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June, 2005
Back in 1997 Marin voters were offered Measure A, a 20-year transportation plan, funded by a _ cent increase in our sales tax which promised to improve local bus services, complete the 101 carpool lanes through San Rafael, while providing safer access and reduced congestion to schools by better care of sidewalks, bike paths and local roads, to ease the congestion caused by the 20,000 who commute daily between Marin and Sonoma counties. Measure A passed but then failed for lack of financing. Re-offered in November, 2004 it again gained voter approval. Al Boro. San Rafael mayor and member of both country and SMART transportation committees, expects cash flow from Measure A to begin arriving by January 2006.
Is anyone truly in charge, locked behind the wheel of a gas-guzzling machine, breathing his neighborÕs exhaust in that stop and crawl to and from the City? Does anyone ask WHY, in all those TV auto ads, the car is always speeding alone on the road or in the countryside?
Few drivers want to face the real cost of commuting to the City. A balance sheet suggests between two to three hours a day, or some 15 hours a week which may add up to 750 hours a year. Dividing this by eight, one finds himself with 94 working days wasted behind that silly wheel. Then add the cost of driving: CAL AAA’s composite national average for 2004 @ 68.9 cents a mile which includes auto, insurance, depreciation, maintenance. Add bridge tolls at $5 dollars a day or $25 a week, and parking? A quick check shows today’s spread from San FranciscoÕs financial district at $550/ month to an uptown open lot at $130-150. Even if your business owns the building, your company pays indirectly for your space in taxes.
Today the commuting Frenchman sips his aperitif in the air-conditioned comfort of le Traine a Grande Vitesse (TGV) , reading the afternoon edition as the countryside whizzes past at over 285 Kilometers an hour, while his Japanese counterpart, homeward-bound from Osaka to Tokyo, naps in the comfort of the Shinkansen, where the 185 Kilo/Meters per hour barely ripples the sake at his side. The Germans, meanwhile have been experimenting with MAGLEV (magnetic levitation) ts cities. To hide his campaign from the public eye, Sloan hired an unknown, E. Roy Fitzgerald, as a figurehead, advertising him as an Entrepreneur from the sticks. These industrial gangsters formed a company, National City Lines, and quietly purchased, first,Yellow Bus, America’s largest diesel bus builder, and then Omnibus, a bus-operating company.
National City Lines, headed by Fitzgerald, but privately funded by SloanÕs consortium, bought up rail systems in America’s cities, one by one. Their approach was simple: using political know-how and money they lobbied city councils, while paying Madison Avenue to tell the country “the trend was away from rail.”
The day National City Lines signed a purchase agreement, their staff took over. Rail management was fired, and the process of piecemeal destruction set in motion: Fares were increased, routes cancelled and trolleys taken out of service. Schedules were reduced, salaries of workers cut, and maintenance neglected. As rail systems thus self-destructed, a nationwide media campaign offered “modern, non-polluting diesel busses.” Eventually, the last trolley disappeared, along with the tracks. The consortium had systematically destroyed America’s clean, electric rail systems, replacing them, one by one, with their polluting diesel buses. By 1941, National City Lines owned the bus transportation systems in over 83 American cities across the country.
An independent observer, Commander Edwin Quinby, caught onto GM’s plot and to warn city fathers across the country, mailed out a 31-page brochure, outlining the takeover plan. GM hoisted an expensive public-relations campaign to discredit Quinby. Enough readers, however, got the news, and a grassroots protest brought an investigation by the Justice Department. In 1936, National City Lines, along with General Motors, was found guilty in court. The two were fined $5,000 apiece, while their management staff were fined $1 each. Later Justice Department investigations got nowhere, because by 1932 GM had created the National Highway Users Conference.
This powerful Washington lobby pushed for more freeways and silenced public discussion of diesel or gasoline pollution. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. headed the Conference for 30 years until another GM man took over.
With the post-WWII boom in home construction, President Eisenhower, in 1953, appointed the then-president of General Motors, Charles Wilson, as Secretary of Defense and added DuPont’s chief, as Secretary of Transportation (DuPont was then GM’s biggest investor). These two set out to pave over America with concrete for the auto. DuPont got Eisenhower to set up the Highway Trust Fund which funneled gasoline tax money into highway construction. Two thirds of these gas-tax funds went to build inner-city freeways. Meanwhile, GM, recognizing the limits of bus sales as contrasted with the growing auto market , changed tactics, and in 1972, convinced the intensely-lobbied House of Representatives to deny all funding for public transportation, thus hoping to reduce bus service. The Trust Fund was diverted to freeways. By the 1950’s buses were disappearing and everyone wanted a car. Thus while post-war Europe and Japan were busy rebuilding their rail transit, America was destroying hers.Though the House of Representatives in 1972 blocked monies for rapid transit, public pressure was beginning to make itself heard. San Francisco’s Mayor Alioto, in the 1974 Senate hearings, publicly questioned whether Òwhat was good for General Motors was good for the countryÓ, and by 1992, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) allowed local input into transit decisions. By 1991, some 25 cities across the country were experimenting with light rail.
1997 marked the 60th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, which now carries over 40 million vehicles a year. The last bridge construction bonds were retired in 1971, representing $35 million in principal and nearly $39 million in interest, echnology. Their present bullet train, supported by a magnetic field, cruises above its track at speeds of over 220 miles/hour. Back in December 2002 German Chancellor Schroeder and Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, together rode a German-built MAGLEV from Shanghai to its airport, a distance of 30 miles in only 8 minutes!
Few Americans understand why those quiet, non-polluting electric rail systems (trolleys) which once served all our major cities, suddenly disappeared like the dinosaurs, and most accept the automobile as their evolutionary replacement. However, it was no asteroid from outer space that wiped out America’s rail systems It was General Motors and their industrial buddies.
Back in 1922 when only one American family in 10 owned an auto. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., then GM’s president, decided to change this. With friends at Firestone Rubber, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum and Mack Truck, Sloan began secretly buying up and then destroying the rail systems in America.SMART ( Sonoma, Marin Area Rail Transit) will put its transportation plan on the ballot in November 2006, asking voters to back rail service from Cloverdale south to Corte Madera with some 14 stations. Prior to the ballot, environmental studies, already planned, will be made public. Northwestern Pacific Railroad right-of-ways from Willits south had earlier been purchased by both NPR Authority, and the Golden Gate Highway and Transportation District, and from Cloverdale south will be turned over to SMART. The right-of-way includes single, and in some areas double tracks. Present plans include increased ferry service from Larkspur Landing, and perhaps from San Quentin. With a branch rail, Port Sonoma may also develop ferry service to the City. The GG Bridge District will contribute a percentage of tolls to support ferries.
Billions wasted in Iraq and on Homeland Security may delay SMART financing. Most of the transportation funds Schwatzeneggar withdrew have been replaced, and unless Bush vetoes the Transportation Bill just passed by both houses our Rep. Lynne Woolsey will see we get our fair share Her efforts in Washington, have produced funds for the four year, $ 13.3 million Golden Gate seismic retrofitting which will create some 3,100 jobs overall The auto, oil , and highway lobbies will continue their fight against rail anywhere in the country, since commuter rail will, for many families, remove the necessity for a second car. Daily media attacks on Amtrak are part of their campaign.
Paying for rail requires political as well as economic cooperation. JapanÕs Shinkansen has thus survived 40 years. FranceÕs TGV paid for irself within a few years. Their new Paris to Lyon TGV has almost put Air France out of business over that route. Amtrak’s express Acela Service between Boston, New York City and Washington, DC, updated by a French firm, has captured much of both auto, and air commuter traffic between these cities. Just so, SMART, for an sound economic future must eventually secure a double rail right-of-way north to Willits, must offe r Òbullet-trainÓ passenger service and, as diesel costs rise, must seize the north-south freight and US mail business from the truckers to help pay passenger costs.
SMART’S plan to unload their rail commuters at Larkspur Landing may be only a temporary solution, and as population and traffic multiplies, rail, directly into the City remains an option. There is no question that the Golden Gate Bridge will support either a complete second deck with rail system or a monorail slung beneath the present deck. Extensive engineering studies all agree on the bridge’s ability to carry a light rail. Present studies show that today 30% of our 101 commuters head for San Francisco. SMART’S board has both direction and enthusiasm. Marin entrepreneurs who can peddle California wines in Europe and desktop computers in China can surely sell light rail to our voters.
(I am indebted to Martha Olson and Jim Klein, producers of the PBS documentary: TAKEN FOR A RIDE for much of the transit history, to the Golden Gate Bridge office and California AAA for statistics, and to Al Boro and Lynne Woolsey for political input. )
Filed under: Railroad, Streetcar, transit | Tags: San Francisco, Streetcar
C.W. Nevius
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Twenty-five years ago, San Francisco put a fleet of quaint vintage streetcars on the train tracks along Market Street. Today those cars are still running on the F-line, which rolls down Market, past the Ferry Building, and up the Embarcadero to Fisherman’s Wharf. They are beautifully restored, eye-catching tourist attractions, and a lot of fun.Unless you are actually trying to get somewhere.
“In the afternoon when I am trying to go home, they get so packed they don’t even stop,” said Tamela Lamboglia, who has been working at Pier 39 for more than 24 years. “I’ve started to walk all the way to the Ferry Building.”
The streetcars, sometimes called “museums in motion,” have committed the cardinal sin of public transportation: They have become too popular.
For example, Monday afternoon at Fisherman’s Wharf, around 2:30, I climbed on car No. 1053, a green and silver model that ran in Philadelphia in the 1940s. It was pretty full when I got on, but at the next stop – right at Pier 39 – hordes of tourists clambered aboard. After several calls to get people to move to the back of the bus, the driver announced that we were now aboard “an express to the Ferry Building.” Sure enough, we shot past passengers waiting at subsequent stops as if they were invisible.
“I see them pass by people every day,” said Pete Ingargiola, who works at an information booth at Pier 39. “It’s too bad, because the price is right and the cars go where everybody wants to go. They need more cars or bigger ones, or something.”
Armed with this kind of first-hand information, I decided to demand some answers. I got in touch with Rick Laubscher, president of the nonprofit Market Street Railroad, which promotes and helps renovate cars, and confronted him with the list of complaints: The cars were overcrowded, they were leaving passengers on the street, and regular local commuters couldn’t depend on them.
“Absolutely right!” Laubscher replied promptly. “Everybody has consistently underestimated how many people want to ride these cars.”
In fact, Laubscher’s organization has been lobbying long and hard to do exactly what Ingargiola suggested – add more cars.
“You could double the number of cars on the route,” Laubscher said. “We could be running cars twice as often.”
There are obvious problems. It isn’t easy to find vintage streetcars, or operators to run them. But the core issue is still something Laubscher says he ran into the first day they put the cars on the street. He overheard a high-ranking MUNI official – no longer with the agency – essentially saying that the old-time cars were cute, but of course they wouldn’t be actually running regular routes.
Today, to the surprise of nearly everyone, the F-line is a bit of a transit sensation. Municipal Transportation Authority spokesman Judson True says the vintage cars carry some 21,000 riders a day, more than all three of the more-famous cable car lines put together.
“Did I ever think it was going to get to this point? No,” said Laubscher. “I thought we’d demonstrate the concept and then move on. But I remember when we opened the line on Market in 1995. Right away we had 50 percent more ridership than the trolley bus it replaced. That’s when I said to Muni, ‘You may have a tiger by the tail here.’ “
The reasons are logical once you get past the old-timey look of the cars. For starters, by a quirk of the layout of the tracks, the line – which begins in the Castro, runs down Market and then travels to the wharf – hits many of the top destinations in the city.
“It covers an “L” that essentially covers the key corridors of San Francisco,” True said.
But there is also an undeniable aura to the cars themselves. Laubscher insists that, “sad to say,” some of the riders on the vintage cars won’t ride buses. He suggests they like the offbeat experience, but also the loving care that went into the restoration. There is polished hardwood, beveled glass lamp shades, and a hoarse toot of a train whistle from a bygone era.
Could nostalgia help solve reluctance to use public transit? Other municipalities are wondering if San Francisco is on to something. True says MTA has been contacted by several cities, most recently Houston, to discuss a similar idea in their transit programs.
So, to review, the cars are classy, unique and popular. There is just one problem: There aren’t enough of them.
Frankly, that isn’t going to be solved anytime soon. About 10 to 16 cars have been put in the pipeline for renovation, but no one expects them as soon as next summer, and 2010 looks like a better guess.
So for now, San Franciscans will have to be content with what they have: the quirkiest vintage transit system in the world. And it is just about to get quirkier. With the warm fall weather coming up, it is almost time for the famous “boat car,” an open-top streetcar that looks like a parade float with a prow and mast, to make its annual arrival on the streets.
Down at Fisherman’s Wharf, they always enjoy waiting expectantly for the boat car to roll up. Unfortunately, until the city can get more streetcars, it is likely to keep right on rolling, leaving them standing at the curb.
C.W. Nevius’ column appears on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Mostly a trail related meeting today, by the agenda. I’m recording it. White balance is always fun to mess with, usually starting with how did I do it last time. I forgot my tripod this time, tired from last night, took it in to the house. I have it propped up on one of the tv/monitors at the access channel table.
update 10:14; Port not on the agenda.
“No official contact with Goldman Sachs”.
update 11:41; trail guidelines won’t be decided until Dec 2008 when they are back up here next. This is to allow time for other areas at the other meetings, plus other agencies to comment. This also means other rail with trail proposals such as Eureka to Arcata will have to wait until it is decided.
update 12:01; one land owner had big issues, with the A&MR RR trail. Trail goes forward. It still has to come back for final approval.
update 12:05; City of Eureka allowed to exempt four crossings.
