THE REGIONAL RAILROAD AT HOME
Nearly six years ago I began a careful study of the possibilities of a
regional railroad development within the United States. At that time I had
not visited Europe. Yet a fairly thorough knowledge of the general plan of
her railway organization, acquired through a process of careful reading,
had made me cognizant of the regional plan as it exists there;
particularly of the French _reseaux_. It was then apparent--well before
our entrance into the World War--that the scheme of organization upon
which our roads had been upbuilt for eighty-five years was approaching the
end of its usefulness. Over-consolidation, the decline of real competition
between the separate carriers, the increasing unintelligent interference
of government with the minor details of railroad operation, the decline of
morale--each of these things separately, all of them together, bespoke the
slowly approaching end of our old order of railroad things.
What was to replace it? Government ownership? Some of the people who in
1916 had a stray thought or two that the state ownership and operation of
our railroads might not be such a bad thing after all, by the end of 1920
were pretty well disillusioned. At the beginning of this book I reviewed
in some slight detail the achievements and the failures of the United
States Railroad Administration. It proved that in the centralization of an
entire railroad structure of this land certain great operating economies
might be accomplished; it also proved quite as definitely the fact that
our 265,000 miles of railroad consolidated into a single structure was far
too clumsy and too unwieldy for any sort of efficient operation
whatsoever. A paradoxical statement in sound, but one in fact quite
accurate.
Three years ago I attempted the fabrication of alternative railroad
centralization and decentralization schemes. In the one I bowed abjectly
to our great American god of competition. To the limit of my ability and
knowledge I recognized banking control, natural traffic routes and
breaking points, and interlocking directorates and ownerships. On paper I
laid down a number of "competitively consolidated" railroads--not more
than twenty, or at the most twenty-five,--for the entire United States. I
linked widely separated roads because they already had linked themselves
by joint ownership; I split New England in twain, giving the New Haven to
the Pennsylvania and the rest of her railroads to the already overburdened
and somewhat unwieldy New York Central. Such moves followed the logic of
Wall Street. The comfort and convenience of Boston mattered not at all.
Did she not have competition? What mattered it that under such a plan the
Baltimore and Ohio, the Erie, the Lackawanna, the Lehigh Valley, or the
Canadian roads would have no entrance either to her or to the fine
industrial territory about her, save over the rails of competitors? That
was a mere detail!
And while Boston might have the competition of two roads, little of the
rest of New England would. As I have already said in this book, railroad
competition may be the industrial necessity, nay even the very breath of
commercial life, to such fine manufacturing towns as Rochester or Akron or
Dayton or Grand Rapids, but how about such fine manufacturing towns as
Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, and Providence? Are they not also
entitled to the breath of commercial life? Yet to give these four big
typical New England towns railroad competition would mean the complete
dismemberment of the compact New Haven system--an almost utter
impossibility. Southern New England is already pretty tightly set as a
simon-pure railroad region. It can be regarded as nothing else.
So I tore up my "competitive consolidation" plan and began work trying to
place the entire country on the simon-pure regional idea, beginning with
New England, which can easily be considered as a single region even though
Boston shudders at the mere thought of such a thing. And in fact from the
point of view of better operation New England would far better be divided
into two regional railroads, each with its headquarters in Boston. One of
these roads would embrace the Boston and Albany and the roads south of it,
the New York, New Haven, and Hartford and its controlled properties, the
Central New England, and the New York, Ontario, and Western. Incidentally
this last road is something of a teaser in any regional planning. From
Campbell Hall, New York, where it connects with the Central New England
and the New Haven (by way of the Poughkeepsie Bridge) down to Scranton and
the heart of the anthracite district, it is an essential part of New
England's railroad system. From Cadosia--where the Scranton branch
diverges from the present main line--north to Oswego it decidedly is _not_
New England. There its value is very questionable, even for local traffic.
From Oxford to Oswego, in any new order of things, it might either be
given to a combination of the Erie and Lackawanna or else to the New York
Central--neither road probably would be bidding for the opportunity.
Return to New England. Just as the present Boston and Albany would make a
good east and west main-stem from Boston through Massachusetts to Albany
for our newly created Southern New England Lines so would the erstwhile
Fitchburg perform a similar office for the Northern New England Lines,
which would include the Boston and Maine, Maine Central, Rutland, Central
Vermont--probably, as to-day, right through to New London--and the Bangor
and Aroostook. There would be left when this was done but two separate or
"foreign" roads in the New England territory. And these would be "foreign"
in the fullest sense of the word--the Grand Trunk (just now being absorbed
into the Canadian national railroad system) and the Canadian Pacific,
which reach across Maine toward Canada's winter ports upon the Atlantic;
Portland, St. Johns, and Halifax. It is not conceivable that these lines
would be disturbed, any more that we should wish Canada to disturb the
important links of the Michigan Central and the Wabash across the
southwest corner of the Province of Ontario.
A good many people attempting this very difficult problem of regionalizing
the railroads of New England have attempted to leave the Boston and Albany
out of their calculations, which not only spoils the picture but makes the
entire regional plan almost utterly senseless. Others doing the same thing
have attempted to balance matters by giving the New Haven to the
Pennsylvania, which is perhaps a little worse. That distinguished student
of American railroads, Professor E. Z. Ripley of Harvard, who undertook
recently a regionalization scheme at the behest of the Interstate Commerce
Commission, fell into no such error. He gave New Haven to the Baltimore
and Ohio, and I suspect did it knowing full well that the Pennsylvania,
having been offered the New Haven long ago and having refused it, would
probably not have a change of heart in the near future.
In its recent close new traffic alliance with the New Haven--an alliance
whose outward expression consists very largely of some new through trains
and sleeping-car services from New England by way of the Hell Gate Bridge
and the Pennsylvania Station in New York City--the Pennsylvania
undoubtedly has all of the New Haven that it can easily digest. Broad
Street cannot be anxious to undertake the management of the Litchfield
branch in Connecticut, or the Chatham one down Cape Cod way.
Yet I hear you asking Professor Ripley, if the Pennsylvania does not want
to buy the New Haven, how much more so would the Baltimore and Ohio, whose
terminals in New York are weak and whose finances generally are in a far
more precarious condition, want to attempt the thing? Can the keen-minded
Mr. Willard at Baltimore be more anxious than the keen-minded Mr. Rea at
Philadelphia to undertake the management of jerk-water branches in
Connecticut or in Rhode Island or down on Cape Cod? In answer to all of
which a Harvard eye of deep wisdom would be winked. Mr. Ripley knows well
that the New England railroad should be purely a regional railroad--or two
regional railroads--and yet I think that he would be quite willing to
embrace the suggestion of the Boston banker that its ownership--not an
enviable honor to-day or apparently for many days to come--should be
divided between the three or four or five trunk-lines that it serves.
This entire question of the probable ownership of the regional roads I
have left until the succeeding and final chapter of this book. I do not
agree in the opinion of many bankers that the regionalization of the roads
should be attempted in a supine bowing to their financial results of
recent years, and so should be based upon these showings. I believe that
it should be based fundamentally upon the service needs of the communities
that the regional roads of to-morrow will have to serve. The Southern Tier
of the state of New York for too many years suffered set-backs from the
fact that virtually its sole railroad servant was a historic line, which
wholesale fraud had doomed to a lifetime of perpetual near-paralysis.
* * * * *
So much for New England. Such planning is typical of that which might be
expected of any non-competitive regional plan. Along the entire outer or
coastline rim of the United States the regional plan without compromise or
variation works out pretty well indeed, all the way from the proposed
Northern New England Lines that you have just seen out to the Californian
railroad, or the Puget Sound Lines, which would immediately adjoin the
Californian upon the north. Along the outer edges of the country it would
be easy to devise. It is a pretty plan, and in its simplicity most
beguiling. And yet when one comes to the center of the country this same
simple non-competitive regional plan becomes almost utterly impossible.
After all we are working with things as they are and not merely with
things as we should like to have them.
A careful study of the rival plans--non-competitive regional and highly
competitive regional--has led me to a firm belief that the real solution
of our problem of railroad organization in this country lies in a
compromise between them. Were we to start afresh to plan the railroads of
the United States, supposing that not a mile of track had been laid down
between the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific and that our vision was
sufficiently Aladdin-like to foresee the present growth of the land
(really built up upon that very railroad development), we might well have
adopted a purely regional plan, as did the French so long ago. But much as
we may admire such a theory we cannot entirely ignore hard facts--the
important properties already built and well developed, the recognized
making and breaking points of traffic, the individual morale and tradition
of the several roads--the sort of thing that we have shown, despite all of
its recent labor troubles, still so existent upon the Pennsylvania and
some other roads.
So in compromise we use the purely regional idea where the purely regional
idea best serves high theory and the broad pathways of hard fact and
established principle. We begin in New England and there we create an
autonomous regional railroad--probably two, for reasons which we have
already stated--each as we have seen with headquarters in New England's
traditional capital, Boston.
Next we cross the Hudson River and tackle the great congested railroad
district that lies between it and the thousand-distant cities of Chicago
and St. Louis as a bloc. Here begins our problem in dead earnest. Shall we
make two great regions of most if not all of it--the one to the north with
the dark-green cars and the traditional name of New York Central, and the
one to the south occupying all the rest of the territory down to the
Potomac and the Ohio River with the wine-red cars and the traditions of
the Pennsylvania? No, not unless we want to consider the operation of two
great railroads of between twenty-five and thirty thousand miles of line
each. If we are to have any sort of intensive or good operation this is
out of the question. With twelve thousand miles to be operated, each of
these roads at times already flounders.
No, I think that we can do better than that. We can easily make four long
narrow regions, stretching from New York about four and five hundred miles
to the west, and to these give auxiliary regions, or rather regional
railroads, further on, to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. The
most northerly of these will be, of course, the New York Central, the unit
management of which will be terminated or broken at Buffalo--as of other
days--and to which will be handed the Delaware and Hudson, north of
Albany, possibly the northern portions of the Ontario and Western, and
some lesser properties. It might be possible to go even further and give
the generally efficient even though somewhat unwieldy New York Central the
Lehigh Valley, the Lackawanna, the Erie (east of Jamestown), the Buffalo,
Rochester, and Pittsburg, and the rest of the Delaware and Hudson. But I
hardly think that this would be practicable. We are trying, even in our
theories, to keep our feet on the ground.
It would be better by far to take this last group and make it the second
of our long, narrow northeastern regions--call it, if you will, the
Erie-Lackawanna and place its eastern terminals at Albany, at New York,
and, by means of the absorption of some sixty miles of the Reading, at
Philadelphia too. This would make a well-balanced and compact group,
fairly competitive and yet accomplishing great economies in the common use
of trackage and terminals. The wastage in these things alone is hardly
less than appalling, the opportunities for saving tremendous.
The third of this particular grouping of regions would be quite naturally
the Pennsylvania. It too would be terminated as of other days, at
Pittsburg, although, as we shall presently see, with its own auxiliary
regional railroad it would go into the chief cities east of Mississippi.
And finally the Baltimore and Ohio! In an earlier plan, and in an earnest
seeking for the simon-pure regional grouping of our railroads, I sought to
thrust this historic property--not only one of the very oldest of our
American railroads but the only one which has existed eighty years without
a change of name or important change in its organization--into the
melting-pot with its traditional rival, the Pennsylvania. But that would
not go. Tho two metals refuse to amalgamate.
But suppose one takes the Baltimore and Ohio, chops it off at Parkersburg,
at Wheeling, and at Pittsburg--as one did with the Pennsylvania--and adds
to it the greater part of the Reading, the Central Railroad of New Jersey,
the Western Maryland, and one or two much lesser properties. The result is
a fairly compact property, sufficiently competitive in its reach to the
larger terminal cities of its territory to appease those who must continue
to bow the knee before that particular god of business, and yet enough
unified to be easily handled from its traditional headquarters at
Baltimore. That would seem to be more generally satisfactory than the
obliteration of the Baltimore and Ohio, with its fine traditions, its good
morale, and its general record of excellent service.
* * * * *
So much then for our four regional railroads to lie north of the Potomac,
west of the Hudson River and east of Buffalo, Pittsburg, and Wheeling. How
about the region that lies immediately west of these three last important
gateway cities? Shall we consider those great railroad States of Ohio,
Indiana, Michigan (the lower peninsula), and Illinois as a great single
non-competitive region, in full accord with the high theory of the
regional plan? No, not if we have any real regard for the feelings of the
residents of those four great States. A single railroad for those four
States might be workable, but I doubt it. I even doubt if you could
operate successfully either a single railroad for either Ohio or Indiana.
Illinois we shall leave out of consideration for the moment, while
Michigan would probably be pleased as Punch to have her beloved Michigan
Central returned to her as her own regional railroad, with its eastern
terminals, as of yore, at Buffalo and at Suspension Bridge and its chief
western one at Chicago--a single, independent, autonomous railroad
property with a genuine presidential headquarters at the very important
city of Detroit.
It is south of Michigan that the problem complicates. And here it is that
I can only see to-day, and for many many hundreds of days to come, the
retention of a pretty generally competitive transport plan. Regions, yes,
if we still like the sound of the word. But regions which interlace so
that in reality the word becomes a good deal of a misnomer. The New York
Central Lines West (formerly the Lake Shore, the Big Four, and the
Pittsburg and Lake Erie and the Lake Erie and Western), reaching from the
terminal of the parent property at Buffalo out to Detroit, Chicago, St.
Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg, would have a president and real
headquarters at Cleveland; the Erie-Lackawanna West would consist of the
Wabash (east of the Mississippi River), the Nickel Plate, the Erie (west
of Jamestown), the Wheeling and Lake Erie, the Clover Leaf and the
Bessemer and Lake Erie. The Pennsylvania Lines West would be virtually as
they existed prior to the recent after-the-war reconsolidation, but with
the addition of a needed feeder into Detroit; and finally the Baltimore
and Ohio West would consist of its present property plus the Cincinnati,
Indianapolis, and Western, the Monon, and the Hocking Valley--all with
headquarters at Cincinnati. That interesting little cross-country road of
the interesting Henry Ford, the Detroit, Toledo, and Ironton, might easily
fit into the westerly region of the Pennsylvania, while the Baltimore and
Ohio would be given at least a trackage entrance into Detroit over the
Pere Marquette, so as to keep it on par with its three regional
competitors. The rest of the Pere Marquette would be merged into the
embracing Michigan Central.
Just as this region, almost immediately east of the Mississippi River,
bids fair to remain competitive for an indefinite time, so is the
territory immediately west of that great stream also bound to remain
competitive. Reserve the greater part of Illinois Central for future and
separate consideration, and now come to that Middle West territory. Are we
going to create simon-pure regions there and ignore the fine traditions of
properties such as the Burlington, the Rock Island, and the Santa Fe? No,
not if we have any real sort of wisdom. North of them the problem is far
easier of solution. The Milwaukee will merge quite easily into the
Northwestern; although to operate the combined properties through to the
Pacific coast would require at least three separate regional
organizations--the Northwestern, between Chicago and the Missouri River,
the Montana Lines from there to Spokane, and the Puget Sound Lines from
there to the actual shore of the Pacific. Into these almost purely
regional systems would also be merged the Great Northern and the Northern
Pacific. The Burlington's line into the Twin Cities (St. Paul and
Minneapolis) would cease to be. And in fairness to that road the
Milwaukee's lines to Omaha and Kansas City would be withdrawn from the new
Northwestern combination and parceled out between Santa Fe, Rock Island,
and Burlington. Into such parceling would also go the always perplexing
Chicago Great Western and the extraneous arm of the Illinois Central
between Chicago and Omaha, running at right angles to the main-stem of
that important system and to a larger extent disassociated from it.
It might be found more practicable to bring Union Pacific directly into
Chicago over the rails of one or the other of these last two properties
(Union Pacific's financial interest in Illinois Central already is a
powerful one), although the Union Pacific's operating heads would probably
prefer one of the routes between Chicago and Omaha discarded by the larger
Northwestern grouping; the present Milwaukee between those two cities is
better built and so more easily operated than Illinois Central or Chicago
Great Western. Union Pacific for a long time has felt that it has the same
right as its chief transcontinental competitor, the Santa Fe, to a direct
entrance into Chicago. In a way such as this it would be brought to a
parity with the direct, although longer, southern route.
"But," you interrupt, "how about Southern Pacific in such a case? It is
also a pretty warm competitor of the Santa Fe."
To bring both Santa Fe and Union Pacific into the Chicago gateway as
transcontinental competitors and bar out Southern Pacific would be indeed
grossly unfair. I have no intention of doing anything of the sort. Cross
quickly with me from the Middle West territory to the lovely Pacific
coast. Here again we think clearly in our own terms of purely regional
railroads. Two of them would occupy the extreme coastal district all the
way from the Mexican line to the Canadian. The most southernly of this
twain is the Californian railroad, a fine, dignified name for a fine,
dignified railroad extending well beyond the bounds of even the great
Golden State, north to Medford, Oregon, and east to El Paso, to
Albuquerque, to Salt Lake, and to Ogden. Within this huge and rather
sparse territory--sparse as compared in a rail traffic sense with the
territories west of the Mississippi River--we should have an absolutely
non-competitive railroad, but under strict regulation operated for the
greatest good of the greatest number. That has been done before in
California; it is being done to-day and most successfully. The Southern
Pacific is usually most responsive to its huge non-competitive territory.
It gives to it in most cases an adequate service.
New England lends itself to the non-competitive and highly economical
regional railroad. So does the west coast too, but because of its giant
sweep we give this last seaboard two regions, the one to the north of the
Californian railroad, the Puget Sound Lines, extending, as we have seen,
north from Medford, and west from Spokane as well as south from Vancouver,
British Columbia, and northwest from Ogden, Utah.
East of these two great railroads--and yet neither of them too intensive
for successful management by a single executive head--are the Colorado
Lines, embracing roughly the main mass of railroad trackage within the
State and extending north to Cheyenne and west to Salt Lake, by way of
the present lines of the Denver and Rio Grande as well as by the yet
uncompleted Denver and Salt Lake. It is a far smaller region than the two
we have just considered, yet a territory of a considerable traffic and,
because of its location, necessitating the most intensive sort of
operation.
Now we begin to get these roads running down into the immediate Southwest
from Chicago and into their proper relationship--the Rock Island, with its
lines from Chicago, St. Louis, and Memphis, coming together and reaching
to El Paso and out to the Colorado Lines near the eastern Colorado border;
the Santa Fe, taking the original Missouri Pacific between Kansas City and
St. Louis for a much-needed entrance into the latter city and touching the
Colorado Lines at La Junta and the Californian both at Albuquerque and at
El Paso; the Burlington shorn of its Twin Cities line, but given either
the Missouri Pacific west of Kansas City or the former Kansas Pacific
(to-day a detached but well-built branch of the Union Pacific) or both and
terminating both at the Colorado State line and, by the acquisition of the
Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient and the building of a few hundred miles of
railroad, with the Californian somewhere in the general neighborhood of
Albuquerque.
Here is balance. Here is a fair adjustment between logical competitors,
the retention of competition where it is not practicable to eliminate it,
and its abolishment where it is feasible to uproot it and establish great
operating economies in the wake of the change.
* * * * *
We are not quite done. We have hardly considered the South. It is very
much entitled to consideration, with its great growth in the last few
years and its wonderful opportunities of the immediate future. But
because, like California, it still has its intensive growth in the future
rather than in the past, it is not too late to bend it into the economic
regional plan.
We left the Californian railroad with an important eastern terminal at El
Paso. El Paso is in Texas, even though it is barely in it, and so becomes
quite the logical western terminal of the Texas lines, which would
exclusively cover in our scheme virtually the entire State east from
Beaumont, Shreveport and Texarkana and south from Dallas and Fort Worth.
It might even be possible to give the Texas regional system a direct
entrance into Kansas City by acquisition of the entire Kansas City
Southern, but I would doubt the wisdom of this. It would have the effect
of throwing the delicate competitive shading remaining about that very
great railroad center considerably out of balance. For if Kansas City by
direct line, why not St. Louis or even Chicago?
No, that would hardly do. The Iron Mountain reaching in a splendid
strategic position from St. Louis to Texas, shorn of its wretched
mesalliance with the Missouri Pacific and given instead the Alton and
certain portions of the 'Frisco and Missouri, Kansas, and Texas systems,
would make an excellent feeder for the Texas Lines right through to Kansas
City, to St. Louis, and Chicago, and still avoid the operation of too many
miles or too attenuated a single system under one executive head.
Meanwhile the competitive factor in the competitive territory which we
have permitted to remain within the land would be appeased by the fact
that the Rock Island, the Santa Fe, and the Burlington would also bind the
Texas Lines to Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. Our plan continues to
balance, and to balance extremely well.
The Texas Lines would have still another competitive entrance into
Chicago. We will take the Illinois Central--deleted, if you will recall,
of its rather superfluous line to Omaha--and make it the main-stem and
core of a far larger railroad which we may well give the more dignified
and embracing title of Mississippi Valley railroad. From New Orleans
straight north to Chicago, west to Beaumont, northwest to Shreveport and
to Little Rock, possibly east to Mobile, and northeast to Birmingham--here
is the making of a really dominating and yet very logical regional
railroad. It also might and probably would be both practicable and
possible to make it live more closely to its name and give to it the line
along the eastern bank of the upper Mississippi, between St. Louis and St.
Paul, now operated by the Burlington.
* * * * *
There still remains the southeastern corner of the United States--and
right here our problem reaches its final and most perplexing phase.
Whether to rearrange it in two or three simon-pure regions or to have two
or three competing systems within a comparatively large regional district
is a question not easy of correct solution. I believe that the latter is
the solution most likely to come, however. The inter-ownership of the
Atlantic Coast Line and the Louisville and Nashville railroads is a factor
not easily to be ignored. Ranged against this combined system--which in
its final entity probably would include the Nashville, Chattanooga, and
St. Louis and the historic Georgia railroad--is the huge Southern railway,
upon which much thought and money has been expended within the last ten or
twelve years, and which would meet it at virtually every important
competitive point.
Only two other important railroads occupy this southeastern territory,
south of Virginia--the Central of Georgia and the Seaboard Air Line. The
first of these is the property of the Illinois Central and yet could not
logically be made a portion of the Mississippi Valley railroad which we
were outlining but a minute ago. The economic thing probably would be to
parcel out these two properties, and several smaller ones, between the new
Atlantic Coast Line and Southern railway combinations and finally retain
for each of these their present valuable entrances into the City of New
Orleans.
A great portion of the Seaboard Air Line lies in Florida, but Florida like
New England and Texas and California lends herself quite readily to the
absolute non-competitive regional plan. A Florida railroad would be
touched by the Atlantic Coast Line and the larger Southern railway at
Jacksonville, at Pensacola, and at intermediate points.
And finally, Virginia! She too lends herself to the regional plan, with
the sole exception of the north and south lines of the Southern and the
enlarged Atlantic Coast, the first coming north toward Washington through
Charlottesville and the second through Richmond. The rest of the rails in
both of the Virginias might very logically be grouped into a single great
efficient system which would stretch from tide-water in the neighborhood
of Norfolk back over the mountains to the Ohio River, and even beyond it
to Columbus, to Cincinnati, and to Lexington. That the chief business of
such a railroad would be the transport of coal goes without saying. With
its vast combined water terminals in the neighborhood of Hampton Roads, it
would be in a dominant position either for the export of its bituminous
fuel or for its further shipment, both north and south, by the highly
economical water lines along the coast.
* * * * *
Economy is indeed a watchword for this plan. I shall not attempt to take
your time or dull your interest in its details by giving you too many of
them. A very few single but rather typical examples of the savings to be
made, were it ever to be placed in effect, will be illustrative. Here for
instance is that so-called Southern Tier of New York--the long row of
counties which lies for nearly two hundred miles against its Pennsylvania
line. Many years ago the historic Erie pushed its rails through the
Southern Tier. From its main line--originally built from
Piermont-on-Hudson to Dunkirk, New York--it gradually shot branches north
into the heart of the Empire State to Canandaigua, to Rochester, and to
Buffalo. Eventually it made an interlacing of these branches, and in those
days--when men hardly dared dream of the motor-car or the improved
highway--the branches generally were profitable.
The Rochester branch, about one hundred miles in length, was typical of
many of its fellows. It diverged from the main line at Painted Post, just
west of Corning, and for the next forty miles threaded a very rich and
prosperous valley situated between deep hills. It was a small railroad but
essential, and for many years it prospered, to a moderate degree at least.
Then in the early eighties there came a competitor through that narrow
valley. The rich Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western, ambitious for a line
of its own into the growing Buffalo gateway, in 1882 and 1883 laid down
its rails alongside the Erie--along the main line all the way from Great
Bend, Pennsylvania, just a few miles east of Binghamton, New York, to
Painted Post, and along the Rochester branch as far as Wayland. The new
railroad was a main-stem; double-tracked it gave frequent and swift
service. The little Rochester branch line of the Erie shriveled up and all
but died.
In the regional organization that you have just seen me outline, I have
brought together the rich Lackawanna and the poverty-stricken Erie, along
with the Lehigh Valley, the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg, the
southerly divisions of the Delaware and Hudson, and the Ulster and
Delaware railroads. It takes no large amount of imagination to forsee that
such a combination--and most railroad executives and broad-visioned
bankers will agree that it is a logical one--can greatly simplify
operation in southern and western New York and abandon miles of railroad
that should have been abandoned many years since.
In effect, this Erie-Lackawanna system would have at least two separate
main lines from its combined terminals at New York (how effectively these
might be combined we discovered when we saw the possibilities of the
electrification applied to the suburban traffic of the New York
metropolitan district) all the way to Binghamton, a little more than two
hundred miles distant. From that point west to the brisk small city of
Corning the traffic could be consolidated upon one of these main lines,
possibly three-tracked or four-tracked, and the other abandoned--a quick
and easy solution of some perplexing grade-crossing problems in the
communities that it would thread. Similarly the old antiquated Rochester
branch of the Erie could be abandoned all the way from Painted Post to
Wayland. The parallel double-track would render it of no further use.
I could take the atlas maps of western New York and show you many, many
more miles of railroad which could be abandoned profitably to-day, not to
the hindrance but to the positive benefit of the communities which they
are supposed to serve yet no longer serve, efficiently at least. But let
us turn our attention from trackage to terminals and for the moment
consider the chief city of western New York--the chief in size at any
rate, Buffalo. Twelve steam railroads to-day enter Buffalo and share four
main passenger-stations there. The Lackawanna has a handsome new terminal
at the harbor-front, into which enter not only its trains but those of the
Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg and the Nickel Plate lines. The Lehigh
Valley has an almost equally new and handsome station, which it shares
with the Grand Trunk. The Erie plays the lone hand in a very ancient
building, while the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Michigan
Central, and one or two other roads are housed in the Exchange Street
Station, which is fairly antediluvian in its antiquity and its
inefficiency.
For some years Buffalo dreamed her dreams of a real union station, which
would rise majestically from the lake-front in the neighborhood of the
historic court-house and jail where Czolgosz, the assassin of William
McKinley, met his trial and his just fate. Travelers who have had to pass
through Buffalo and who have been compelled to change from one railroad to
another there shared these dreams of a station into which all the trains
should pass. But the city authorities and those of the railroads came to
an absolute _impasse_ in the matter. The New York Central, for instance,
did not want to continue backing its through New York-Chicago passenger
trains into the Buffalo station. It proposed as a compromise a union
station somewhere east of Clinton Street. But "somewhere east of Clinton
Street" is _declasse_ to Buffalo, and the big lake-front town would have
nothing of that.
So while mayors and general managers and high-priced engineers and all the
other bigwigs stormed and argued the Lackawanna people and the Lehigh
Valley people went right ahead and built their own passenger stations. It
is not conceivable that these large handsome stations would now be
abandoned. In the creation of the regional plan it is not necessary. It
becomes obvious from the beginning that the many trains of the
Erie-Lackawanna would easily fill the Lackawanna Station to repletion and
permit of the final abandonment of the ancient Erie passenger-house with
one of its most exasperating rail grade-crossing problems in the land as a
perplexity always attendant upon its operation.
The Lehigh Valley Station, but slightly enlarged in its head-house
accommodations, can easily be brought to meet the necessity of the other
regional systems entering Buffalo--those of the New York Central, the
Michigan Central, and the Pennsylvania. For it so happens that the present
train-shed of the new Lehigh Valley passenger terminal lies parallel with
and immediately adjacent to the tracks and platforms of the old Exchange
Street Station of the New York Central. To make the head-house (the
passenger, baggage, mail, and other facilities) of the Lehigh Valley
Station accommodate the trains that now enter Exchange Street would hardly
involve more than a rearrangement of these last groups of tracks and
platforms, at an astonishingly low cost and with an astounding degree of
operating saving--this last a factor which seemingly enters but little if
at all into the calculations of the men who design our dazzling new
American railroad stations.
* * * * *
Economy enters into the operation of a passenger terminal as it does into
that of a freight terminal--and what can be accomplished in this last
direction we already have seen. The upkeep of the passenger, baggage, and
mail facilities of a railroad station--even one upon a comparatively
simple scale--will come to a large figure in the course of a twelvemonth.
Rochester is but seventy miles distant from Buffalo. It is entered by six
steam railroads, which occupy five separate and distinct passenger
stations. McAdoo brought this down to but four, yet recently the
Pennsylvania decided that it could no longer share the occupancy of the
handsome and commodious station of the Buffalo, Rochester, and Pittsburg,
so it reopened its former individual passenger station, for three trains
in and three trains out each day. We do not have to go as far as Vancouver
to see the essential waste of the pride of the competitive system.
Rochester is a city of a little more than 300,000 persons. Two stations,
anyway--two of the existing stations--and possibly but one--the excellent
new station of the New York Central--would serve all the passenger needs
of both her steam and her interurban electric railroads, and with no more
than the slightest trackage rearrangement. And at an operating economy, as
well as an economy to the purse and time of the average traveler who must
cross the city from one road to another, that is not capable of quick
estimate.
Cleveland has just embarked upon an extravagant union station project
which, after all is said and done, is not to be a union station. For some
of the more sensible of the railroads who come to her have refused to be
beguiled by so obvious a real-estate scheme and one involving huge
expenditures at the very time when the average American railroad is
pleading poverty and reducing its expenditures because of that plea. The
huge capital expenditure of that proposed new Cleveland passenger-station
might be saved in a large part, and still that enterprising city be given
a fine passenger gateway that would express worthily her great pride and
her great wealth.
I have always had a feeling that with foresight--and _an abolition of
foolish competitive pride_--the huge capital expenditure already made and
yet to be made upon the new Union Station of Chicago could have been very
largely saved by an enlargement and an adaptation of the existing
passenger terminals of that city. The Northwestern for instance has a
head-house out of all proportion to the train-house. A second train-house
could easily have been built alongside of the present one without the real
necessity of adding to the main frontage of the station upon Madison
Street. Unquestionably new and much larger stations were and still are
needed both at Dearborn Street and upon the lake-front. But these new
stations will be needed even after the completion of the so-called Union
Station, at an expense now estimated at well in excess of $50,000,000.
These other stations could have been built to a larger size without the
expenditure of the $50,000,000, and the Chicago Union Station permitted to
become a matter of history.
It is useless, it seems to me, to stress too heavily the wage of the
American railroad employee when gross capital expenditures of this sort
have been made and are continuing to be made; or the rate of the traffic
return. Our railroads have been far too greatly burdened by these gewgaws.
Once in a while, of course, a station comes along, like the new Grand
Central Terminal in New York, which is the fruition of a positive genius.
If all of our passenger terminals had the economic strength of the new
Grand Central it would not have been necessary to write these paragraphs.
And I do not think either that it would have been necessary to raise the
passenger-fares far from their before-the-war levels. But when one
balances one Grand Central against a baker's dozen of Washington Terminals
(with that overhead and operating cost of thirty-four cents a passenger)
he sees at once the genuine value of that one Grand Central.
I can have no quarrel with the fine civic spirit that demands that the
railroad station of the modern American city shall be the full
architectural expression of its progress and its growth--in truth a city
gateway. The exquisite monumental concourses of the Pennsylvania Station,
the new Grand Central Terminal, and that at Washington have not been lost
upon me, while the somber but ecstatic beauty of the interior of the
Kansas City Station--to say nothing of the wonderful toys in Fred Harvey's
drug-store there--gives me a new thrill each time that I pass through it.
But it does seem that we might sometimes use a little more sense and
judgment in the planning of these stations. Monuments are quite all right
in their way, if they do not cost too much to build and to maintain. Again
let me illustrate.
When we were considering the electrification of the standard steam
railroad in the United States in general, and the Boston suburban zone in
particular, I called attention in a brief word to the fact that
electrification would vastly increase the passenger capacity of the two
great terminals of that city--South Station and North Station. I did not
stop then to tell in detail of what it might mean to both of those two
civic gateways, already badly crowded in the rush hours of the morning and
the evening; of how it might avoid for twenty-five years or more the
somewhat imminent present-day necessity of tearing them down and replacing
them with far larger stations, at a huge capital expenditure. In South
Station the fact that its builders of a quarter of a century ago had the
wisdom and the foresight to place underneath the train-shed and head-house
loop terminal tracks for future electric operation (tracks and platforms
which have never been used and whose very existence is not even suspected
by the majority of the people who use the station daily) might defer this
necessity. At North Station the time for imperative and radical
enlargement is close at hand, unless warded off by an electric
installation upon most if not all of the many suburban lines that now
enter that busy place.
Also in these chapters have I likened New England, in both its topography
and its traffic problems, to Old England. Now may I go further and see in
Boston fairly accurate replica of London, not alone in appearance--and
that it is, with its Christopher Wren churches, its medley of old-time
streets, its little parks and squares, and its general appearance of
staid sobriety--but in its own local problems of transport. Into London
come the tens of thousands each business day by surburban train, both
steam and electric. Yet London has no station in size comparing with the
North or the South Stations of Boston. Even Liverpool Street and Waterloo,
which come the nearest, fall far short in mere physical bulk, though not
in train operation. Yet I am thinking of Victoria--that marvel of
conciseness and terminal operation.
Victoria--both of the stations that rest side by side and share the name
in common--seemingly is no larger than the Broad Street or Market Street
Station in Philadelphia. The combined station certainly is not as large as
Broad Street, barely larger than Market Street. Yet in each business day
more trains arrive and depart from its train-sheds than either at Broad
Street or at Market Street.
How is this done? In the beginning the British railway man does not feel
that when he builds a railway terminal he has to provide a great
congregation place for the people. There is of course at great interchange
points in the heart of this country--such as Kansas City or Atlanta or
Cincinnati or Omaha or St. Paul--a real need for abundant waiting-room
capacity where through travelers may be properly housed between their
trains--for a number of hours, if need be. At more strictly terminal or
near-terminal points such as Philadelphia or New York or Boston this
necessity largely disappears, and the space that is taken by huge
waiting-rooms can better be used by more essential station facilities.
Victoria Station does not exceed ten platform-tracks in width. To handle
more than 300 trains a day within this limited capacity means the very
highest efficiency in train handling. Not only does it mean the maximum of
promptitude in loading and unloading the trains but an adaptation of their
schedules wherever possible so that an incoming train bringing passengers
into the station is used for a regular run taking other passengers out
again, and so the necessity of an "empty movement" into the storage-yards
and back again is avoided. Moreover the very arrangement of the tracks
and platforms themselves leads to efficiency in these things.
When but a few years ago it became necessary to enlarge radically the
capacity of the side of Victoria Station belonging to the London,
Brighton, and South Coast railway the engineers found that they would have
to think twice before they accomplished their purpose. The station was but
six tracks in width, divided into two groups of three tracks each--two of
these alongside the platforms, with a middle one reserved for the
switching of the locomotives backwards and forwards. It was not possible
to increase this limited width. Upon the one side stood an important
through street of London--Buckingham Palace Road--and upon the other the
equally immovable twin-station of the Southeastern and Chatham railway.
Therefore the engineers did the one thing possible, short of the
enormously expensive job of double-decking the station--they lengthened
it, and at a comparatively low cost doubled its capacity.
To-day two long trains, standing one behind the other upon the same track,
may load and unload their passengers at the same time, and without the
slightest confusion or difficulty. The high-level platform (the
station-platform at the same height as the floor of the train), which
Parliament forced upon the British railways many years ago, is a
tremendous help to quick entraining and detraining. Why it has not been
more universally adopted in this country it is hard to understand. It is
in successful use both in the Grand Central and the Pennsylvania Stations
in New York, but at very few other points. And this despite the fact that
in order to serve these two highly important stations virtually all the
Pullman equipment in the country now has been adapted to high-level
platform use. Yet only the Pennsylvania has had the courage and the vision
to adapt this very sensible form of platform to its intermediate stations.
It already has become a standard upon that great railroad.
That the adoption of a regional railroad system for this country would
bring this and a hundred other needed improvements--both greater as well
as smaller than these of the economical passenger terminal--I am not
attempting to argue. But I do believe that the regional railroad system,
with its setting of the competitive phase in its proper position in
relation to the conduct of our roads, would be a powerful factor in
bettering present conditions, and in a way that would bring wholesale
operating economies all the way across the land. This, in turn, should be
translated most promptly to the public in two ways--lowered rates and
bettered service. Here then is always the nub of the situation; railroad
efficiency accomplished through operating efficiency, not necessarily wage
reduction but reduction in other costs as well, as long as they may be
accomplished without detriment to the service. The service upon our
American railroads has long since been reduced to a point where their
actual efficiency and value as public servants have begun to be impaired.
From this time forward we must begin to puzzle out how their service may
be bettered, and there is no better way for this than that which lies
within a real correlation of their activities.