over from electric tram and trolleybus systems to gas-guzzling buses, then cutting back on the scheduling, and devising less convenient routes. LA's transit systems vanished altogether. In the Bay Area, the commuter trains from the East Bay to San Francisco (the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was exclusively a train deck) were acquired in order to end their service, and they were replaced by buses. Tram and trolley systems in Seattle also were eliminated, the tram tracks torn up. Train service between major cities was also ended.
This was sold to the public as "modernization", but the purpose was to get transit off of electrical power onto petroleum, and also, to sell the American public on the superior convenience of the private auto. Interstate bus and train travel was also curtailed. There used to be two interstate bus systems: Greyhound and Continental Trailways. The latter didn't survive this change. After interstate road trips were popularized, Greyhound's service was cut back, as well. These industries sponsored an elaborate "Futurama" exhibit at the New York World's Fair, 1939/40, showing "cities of the future" full of freeways that would whisk commuters in private cars from suburbs to city centers for work. All of this was done to sell the American public on the automobile, and get them off of public transit, which had been quite popular.
Eventually, these industries were sued in federal court for the destruction of urban transit systems, and lost, but only got a slap on the wrist in the form of a moderate fine. They weren't required to restore the systems they'd destroyed.
This actually makes me wonder why they did not just build an interstate all those decades prior to post WWII as opposed to having chinese people lay down train tracks.
Construction for parts of the PA turnpike were started in the early 1880's, they just didn't know they were surveying and building a road. It was for a RR and was abandoned in the mid 1880's. Construction of the road began in the 1930's with the fist sections being opened in 1940 and most of it completed by the 60's. There is debate about this but it's billed as "America's first super highway" . There were other similar roads built before it but none anywhere the length.
Differences between a more modern highway and the PA turnpike are not that great. The obvious difference you will immediately notice is the median which is typically a few feet of shoulder and a concrete wall. Other highways may have this in urban areas but on the Turnpike it's even like this in rural areas. Not a lot of people are comfortable with moving at high speeds next it, it leaves very little room for error and on a left bend can obstruct your view down the road. On average it's also going to be much flatter(given the terrain) and straighter, it's built through the terrain as opposed to modern highways that tend to go around it.
Last edited by thecoalman; 05-13-2020 at 10:39 AM..
Actually the story is that the automotive industry (primarily The tire companies and Yellow Truck and Bus (a GM subsidiary) bought up the interurban rail lines and replaced them with busses. The truth is that the railways were already failing and were actually starting to replace segments of rail with 'motor busses' if ridership fell or major maintenance (from washouts, etc) was required. this transferred the high cost of right of way maintenance from the private companies to the government.
Then again consider what happened when Henry Ford utilized the means of mass production to bring the automobile within the reach of the common man.
Adding to that the insidious implementation of the credit card which made the upper crust automobile available to the common man seems to have put the final nail in the coffin. It's hard to take away that privilege once people have become accustomed to it.
Here on the prairie the towns were only about seven-eight miles apart. They were platted out that way because that's about how long a train could run without picking up more coal. Or at least that's what I have been told.
As short a time ago as my parents and grandparents' lives you could hop on a train and go to a larger town for shopping for very little money and return the same day in the afternoon.
And do you know that the great amusement parks were initially built with stimulus from the street car industry? It drummed up ridership on the weekend and gave the working poor a breezy place to get out of the city and recreate. A win/win.
I am reminded of when our small city needed new Twentieth Century streetlights so we could keep up with Minneapolis. We had lovely antique lights which would have remained solid for many years to come and had attractive workmanship. If necessary we could have adjusted the kind of lighting.
Well, our shiny new lights didn't last long and we were building "Old Town" with the few remaining well-designed elderly buildings and somebody decided it would be nice if we had old-fashioned street lights to match. I'm still shaking my head.
We want people to stroll and shop there but keep the four lane main street running through so all our college students can race through at forty miles an hour and we wonder why Old Town doesn't take off. LOL
Two glaring errors here: old ideas aren't always bad and personal automobiles aren't always good.
What made bus & train travel disappear, and urban public transit systems less efficient, was the organized dismantling of those systems in the 1950's by the petroleum and auto industries, together with the highway lobby. This consortium bought up urban transit systems around the country, ending some of the service, switching others over from electric tram and trolleybus systems to gas-guzzling buses, then cutting back on the scheduling, and devising less convenient routes. LA's transit systems vanished altogether. In the Bay Area, the commuter trains from the East Bay to San Francisco (the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was exclusively a train deck) were acquired in order to end their service, and they were replaced by buses. Tram and trolley systems in Seattle also were eliminated, the tram tracks torn up. Train service between major cities was also ended.
Not really. In the 1920ies the automobile became affordable to well paid factory workers and in the 1930ies the used automarket exploded. This along with the ability to buy a car on credit expanded car ownership. The automobile allowed people to go where they wanted to go, when they wanted to go and often get there faster.
This reduced demand for public transit which at best was never that profitable to begin with. By the 1930ies about 50% of households had a car. In addition in the 1950ies gas was much cheaper then and buses more capable. Street cars were old technology. By the 1950ies they had been around in one form or another for over 100 years. In fact in Chicago when the CTA was formed one of the biggest problems was old wooden el cars some of which had been in service for nearly 50 years by then. An EL car has about a 30 year lifetime and those el cars were well past that. Even worse for safety reasons they could not be run in the subway(fire) or coupled with the more modern(1920ies) metal cars.
The problem was that often private public transit was unable to modernize or replace it's equipment. Basically before gasoline and diesel powered busses there were horse drawn omnibuses that carried about a dozen people. The omnibus was the original form of public transit(excluding taxis). Street cars came about the 1830ies when they realized that a horse could pull a bigger load and do so longer if they put the carriage on rails, not to mention immunity from lack of pavement. Horse drawn street cars then took over leaving omni busses for areas where demand was too low to justify the installation of rails or where rails had not yet been installed. The next evolution was the replacement of the horse with cable cars and by the 1890ies\early 20th century with electric traction on rail replacing cable cars in most systems. In the 1910's some experiments with gasoline and trolley busses were made and they began to replace horse drawn omni buses in the 1920ies. In 50ies many trolleys were replaced with trolley buses and other types of bueses (gasoline, propane and diesel powered). The problem was that the cost of the rail and the electric cable fell on the transit agency where as the cost of the road fell on the department of transport. That along with declining ridership made electric rail traction less attractive and busses more economical. In addition buses could maneuver around blockages and run places where no cable or rail exists where as trolleys can not. Electric street cars do have one advantage, in that they can carry more people than a bus, but with declining ridership that was not useful.
Interstate bus travel very much remains but rail travel had to compete with buses, cars and planes. With the interstate highway system both cars and buses could benefit whereas before rail had a near monopoly on long distance travel. Before WWII airplanes lacked the range for non stop, coast to coast travel. In face the first coast to coast flight involved flying, boarding a train to travel by night, and flying again to the destination. The advantage of traveling by car is that you can use it to depart for your destination on your schedule(not the railroad or bus schedule), travel to your destination by whatever route you please stopping whenever and wherever you want, travel around your destination, and leave your destination whenever you please and do so cheaper than by rail. Buses got relegated mostly for those who could not drive.
If the US had invested in passenger rail to the same extent that it invested in airlines and highways, passenger rail would be a much more used mode of transportation.
Since the 1960s, look at how much US airports and highways have been upgraded.
But the only passenger rail line that has been upgraded has been the Northeast Corridor: the Washington to NY segment was upgraded in the 1960s to allow speeds of 125 mph, and the New York to Boston segment was upgraded in the 1990s to allow speeds of 150 mph.
But apart from a few upgrades in the 2010s around Chicago, to allow speeds of 110 mph, that's it for intercity passenger rail.
Elsewhere, there has been minimal investment in tracks and other infrastructure to allow more and faster trains. Intercity passenger trains around the US are slower than they were in the 1960s.
So yes, highways and airports did take a lot of passenger train business away, but improvements in highways and airports are progress. We should have invested in passenger rail to the same extent. This is a huge failure of public policy.
If the US had invested in passenger rail to the same extent that it invested in airlines and highways, passenger rail would be a much more used mode of transportation.
Since the 1960s, look at how much US airports and highways have been upgraded.
But the only passenger rail line that has been upgraded has been the Northeast Corridor: the Washington to NY segment was upgraded in the 1960s to allow speeds of 125 mph, and the New York to Boston segment was upgraded in the 1990s to allow speeds of 150 mph.
But apart from a few upgrades in the 2010s around Chicago, to allow speeds of 110 mph, that's it for intercity passenger rail.
Elsewhere, there has been minimal investment in tracks and other infrastructure to allow more and faster trains. Intercity passenger trains around the US are slower than they were in the 1960s.
So yes, highways and airports did take a lot of passenger train business away, but improvements in highways and airports are progress. We should have invested in passenger rail to the same extent. This is a huge failure of public policy.
I don't really believe that.
There are specific reasons the United States chose to invest in the interstate highway system and the system of paved US highways that existed before that.
Once you get away from the east and west coast, the USA does not have the population density that countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and the Netherlands have. This renders travel by passenger rail far less practical. Than there is the matter of the distances involved. It approximately 3,000 miles from coast to coast in America. Travel by passenger train for that great of a distance is a long and tedious trip indeed for all but a retired person on board to enjoy the scenery. Frequent stops make such a journey a slow one.
Than there is the question of flexibility. Rail lines don't run through all population centers. With a car, its not a big deal. You can drive anywhere. Taking the train would involve getting off at different stations and trying to catch a bus to areas not served by the railroad.
Railroads have a role to play in local and regional travel. However, I maintain today, that building the interstate highways was the right thing to do.
In short, conditions in the USA are different than those in Europe and our country lends itself far more to the private passenger car and the jet airplane for long distance travel.
There are specific reasons the United States chose to invest in the interstate highway system and the system of paved US highways that existed before that.
Once you get away from the east and west coast, the USA does not have the population density that countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and the Netherlands have. This renders travel by passenger rail far less practical. Than there is the matter of the distances involved. It approximately 3,000 miles from coast to coast in America. Travel by passenger train for that great of a distance is a long and tedious trip indeed for all but a retired person on board to enjoy the scenery. Frequent stops make such a journey a slow one.
Than there is the question of flexibility. Rail lines don't run through all population centers. With a car, its not a big deal. You can drive anywhere. Taking the train would involve getting off at different stations and trying to catch a bus to areas not served by the railroad.
Railroads have a role to play in local and regional travel. However, I maintain today, that building the interstate highways was the right thing to do.
In short, conditions in the USA are different than those in Europe and our country lends itself far more to the private passenger car and the jet airplane for long distance travel.
One principle justification for the Interstate Highway system was an artifact of the Cold War. It was designed to provide quick transportation of Troops and material across the country. A large troop movement could take place rather quickly, but having out runners going ahead, and blocking the access ramps, so the transports could move unhindered by local traffic. Of course, the large air transports developed in the fifties and sixties made that nearly obsolete.
It was combination of the Railroads making Passenger travel secondary to freight that began the kill off of Passenger train travel, and Air travel drove the dagger into the heart of it.
The trains in Europe do a fine business, but in the US, it is ridiculously cumbersome and time consuming to travel very far by train.
Passenger travel was always secondary to freight for the railroads. Passengers promoted the image but freight paid the bills is the way they put it. As mentioned upthread, passenger rail was lucky if it could just cover variable costs with nothing going toward the fixed costs used.
After WWII most railroads invested very heavily in new passenger equipment and did everything they could to promote passenger rail, with the expectation that passengers would return after wartime restrictions on travel ended.. That never happened as Americans bought cars instead.
Trains in Europe are completely different matter. They're government owned and enormous sums of tax money are lavished on them. It's a money pit but they are okay with that because it reduces the need to import oil which they don't have and it provides government jobs. Europe is also much more spatially compact.
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