THE CRISIS IN TRANSPORTATION

...What these instances signify is that American transportation is plagued by irrationalities in public policy...

...Nationalization is what troubles the transportation men and also the many who see such a development as the beginning-of-the-end of our private enterprise system...

...Three-quarters of our people now live in our cities...

...Half of the major common-carrier trucking companies operated in the red throughout much of 1961...

...interrelated problems plague all systems, and taxation and subsidy in one sector inevitably affect another...

...We must look into the feasibility of pipeline transport of solids like coal...

...The Doyle report's charge of overcapacity and under-utilization of our total transport system is evident...

...But no one had paid any attention to a succession of similar anguished utterances from bona fide transportation specialists either...

...Finally—and it is good to see that the Kennedy Administration is pushing this—there-,niust be Federal support for the encouragement of mass transit in metropolitan areas...

...the railroad then requests, from the Interstate Commerce Commission, discontinuance of local service...

...It is this: Competing highways, enjoying three-fifths of the total $5.4 billion Federal transport subsidy (1960 figures), force the heavily-taxed railroad to the wall...

...Yet they average only about forty-five per cent of capacity...

...Thus the United States' transportation system would go the way of that of the rest of the world's industrialized nations and become nationalized...

...Once the best intraurban railway in the land, it was destroyed by an immense system of freeways, now, more often than not, clogged bumper to bumper, devouring land removed from the tax rolls to accommodate cars averaging fewer than two passengers each, which then, on exit, monopolize the city's streets as a vast terminal...

...Result: greater speed, savings, and coherence, rather than delays and unnecessary costs...

...Among the nation's seventy-three major industries, transportation, at latest count, ranked seventy-first in earnings...

...Since 1958, when the Interstate Commerce Act was revised to facilitate discontinuance, some 150 trains have been dropped...

...What Rockefeller meant by "a national disaster" was bankruptcies and collapse of service, and then nationalization of the great common carriers—first the railroads, then the airlines...

...Inland waterway carriers are in trouble...

...Consolidation of railroads and airlines through merger is necessary and must be forcefully pushed by government, rather than left to the financial interests of the operators alone or prevented by regulatory agency efforts to keep alive moribund companies...

...undermainte-nance of equipment...

...A vicious circle sets in: reduced scheduled services by the common carriers...

...The Federal government pays a subsidy of $10 for every passenger...

...The remaining issue is the question of government organization...

...The rail network remains fundamental to this system...

...There are sufficient, if not necessarily good, reasons to explain the difference in public response to these two news developments...

...This so-called "excessive social investment" in transportation, creating redundancy, waste, and under-utiliza-tion, has been accompanied at the same time by a rise in the growth of private, unregulated carriage—not only private automobiles, but the private truck and barge fleets of large companies, whose legal (and often illegal or semi-legal) activities increas-rngly threaten the life of the regulated "for hire" common carriers...

...Yet when New York's Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller earlier said in a major speech that no less than "a national disaster" threatens the existence of America's "entire transportation system" unless there is "drastic and immediate action by the Federal government"—a remarkable statement—few paid any particular attention...

...The examples of nationalized transportation existing for generations in the midst of thriving free economies in western Europe, and in our own neighbor, Canada, should— but probably will not—quiet these unfounded fears...

...in 1961 they experienced a decrease of 15.6 per cent in income from 1960...

...we will be pressed as never before to reduce our costs so as to compensate for the lower European labor pay scale...

...It is difficult, but not impossible, to show how the well-being of the individual American is profoundly influenced by what is happening in transportation generally, as distinct from individual headaches like the New Haven Railroad...

...Besides government support for such research there must be public support of demonstration and test projects—for example, the Philadelphia experiment, in which mass transit is being subsidized to offer more frequent service at reduced fares, in an effort to save the railways and lessen urban auto congestion...

...Over-capacity and under-utilization are not confined to passenger service...

...It is faced with an immense new world competitor, the Common Market...

...This is essential to making better use of plant and personnel, to developing more efficient local, regional, and national route patterns, and to restoring competition between competing modes—rails, waterways, airlines, and highways...

...This is the result when transportation social investment costs outrun the gross national product...

...Measures must extend to improve metropolitan-wide planning of all land uses...

...Highways, airways, and waterways cannot be subsidized and the railroads be expected to survive...

...Here the consensus of experts is not clear...

...Also, EDWARD T. CHASE has been writing and working in the field of transportation for a number of years...

...The Doyle report says: "This cannot but add a great financial burden to the economy unless the economy experiences a commensurate growth of commerce . . . We find that the investment per ton-mile increased from 4.6 cents to 6.7 cents from 1946 to 1959 and that by 1975 it may reach 8.2 cents per ton-mile...

...The record shows a score of recent major studies detailing the plight of transportation in general— a million dollars worth of them commissioned by the Department of Commerce—but no action...

...we require a balanced transportation system, of every mode...

...What is the end result...

...During the past six months he served as part-time consultant to the Department of Commerce on the formulationof transport policy...

...But 120,000 commuters to New York city alone, 155,000 stockholders, and 134,231 employes are directly affected by the proposed Pennsy-Central merger...

...of vertical and short take-off-and-landing-aircraft...

...To accomplish this, all the different modes of transportation must be scrutinized together—each mode is complementary yet antagonistic to the other...

...Comparable space was devoted to the event by scores of other dailies...

...There must be reform in feather-bedding, the "full crew" practices which so exacerbate the headaches of the railroads, ultimately to labor's disadvantage...

...yet a hopelessly fragmented approach is guaranteed by the overweening concern of each regulatory agency (and its Congressional legislative committee counterparts) with its particular transport industry...

...Otherwise, remedial action by Congress will continue to be postponed and the attainment of national goals like economic growth, improvement in our balance of payments, full employment, and our capacity to compete with the Common Market will all be endangered...

...Simultaneously, the Civil Aeronautics Board, operating in total independence— not to say in ignorance—of the ICC, authorizes subsidies to local-service airlines over the same routes heretofore unprofitably, yet more efficiently, served by rail carriers...

...A less familiar sequence points up the economic absurdities in transport policy...

...With private, exempt carriage capturing thirty-nine per cent of the market, "a rapid deterioration of regulated carriage could be expected...

...Apart from the pipelines, which are a highly specialized category of transport, practically the only major facet of transportation that thrives is the manufacturer of the private carrier, the automobile...

...The National Bureau of Standards should develop and approve a family of interchangeable containers of less-than-carload-lots...

...The rising cost in transportation must be attacked by more research and development in transport technology...

...One obvious reason is that "America's entire transportation system" is an amorphous concept lacking personal meaning for the layman—it is simply a big and vague abstraction...

...A classic case is Los Angeles' extinct 900-car Pacific Electric Railway, which once covered 1100 miles of track radiating in every direction from the heart ot the city...

...The private carriers have a high percentage of one-way loads—and when, illegally, they contrive to carry commercial shipments on their return trips, they reduce business for the regulated "for hire" common carriers...

...The American merchant marine remains on permanent relief...

...Here are some eight points that seem basic: ¶There must be a substantial reduction in the $441 million annual state and local tax-load on the railroads...

...higher financing costs and consequently higher transportation costs for the public...

...The pinch in that competition will be over the costs of production...

...To break even, the local carriers must be seventy per cent filled...

...Secretary of Commerce Luther H. Hodges says there are more than two million dollars worth of studies on transportation filed in his department from earlier years...

...The airlines, meanwhile, have seen their load factor—the percentage of available seats occupied by revenue passengers—decline from 59.4 per cent in 1960 to 56.2 per cent in 1961, the worst year in air travel history...

...by 1980 or before, nine-tenths will...

...Recently, he planned and conducted a national conference on transportation...

...His articles have appeared in many American publications,including Harper's, The Atlantic, Commentary, and The Reporter...

...But nearly one-third of our rail network is carrying only 555 ton-miles per day per mile—only enough to warrant a single train load per week...

...The basic charge of the report (actually a compilaton of many reports) is that Americans have been reckless in creating a huge overcapacity in transportation, allowing grave imbalances to develop...

...Metropolitan centers with no overall planning become inundated with the traffic the Federally-subsidized highways dump into them...

...Of more immediate and general consequence is the fact that the rising cost of transportation based on waste, redundancy, and incoherence in services inevitably conflicts with important national objectives...

...Indeed, the basic reason for the sad condition of transportation is precisely the persistent failure of the nation to look at transportation as a whole, and to adopt policies and programs consistent with such an overall view...

...Yet the railroads, with a six per cent overall decline in passenger volume in 1961, continue the disastrous trend of many years...

...About three-fifths of the approximately five and a half billion dollars of Federal expenditures for all transportation went into highways last year, with waterways getting the next biggest cut, more than a billion, and airlines next, less than a billion...

...It was an important story and no doubt merited the space...

...The public soon must understand, however, why this merger (and there are fourteen earlier railroad mergers waiting final approval) is only one symptom of the dismal condition, not confined to finances, afflicting most of America's transportation...

...It faces a genuine challenge in its inadequate economic growth rate and use of its industrial plant...

...But experts like Dean James Landis and Wilfred Owen feel the real need is coordination of policy with national interests, and that this goal can best be achieved by placing responsibility for transport policy within the Executive office...

...Finally, an economically impoverished transportation system is in a poor position to undertake expensive research and development so as to create more efficient new transport technology...

...What must be considered are the ingredients of a new, integrated national transportation policy and the organizational reforms required in the government structure overseeing present or future transportation policies...

...While the nation seems poised for a new surge of prosperity, the transportation industry is, paradoxically, in deepening financial trouble...

...Besides, fuel taxes are an easy source of revenue, given the current automotive traffic volume...

...But this is minimal...

...Some sixty-three million private automobiles, with a capacity of from two to eight persons, move over our highways and streets carrying an average of less than two persons per car...

...Look at the extraordinary record of these local-service airlines...

...The Doyle report states that total tonnage capacity of our railroad system, despite some contraction in mileage, has generally been maintained, so that it could handle seventy-five per cent more traffic than it does...

...What is less easy is to pinpoint the underlying causes and suggest remedies...

...Authorization eventually is given for discontinuance...

...transportation is of critical importance in the style and the form our new urban areas take...

...The report further concludes that, if trends continue, the regulated common carriers will be threatened with extinction...

...The Crisis In Transportation by EDWARD T. CHASE rTTHE recent approval of the merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads by their boards of directors commanded a three-column headline on Page One of the New York Times plus two and a half pages of detailed reporting...

...It is said that thirty per cent of our rail network of 220,000 miles is uneconomic...

...Local officials presume they win office on highway building accomplishments...

...By 1975, according to the report, regulated common carriage will haul only sixty-one per cent of freight traffic...

...Transport expert Wilfred Owen, of Brookings Institution, says that the busiest ten per cent of the rail system carries an average of 39,000 ton-miles of freight per day per mile of line...

...Possibly the cardinal fault of an agency like the Civil Aeronautics Board is its zeal in maintaining the life of a given airline by giving it a piece of a profitable route, or some such patchwork attention, instead of looking to the overall health of the airlines' service as a whole...

...We are also running out of open land, and we are becoming a nation of urbanites...

...This is something the press can report to quicken the interest of the average man...

...Staff Director, Transportation Study Group, John P. Doyle...

...Even high school civics students now appreciate that as highways multiply, passenger rail service terminates, (The Federal government pays ninety per cent of the cost of all roads comprising part of the Interstate system...

...The philosophy behind this approach is that a Department of Transportation alone might perpetuate the problem of keeping transportation unrelated to national goals, that an independent department would become a huge institution acting as if transportation were an end in itself instead of being an indispensable means to serve more important ends...

...The railroads, with few exceptions, have either lost substantial money or have experienced the slimmest profits in their history—a decrease of thirty-one per cent in their net income from the 1960 figure...

...Among inter-city passenger buses, the average load of eighteen or nineteen passengers has not changed since 1949...

...and the heavily-taxed commuter lines and undervalued urban mass-transit lines decline...

...The assumption is that if transportation—the nation's largest single economic complex, on which we spend a fifth of our gross national income and on which the whole economy rests—that if this is nationalized, our "mixed" economy will in fact soon be totally socialized...

...Perhaps we can do without some of it, but we cannot let the whole network perish...

...Urban residents throughout the nation have depressing first-hand knowledge of similar experiences...

...The greatest single source of information on the transportation problem is contained in the massive study known among the experts as "The Doyle Report" (National Transportation Policy, A Report Prepared for the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States Senate, January 3, 1961...

...All too often these roads debase our finest land with commercial ribbon-strips along their borders and at interchanges...

...Half-empty trains testify to the fact that fewer Americans are riding the trains today than at any time since 1885, and sixty per cent of these passengers are commuters, cramming the trains for a short distance in the morning and again in the evening...

...The circle is maintained against a background of regulatory policies wedded to the principle of preserving the status quo, rather than to the concept of creating a dynamic, balanced transportation system responsive to new situations and infused with new technologies...

...Under this scheme, in place of the rail, steamship, airline, or trucking company, there would be a company simply selling transportation, using the means best fitted for the customer's need...

...It has a persistent, serious unemployment problem...

...The consequences of this failure have been far-reaching...

...Obviously, the public's interest has not been aroused...

...Politicians like Governor Rockefeller favor a Federal Department of Transportation...

...Los Angeles has belatedly awakened to the necessity of creating a whole new mass transit system...

...For example, the United States is confronted with the problem of preventing or ameliorating the recurrent slumps that have characterized the postwar period...

...In 1960 there were 113 cities, of the 500 served by local carriers, that produced fewer than five passengers daily, and twenty-eight that yielded fewer than two passengers...

...the Federal government picks up the tab on ninety per cent of the cost of all roads in the Interstate system...

...of trains, like Ford's "levacar," running on so-called air bearings—actually a cushion of air—at high speeds...

...This exception highlights some side-effects that are integral to transportation's general plight...

...The domestic airlines just experienced the worst year in their history, having lost $31 million...

...The result of expansion of carrier investment and capacity," states the Doyle report, "at a rate that so far exceeds the growth of gross national product and traffic volume naturally has resulted in an excess of transport that is unequalled in this century except during the major economic depression of the Thirties...

...The rescue of urban mass transportation is a priority matter now in Washington...

...But the cardinal priority, by whatever procedure, is to relate transportation to the country's needs, something which has never been done...

...Not as much public wisdom as public pressure accounts for the proportions...

...The time has come for the development of regional transportation companies, that is, transportation companies integrating various modes...

...Since the nation could not possibly afford the end of common carriage—private and exempt carriage simply could not accommodate all the nation's diverse transport needs, especially those of the small customers who must depend on common carriers—the government would have to take over...

...A coordinated national policy is essential...

...It is easy to elaborate upon scores of comparable irrationalities throughout transportation...

...But the average number of seats in each bus has increased from thirty-five to thirty-nine, producing an 11-4 per cent increase in unused seat-miles per bus...

...inadequate earnings...

...There must be recognition that tax policy and subsidy policy are critical in determining the very structure of our transport system...

...Owen suggests that what is required, therefore, is a national planning group within the Executive office, with transportation as a whole one of its basic concerns...

...Perhaps a Department of Transportation is also needed, to house the working staff responsible for research, administration, and housekeeping duties...

...In trucking and inland-waterway carriage, the growing phenomenon of private fleets accounts for extensive empty mileage...