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Attempting to rewrite history?
by JIM FOSTER
Several weeks ago I wrote an opinion piece criticizing SEPTA and its
operating policies and comparing some of the current practices to those
of its predecessor, the PTC, in its last years of operation under the
control of National City Lines, a holding company owned by General Motors,
Firestone Tire and Rubber, Standard Oil of California and several smaller
corporations providing bus service parts.
I contended, as I still do, that National City Lines while operating
as a so-called management and modernization enterprise used illegal and
extra legal means to intentionally downgrade service and destroy electric
urban rail systems, or at the very least run them into insolvency, forcing
them to be taken over by taxpayer funded municipal entities or face their
elimination. Once accomplished they then often become inefficiently run
bureaucratic and political albatrosses that consume subsidies while doing
little in the arena of efficient long range planning and at the same time
dupe the public and hide their manipulative practices with the assistance
of often incompetent boards and politicians with agendas of their own.
Two letters criticizing the accuracy of my supporting detail regarding
General Motors and National City Lines have been submitted to the Local
and they cover the same ground with suspiciously similar structure, making
their fine points with virtually identical language. Also conspicuously
absent in these critiques is the data that to any logical analysis proves
that the whole story is greater than the sum of its parts.
Michael T. Green and Henry J. Adamchik attempt to convince readers that
National City Lines was not a General Motors led holding company as I
indicated, referencing its 1936 startup date with names of its initial
principals from Minnesota. Existing documents and the results of federal
investigations clearly outline the GM, Firestone, Standard Oil control
regardless of a predecessor ownership and they further state the company
was organized largely by GM employees and executives. Furthermore an earlier
GM corporate arm was founded with the express and documented purpose of
buying up electric rail systems, tearing them down and then replacing
all equipment with only GM buses. National City Lines was simply a way
of making the General Motors name (and Firestone, SoCal etc,) once removed
from the process. I strongly recommend a reading of the report to the
Senate Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopolies delivered in 1974 by
Bradford E. Snell, summarized in easy reading on the Internet. This was
compiled long after NCL had done its damage and received the most outrageously
lenient punishment one could imagine after being found guilty of federal
charges in 1949. The Treasurer of GM was found guilty of criminal conspiracy
in the related Pacific Electric case but fined a dollar thanks to the
efforts of friendly politicians.
60 Minutes did an extensive documentary on the entire process several
years ago and makes the point that it was not only through NCL, but the
campaign contributions and buying of city officials that enabled the GM
monolith to acquire surface rail systems. They were further assisted in
by-passing PUC and local city regulations (politically) in making “temporary”
bus substitutions and then tearing up key sections of rail and removing
wire illegally rendering the system inoperative while mandated hearings
were held on the permanent replacement, rather than new electric cars
with upgraded infrastructure. Often by the time the hearings were concluded,
the rails were covered, wire was down and the cars scrapped while authorities
looked the other way. This was the exact process used by NCL when it reached
Philadelphia in 1955, and those who live in the Northwest may remember
that was the method used when the Route 53 (Wayne Avenue to Carpenter
Lane) was dismantled in the late 60s over massive protest by an aware
citizenry. Political influence got that done just as it did last year
with Route 56 on Erie and Torresdale avenues.
Additionally Messers. Green and Adamchik claim that NCL never “owned”
the PTC, SEPTA’s predecessor, only acquired a minority interest
at the request of the management. Do they think we just fell off a turnip
truck? Controlling interest is what gets the job done, and NCL expanded
its minority interest by getting blank check proxies from many of the
majority stockholders including some very prominent Philadelphians and
New Yorkers. With those proxies no one could stop them from within the
company, and with a friendly political structure, the largest surface
rail system in the United States (1600 cars and 567 miles of track) was
reduced to a shadow its former self in five years; with further paring
down in the next five.
The underlying purpose was to get the stockholders paid out and turn
the company over to the taxpayers and NCL had the formula down pat; they
had used it over and over again. The argument that they only were buying
up companies that were obsolete anyway also does not hold water as several
of those companies purchased had recently bought the ultra-modern (at
the time) PCC streamlined cars, only to have them retired with only a
year or two of use. In point of fact PTC bought ninety of those cars second
hand from St. Louis, Kansas City and elsewhere in the 1952-55 period,
clearly indicating that they were not prepared to dismantle trolley operations
“anyway” as my critics claim. Actually an executive of PTC
was in Detroit negotiating the purchase of their nearly new cars when
NCL took control in 1955. The order was cancelled and the dismantling
began in earnest.
Mr. Adamchik contends that the PTC had master plans originating in 1938
to make a full conversion to bus and NCL was only fulfilling management’s
wishes postponed by World War II. Why then did PTC place an order for
260 of the newest technology PCC cars in 1938-40; and followed that up
postwar with another 210 from 1946-49? A capital expenditure of that magnitude
in cars with potential service lives of 50 years hardly supports his contention.
What was planned was the selective conversion of some routes to electric
trolley buses and those plans were implemented beginning in 1941. Five
routes were converted through 1966. Incremental tailored modernization
is what keeps transit systems viable and financially sound. NCL’s
management policy was to provide the fastest route to the junkyard; public
be damned.
To prove my point of purely self-serving interest, from the date of NCL
control of the PTC they bought only General Motors buses from that day
forward. Virtually every tire was a Firestone, and fuel contracts and
other needs originated from the other corporate owners of NCL. Competitive
bidding was non-existent. Prior PTC operated 700 or so buses from Brill,
Mack, Twin Coach, ACF, and 1800(1946) trolleys from Brill and St. Louis
Car. The financial side of the story is even more eye-opening as the purchase
of 1000 buses over a very short period of time put the company in massive
monthly debt service, while management, if you can call it that, claimed
operating efficiencies would act as offsets. In actuality the opposite
came true as the bus maintenance curve after the first year or two goes
way up compared to streetcars and the life expectancy of a bus rarely
exceeds 10 years while a trolley can last 40-50. It did not take too long
for the PTC under NCL to meet the same fate as all the other systems they
acquired: the brink of bankruptcy and city takeover, and of course that
was the plan all along. NCL was the mortician for transit systems and
often the savior for stockholders. Then there was the case of who got
all that scrap copper wire! To this day the most valuable recycled commodity,
400 plus miles of that heavy-duty cable came down and much of it vanished
unaccounted for. Questions raised in the press at the time in response
to those reports went nowhere.
No one should conclude from my perspective that trolleys always work
better and buses have no place. Of course there are applications for both
in an efficient transportation network. What is clear however, and proven
time and time again all over the world, is that high-density structured
transit routes in urban areas are cheaper, cleaner, and have far less
environmental impact as rail rather than bus operations. Of course they
have to be properly constructed and maintained; something SEPTA has no
interest in doing. Stand at the Chestnut Hill loop when three or four
buses are continuously idling and measure the noise level against standing
silent, non-polluting streetcars. Multiply that by the thousands of vehicle
miles per week, month and so on and ask yourself where our transportation
tax dollars should be spent. Even more important one should ask if an
essentially unregulated and non-responsive management such as that in
place at SEPTA should be spending them.
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