I've heard similar stories from right across the States. It might have been
Cincinatti where the city councillors who voted to close the streetcars
were rewarded with Cadillacs for their service to the auto industry. Even
though the entire thing was corrupt to the core, it never did end up going
to the courts because there were sufficient loopholes in the laws to make
the anti-competitive practices borderline legal.
The same happened in other countries: Sydney's trams were torn up as soon
as the government could get away with it, and the NSWGR was dismantled from
the inside through political meddling; Auckland's public transport was
obliterated by their infatuation with the motorway; the UK lost all their
tram lines and a huge mileage of branch lines under the Beeching report.
The French closed a lot of their branch lines, and then spent so much money
on the TGV that their *Lignes Classique* are in a pretty poor shape. Coup
after coup in South America largely destroyed their functioning railways,
helped along by American interference. There's a similar tale of neglect
brought about through war in post-colonial Africa.
Politics and ideology kept the railways going in the Soviet Bloc—I guess
the military men knew how important the railways are for heavy industry and
as military supply lines. The system pretty much fell apart during the
capitalist robber-baron days of the 90s immediately after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, and has only recently recovered somewhat, though Soviet
vintage electrics and diesels that could rival an Alco for smoke still
predominate.
The exception to the rule seems to be Central Europe, and the Germans in
particular, as well as Japan. They weren't immune to closing lines, they
just didn't systematically destroy their functioning systems in the same
way that virtually everyone else did. And it's not like they didn't build
autobahns and multi-lane roads either. What makes the Germans and Japanese
so different? Japan, at least, can be explained away by the high population
density dictated by a difficult topography. Germany, not so much.
Robbie
On 20 September 2017 at 17:27, Tony Gallowayarg@...
[TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@...> wrote:
>
>
> Looks like I left the “had” out - “Indiana Railroad and a few other
> properties HAD to take on MU's debts”.
>
> I hate sounding illiterate.
>
> Tony G
>
>
> On 20 Sep 2017, at 5:07 pm, Tony Gallowayarg@...
> [TramsDownUnder] TramsDownUnder@...> wrote:
>
>
> Before my house fire I had a book about the Atlanta street railways and
> interurbans. In the foreword was a quote from Walter Chrysler that was in
> an interview published in a transit industry magazine, the Street Railway
> Journal I think.
>
> In this interview explicitly Chrysler stated it was the wish, aim and hope
> of the auto industry to drive the (privately owned) public transit industry
> out of business. I’m sure the date this was published was 1930, just as the
> Depression was hitting public transport ridership and revenue hard.
>
> At the same time GM was organising its National City Lines subsidiary to
> take over these distressed properties, the US supreme court was using the
> anti-trust legislation to separate traction operations from the power
> companies that owned them, forcing arguably viable traction companies into
> the hands of GM and NCL, and the collapse of Samuel Insull’s Midland
> Utilitities holding company that controlled the three big Chicago
> interurbans, the Indiana Railroad and a few other properties to take on
> MU’s debts forcing them all into bankruptcy.
>
> It wasn’t an easy time for the industry, with other factors as well (life
> expired plant and rolling stock needing replacement for example) that made
> it easy for companies to buy relatively cheaper buses and run on roads
> rather than renew their rail assets. What’s remarkable is anything survived
> this period. WW2 gave the industry a temporary boost, due to fuel and tyre
> rationing, but postwar the destruction continued and was stupidly
> replicated elsewhere, like here.
>
> Tony G
>
>