Diesels and Dollars - 1958

This General Motors promotional film, made in 1958, is quite typical of their anti-electric transportation bias in that era. They make a valid point about fleet standardization, but they conveniently omit several facts. For one thing, they don't tell you that National City Lines {NCL}, an organization funded and controlled by General Motors at that time, purchased a controlling interest in the Philadelphia Transportation Company. The sole reason and purpose was to sell many hundreds of G M Diesel buses. I question the methods and business practices employed to do this, in Philadelphia and elsewhere at that time. I am not anti-bus and I truly believe that the bus had then and has now a place in the overall mass transit system. Every mode has it's place in a co-ordinated, unified system of public transit. It isn't and shouldn't be an 'either or' situation.

What this film fails to tell you is that while Philadelphia did indeed have some marginal street car lines, with a fleet largely in need of replacement, operating on tracks needing major overhaul, there were many routes that never should have been converted to Diesel bus. Certain street car routes operating on wide, uncongested streets {such as Spring Garden Street}, with good rail infrastructure and modern streamlined PCC cars should not have been converted to bus. Other very heavily traveled street car lines, also with modern PCC cars {such as Chestnut and Walnut Streets} should also not have been converted to bus. Ridership on those lines plummeted soon after conversion.

In many instances, the existing electrical infrastructure {substations, overhead wires, line poles} should have been used to standardize on a fleet of electric trackless trolleys, rather than Diesel buses. While true, trackless trolleys of that 1950's era did not enjoy the 'off-wire' capability that modern day trackless trolleys do now. But starting in the mid-1930's, nearby Public Service in New Jersey had a fleet of hundreds of dual mode trackless trolleys, capable of operating fully in either mode and with automatic trolley poles. Those vehicles were made by General Motors and the technology existed for a modern version in Philadelphia in the mid-1950's. That would have been the way to go. But who then could predict that years later, fuel prices would go through the roof and environmental issues would take front and center. Interesting that we've come full circle in North America now with millions of dollars being spent on new electric street car and light rail lines. A fortune in taxpayer money is now being spent to undo what General Motors did back then, from coast to coast. It took decades to realize and understand the mistake that was made.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/25/...

Fox News reports that street cars and trolleys are making a big come back in cities all across the USA. But don't look for any new trolleys in Philadelphia. The transit authority that operates the public transit system in Philly {SEPTA} openly hates trolleys and only operates what it's forced to. SEPTA has almost done more damage than G M and NCL did back in the 1950's. Be sure to watch the FOX News report.