Jun-04.pd - Local History Archives

Suburbia Today
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Edited by GEORGE FIELDING ELIOT
TODAY'S COMMUTER has plenty of problemsa
survey of conditions all over the country,
made through local papers, leaves no doubt about
that. The wonder perhaps is that w~ manage to
get back and forth as well as we do.
The people who have it the best nowadays, by
their own account, are the ones who are still riding
the rails. Where the standard pattern of the
7:55 a.m.-5:25 p.m. st,;rgc to and from the city
prevails, the towns which still have rail service are
trying hard to hang on to it or to revive it where
it has been discontinued. But rail service for commuters
does not pay; railroads are in b:Jsiness to
make money, which they do by hauling freight.
So the railroads, with few exceptions, want "out"
of the commuter business.
There are other problems for the rail commuter,
too. Congestion at suburban stations is one; on the
Boston and Philadelphia services the railroads are
issuing park-and-ride tickets which help this
problem-at a price. Getting to and from the station
is another problem-usually it means a twicea-day
chauffeuring chore for the little woman, or
a two-car family with Daddy parking }lis jalopy
at the station all day. Then there is the trip te)and
from the office once a man is in the big city. Redwood
City tells us the terminal in San Francisco
averages so far from job locations that it often
takes their commuters longer to get from station
to office than to make the 27-mile rail journey.
Over all hangs the uark cloud of how to make
the railroads go on losing money. This involves
what one of our correspondents calls a deadly
cycle: Poorer service, higher fares, declining patronage,
still poorer service, and so on. Many bus
companies appear to be in much the same spot.
The answer seems to be that if rail service is to
keep the flow of commuters moving, it will have
to be subsidized or wholly maintained, even newly
built, by public funds. When faced with these costs,
there has been much taxpayer re~istance, notably
in California but also around Washington, D.C.,
Atlanta, and Detroit, where large-scale rapid transit
systems are being considered. In the Boston,
i>ittsburgh, and St. Louis metropolitan regions,
some plans include making use of abandoned
tracks anti right of ways which are still available.
But even if adequate rail service were restored .
the trains couldn't provide all the answers now.
With so many industries and offices moving out
of the city, more and more- people would be unablt>
to get to work by taking a train direct from
one point to another. They need their cars to fan
out from home to ~he new places of business that
are locatir.g all over the countryside.
Finally, most Americans love automobiles and
prefer to drive themselves to work if they can.
Out of 56 publishers reporting from all over the
country, two-thirds said that commuting by car
was the method of choice ili the towns they cover
-and they speak for hundreds of thousands of
commuters.
Most often, it is one man to one car
(have you ever driven into Detroit on Woodward
Avenue on a weekday morning between 8 and
9?), so it's a twiceMa-day"bump and grind," mile
after fumillg mile, to say nothing of the expense
and trouble of arranging for all-day parking in
the choked city. And while the volume of traffic
grows, new road building lags well behind. Total
motor-vehicle registration in the United State:>
rose 50%, 1950 to 1960; mileage of surfaced
roads rose only 3-3Y3% .
THE JAM-UPS are real, and they seem likely
to continue. From Richfield, Minnesota, we
hear that "heroic police work reduces a colossal
problem to one ..that is merely tremendous" on a
twice-a-day, five-days-a-week basis. Two cars per
family is standard equipment in many places.
Group riding, popular during wartime when gas
was in short supply. is still used, but sparingly.
Grayslake, Illinois, among other places, reports
that groups of riders will sometimes buy a special
car which they use just for commuting. From
points as far apart as La Grange Park, Illinois,
and Los Gatos, California, complaints are registert~d
(presumably of feminine origin) that the
strains and stresses of the daily struggle on the
freeway result in increased martini consumption
before dinner can be served.
Delays due to weather conditions are noted
in many reports as adversely affecting commutation
by car. From Buechel, Kentucky, we hear
of "Operation Snow," a plan by the mayor of
Louisville in which business firms stlligger working
hours during bad-weather periods, so no peak
volume of traffic is reached during the day.
There is no one answer that fits all the situations,
but when you get d(lwn to cases there are
some bright spots.
Conside! the two happy Barringtons-Rhode
Island and Illinois. Barrington, Rhode Island, has
good, fast motor roads to Providence, also waterways
to the city which are open for use all through
the fair-weather months, and a helicopter service
is coming up for executives of a plant which has
moved into the country. Barrington, Illinois, is
on the Chicago & North Western, one of the few
railroads which do a good job for commuters
and still manage to break even, by using
freight-hauling diesel locomotives for commuter
service in between long-distance freight runs.
T A GRANGE PARK, ILLINOIS, speaKs well of !he
L Burlington's service; the Southern Pacific
gets a pat on the back from Redwood City, California;
and Somerville, New Jersey, has a love affair
with the Jersey Central, which is shared by other
communities along tha~ line.
Many of the publishers we queried feel that new
freeways are the best answer for their local jams,
and certainly they will help absorb some of the
pressure, especialIy as more employment opens
up in the suburbs; making a more flexible pattern
and reducing congestion on the road net that centers
on the city. Yet from Shaker Heights, Ohio,
which has a fine rapid-transit line right into downtown
Cleveland, we hear that "all the eastern suburbs
are now battling to prevent the building of
unwanted, unneeded freeways by the county engineer,
that would butcher the communities these
freeways would profess to serve. We prefer our
lakes, homes, and woodlands to concrete ribbons
which are proposed just because Federal funds
are available to take care of 90% of the cost."
8 Suburbia Today. June /964
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