GIVE THE CITY BACK TO,PEOPLE New mobility can make our cities a joy again. By George W. Jernstedt with Tom K. PharesBoston Public Library Copley Square This book is dedicated to my loving wife Lee, whose unstinting labors and devotion supported and respected the work described here over many, many years. The book is intended to inspire transportation planners, city officials, civic and business organizations and the average citizen as they seek to improve transportation and the associated living and working conditions in our communities. It was written to encourage all to examine successful development increments wherever in the world they are found. It proposes that we open our minds to what others are accomplishing to gain greater public mobility and to more wholesome and efficient urban development. The Author Copyright © 1994 by George W. Jernstedt Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review with suitable acknowledgement of the source. Library of Congress Catalog No. 94-94282 First Edition Published by Cityscope & Mobility Company Box 260 RR #1, Bolivar, PA 15923 412-235-2348 + Fax 412-235-2878 ISBN 0-963 915 8-1-9 $18.95GIVE THE CIDy BACK TO: PEOPEE New mobility can make our cities a joy again. By George W. Jernstedt with Tom K. Phares Published by Cityscope and Mobility Company, 1994HE2741 J47 i994Forewords Introduction.... Preface Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 CONTENTS Mobility, An Ancient Problem Still With Us ... More and Mote Cars, Less and Less Mobility ..... An Early Try for Mobility, The Trolley Car America’s Slow Start on Mass Transit... Public Transportation: The Battle for Funds The Birth of Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) .... Airports Discover AGT and Profitable Growth Pittsburgh Opts For Low Performance Transit ....... In Lille A Mayor Made The Difference .. Rail Rapid Transit: A Tale of Three Cities... Needed: A Change of Direction Growth Planned From Within, Horizontally Chapter 12 The Technology Worshippers Chapter 13 Can “Super Trains” Improve Urban Mobility? .... Chapter 14 Returning The City To People Summary... Acknowledgements... . 139 Photo credits, text references ......Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/givecitybacktopeOOjernFOREWORD By Tom Larson Consultant and Former Federal Highway Administrator ome 80 percent of our people live in urban areas. Giving them access to opportunity in a physically and environmentally safe place has got to be one of the central challenges of our time. It’s not a new challenge. For as long as people have lived, some dimensions of the current circumstances have pertained. But now there are more people and they are spread over vast areas — areas that are ever-expanding, worldwide. This isa situation crying out for fresh thinking, for innovation. George W. Jernstedt is a man with fresh ideas. He says in this book that urban transportation should deliver the kind of service provided by the elevator sys- tem in a high-rise building — REVOLUTIONARY! Can it be done? This, or something equally creative, must be done or our urban-focused civilization is in trouble. Short increments of such service already have demonstrated feasi- bility. We now have legislation that requires coming to grips with congestion and clean air, but our tools for doing so are just not up to the job — neither highways nor transit as we know them can do the job. So we come back to Mr. Jernstedt, his Horizontal Development Process and this book. I believe we have here a viable option for improving our urban places — laid out in specific detail and based on years of personal study and experimentation. This is a book to be read by all those who would grapple with a pre-eminent problem of our people at this time.By Kenneth H. Fraelich Executive Vice President Marketing and Strategic Business Development AEG Transportation Systems, Inc. hen George Jernstedt told me he was writing a book capturing his W ievst on people mobility and the Horizontal Development Pro- cess, I told him I was anxious to read it, knowing it would include a lot of history related to Westinghouse involvement in the guided ground trans- portation industry — an industry of which I have been a part for the past 35 years. George’s book did not disappoint me! It is loaded with many colorful, personal stories which I can relate to and appreciate. One was the hectic but ultimately successful development of the BART automatic train control system which es- tablished the Westinghouse Transportation Business Unit as an international leader in the industry — a position which continues into the 90s in its new life as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Daimier Benz Group. While this is not, nor was it intended to be, a history book, the author skillfully uses historical successes and failures to reinforce his central message: the criti- cal need to use the Horizontal Development Process as a basic tool for the plan- ning of people spaces and movement. George Jernstedt has the reputation for being ahead of the industry in many of his concepts on transportation plan- ning. I believe the readers of this book will conclude that the author’s ideas on horizontal development can lead to economically solving the future people space and mobility needs, not only for tomorrow, but for today!By Walter Kulyk, PE, Director of Mobility Enhancement Federal Transportation Administration he planning and development of effective public transportation systems in the United States is difficult and complex. The process must involve a host of factors, encompassing technology, design, politics, public policy, administration and management, demographics, land use and funding. Comple- tion of a public transportation system project depends on skillful attention to such factors, while its ultimate success as judged by the riding public depends completely on their successful integration. Successful transportation investments today are more and more difficult to plan and develop because the riding public is more sophisticated, educated, fiscally conscious, environmentally sensitive, politically active and demanding than ever before. Attention to all of these planning and development factors and their integration is a must. In this book, George Jernstedt skillfully addresses many of these factors and reminds our planners, engineers, administrators and public officials that they must comprehensively integrate all factors in the planning and development of our transportation systems. He effectively conveys the importance of marrying useful technology with limited funds; of integrating land use with transporta- tion planning; of promoting personal mobility, and making our cities more livable. He urges bringing private developers and their architects into the plan- ning process to benefit not only from their financial resources but from their experience, ideas and demonstrated ingenuity. Readers will enjoy his historical perspective and conclude that, indeed, we must adopt fresh new ideas in the planning and development of our transportation systems in this country. The health of our cities and enjoyment of our urban environment hangs in the balance. mui 2 Biber wel Laer apt peg ates tee Pa hs Big — ee 3 nee ee hr - ara | | A OP? eee See a Tae 3! 11) Grete sata : oe i Nae td ye he 2 = OE sp ee pi a mae ct - oe ee tly lle et nt re Lf cette a eee e Tee See sein apt Se ee i Soy SF en area Fe ctl a ke AP J tel ie ey vo "Te age Polio one OMe a gi aS AaGecyventereaINTRODUCTION ublic transportation can be exciting and profitable. It can bring people P back into the center city and the high density suburbs. This book tells how. The key is combining far-sighted development with “horizontal elevator” sys- tems. The term horizontal elevator should not be confused with conventional rail rapid transit. It performs on the horizontal plane like elevators in our high- rise buildings perform on the vertical — always available, free and rapid. Such horizontal elevator systems are in daily use in airports around the world and a municipal system exists in the progressive city of Lille, France and in Omiya, Japan. Horizontal elevator systems will mean the end of conventional transit stations in many cases. Such systems will be absorbed into the buildings of large shop- ping malls and other commercial development projects. They will take riders right where they want to go — not to isolated transit stations. Once such easy convenience is available, people again will enjoy our cities and their cultural, commercial and entertainment centers — enjoy them without the hassle of how to get there and how to “get around.” With no waiting, no fare collection, no traffic delays, such systems already exist in various cities of the world today, but usually in short increments. They can be applied to whole communities. The key is to get private development involved. The government’s ISTEA pro- gram which provides 151 billion dollars for transit over six years is only 50 billion more than is already being invested by private enterprise in projects which include some public mobility, without any real effort to bring the private sector into full participation. In these pages, the author tells how the technology and methodology for the city of tomorrow was born and is being perfected today...and how it can “Give The City Back To People.”7 Ok Ret iow. lM geet ie ere vale tet asittederasitt, foams i) ae sale hag dN taal as bb Fiat qaispxictne seth ving Piel om OE ter! a agate eet oe cts TrapmaptigL ar + aiinatt euityiee ee “vile aplenty A = s Jeans vel iba Fath a iemta dy wea flim GT Ue. Pe Wares Pafop ate (tamale cdl ils Sa See ee car oobi nw 5nadizet- vat ane ee Fe pet oye ~ ate ae _oeu, x =i. ot eee gaa Va am (ps oe oti I a9, sola @ ; - | esate nina ne p ak Sra . 55 i 7 = att: Ava ott peel ei rer Seteesl, i 8 Rab att a ar ee 7 a) . 7 Pa oF ia diel lh yee iy bs oftt ‘eon Thad uP le Aas) Altes bach scl arama Peay Lal daar Alpen 5 = + lukas a rarer a, shih atsPREFACE Mobility, An Ancient Problem Still With Us city. The vehicles were not even moving. People were pushing and argu- ing; some of the large vehicles were crossway on the road, trying to go down the center but meeting traffic coming the other way. A few of the smaller vehicles had to pull over to the side to avoid being crushed. From the conversa- tion of the drivers and the pedestrians, this condition happens almost every day —on the Via Appia. I t was now near noon and this was the worst traffic I had ever seen in the “Suddenly there was a roar of the crowd down the roadway. The guards had made the decision to empty the road of all vehicles. Every cart and wagon was being forced off into the side streets. For the remainder of the day, only people would be permitted on the Via Appia.” This is the way a Senior Roman Guard described a traffic jam on Rome’s Appian Way, 1,875 years ago when the vehicles were “wheel to wheel.” They had a solu- tion — one we still use today — keep all the traffic off the road when the con- gestion gets too bad. There were about one million people in the district of Rome of whom about 90 percent were Roman citizens. But even citizens were subjected to common traf- fic regulations and had to get off the road at such a time. Before examining today’s situation in our cities to see if we can bring excite- ment and mobility to public transit, it is worth looking briefly at the early his- tory of man’s efforts to achieve public mobility.It all began when homo sapiens 50,000 years ago used only their feet to move about the land. Man’s first “transport vehicle” probably was the sled or skid which was invented in several places at about the same time. In Northern China women were used to pull the sleds with thongs. When in about 3500 B.C. animals first were used to pull the sleds, the donkey was tried on this job. But its obstinacy was recognized early. An ancient mural in Egypt depicts several men tugging at a donkey, front and rear. A third man carries a stick to help persuade the beast to move. Invention of the wheel was a great milestone. The first wheels were solid round disks. Spoke wheels followed. In the Tigris-Euphrates Valley lived an amazing people, the Sumerians. Their progress in art, architecture and the wheel surpassed that of all other peoples at the time. First came one-wheeled carts, then two-wheelers, and by 3000 B.C. four-wheeled wagons appeared. Progress in making wheels spread east and west, reaching what is now Great Britain by 500 B.C., and northern China a short while later. And the wheel brought a most important improvement in mobility — a paved road. The first paved road probably was in Egypt where a five-eights of a mile stretch was paved from the Nile’s highwater mark to the construction site of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The road took 10 years to build and was 60 feet wide. This may not have been man’s first road, since a smaller such project is believed to have been constructed on the island of Cyprus as early as 5500 B.C. Mobility and Empires In 295 B.C., the small city-state of Rome achieved supremacy over all Italy. What was the secret of this success? Mobility — achieved by the Roman Legions through efficient use of roads and wheeled vehicles. Amazingly, some of those roads remain in service even today. Thanks in large measure to the mobility which the Romans created for their legions and their skill in civil government, Roman civilization spread throughout the civilized world of Europe, Britain, North Africa, Egypt, the Middle East, Mesapotamia and Asia Minor. Fifty thou- sand miles of roads were a major factor in the creation of the Roman Empire. The importance of the roadway carried on through to the next great empire, Great Britain. The British developed the first turnpike which required payment of a fee for travel on all or a portion of the distance. The year was 1663. Although people strongly objected to this type of development, turnpikeconstruction proceeded throughout England and Scotland. In protest, people actually destroyed some sections of toll roads. Who should finance public See a ua ceRu mobility was a problem then and it remains a prob! Y. Meanwhile in England a new vehicle appeared — the horse-drawn coach. People now were traveling greater distances and wanted to get there faster. In 1706, the trip from London to York took three days. By 1776 this had been cut to 36 hours and within 20 years the coach run required only 20 hours. In those early days of coach travel, London had more than 1,900 coaches plying the streets and there were another 6,000 in the countryside. Early City Planning in America The design of several of America’s early cities was influenced by the need for public mobility. There were two great city planners working in America in the early 1700’s — the Englishman William Penn and the Frenchman Pierre Charles LEnfant. Both were widely traveled and familiar with cities abroad. William Penn laid out the city streets of Philadelphia and his plan of the city has sur- vived from 1682 until today with only minor changes. Major L’Enfant, an of- ficer in the French Army, corresponded with Thomas Jefferson after each had visited the other many times. Through their correspondence a planning pro- cess was initiated for the Federal City, later to be known as Washington, D.C. Both Penn and L'Enfant planned for growth. Mobility in their planned cities was high for the first several hundred years. Then came the automobile with its impact on the city. One wonders what would happen if these two city planning pioneers could update their planning for today? We need not just new transit lines or new highways. We need a major upgrading of our entire transit plan- ning. Which brings us to the subject of this book. It has been well stated by Peter Wolf in his book “The Future Of The City,” when he says: “Transportation has always influenced city location, city form, in fact the des- tiny of cities. The impact of the wagon, the barge, the ship, even the railroad are minor compared to the complex, multifaceted influence of the automobile on the evolution and development of cities. In the beginning of this century, when the car was introduced to city streets, it was seen as a dramatic and joyful toy celebrated by most advanced thinkers as a step forward, one that would make the city all the more delightful and available. We now know, after a brief but bewildering experience, that the automobile is able to severely diminish the experience of the individual in the city and to create a pattern of cityless, region-wide habitation never before experienced in the history of man.”The automobile has led to a phenomenon of this regional growth which, of late, has been called the “Edge City.” Really a “non-city,” the Edge City is a high den- sity suburban pattern of growth which has occurred out on the edge of the big cities but has not been created by any common master planning process. Each Edge City is different according to area market demands and none isa real city ‘in the séifise of being a multi-functional community. A common danger of these Edge Cities is that they depend almost entirely on the automobile, largely because highway funding is so available. We must be- ware of any such syndrome which limits mobility to the automobile, severely restricts pedestrian mobility and depends largely for its functions on high rise buildings. More about these matters of city growth and mobility later. The city can be a laboratory. From it we must learn the lessons of good and poor mobility. Our vehicles, great as they are, limit their own growth by the success they temporarily enjoy. Each vehicle, each component, each mode has its day in history. The sled, the wheel which has spawned many types of vehicles are seeing new equivalents appearing as air support, magnetic suspension and other forms. But we have become bound by our conventional practices — highway, transit, street patterns and pedestrianism. Our planning has become a cooperative ex- ercise — a process of compromise — not an integrated process. We must do a better job of planning for integrated, horizontal growth. This book will, I hope, make the case for the need to plan not primarily for cars, buses, trains and planes, but for people, in creating greater public mobility in ~our-urban-areas. The secret, if there is one, is the intelligent Integration oT TR. proved transit technology with the exciting new uetirodie ana tormns chu vay development. i i a ‘Tomorrow's city will be a wonderful place.CHAPTER ONE More and More Cars, Less and Less Mobility looked like glass elevator doors. But through the glass I could see a tran- sit vehicle coming into the station. A “horizontal elevator.” Behind a big window at the front of the transit car sat two children pretending to drive the car. They were having a ball. There was no operator! A s I walked down the steps of the transit station, | faced a row of what Tears came to my eyes. This was an automated transit system developed in my hometown of Pittsburgh 20 years earlier by a team of Westinghouse engineers under my management. That pioneering system had been rejected by the local politicians as unsafe, “ahead of its time,” largely because there was no operator and because some key local leaders had little vision for the future. Here in the early 1980’s was that same system operating routinely in Lille, France, a city the size of Pittsburgh. When this transit car stopped, the people seemed to flow on and off with no delays at all. How come? Suddenly I noticed that nobody was collecting tickets or fares. I timed the interval to the next vehicle arriving. 55 seconds. What mo- bility! How this came about is the story of automated rapid transit integrated with private development —a story still unfolding in our cities. That story is part of the struggle to free our urban centers from the paralysis of traffic congestion and municipal debt. It is a struggle to give Americans real urban mobility at a profit. This is not a story about conventional mass transit. It is a story about how to make it possible for people to move easily and conveniently within the develop- ments and functional locales of the city. It is about people not vehicles.Actually, it is two stories in one. First, the story of how to accomplish the im- provement of mobility or people in the city, and, second, the story of mobility of information. The flow of information is vital to progress in mobility im- provement. Too often we use a crutch — political compromise — to substitute for a free information flow. Compromise assures maintenance of the status quo. It conceals leadership and achievement. Changes in methods often are controlled more by how the information is handled than by the merits of new technology. I Love My Automobile. .. Except First, as a former president was fond of saying, let me make one thing perfectly clear. Because I seek to end traffic congestion in our cities, doesn’t mean I am out to eliminate the automobile! Being for more urban mobility doesn’t mean being against the automobile. I love my automobile. A great invention. It’s ready to go when I am. It goes right where I want to go, even stopping on the way if I have to pick up a package. It’s comfortable — just marvelous transportation. Except. .. it’s taking longer and longer to get to my destination. And when I get there I wish my car would disappear because too often there is no place to put it. Except. .. the automobile is pushing some of our big cities such as Los Angeles to the upper limits of air pollution due to fumes from the millions of internal combustion engines. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and 1992 will severely limit or shut down auto traffic in these center cities by 1995 if they fail to take meaningful action. But will I give up my car for city driving? Not until I get something better! And that’s the problem that’s facing our urban areas. That darling of American transportation, the automobile, is leading our congested cities toward traffic gridlock and pollution paralysis. And the “something better” — which ought to be some form of public transit — continues to be largely ignored or drowned in red ink. It’s not that we haven't seen this problem coming. As new highways and streets began to pour more and more vehicles into our cities in the years after World War II, city planners and transportation engineers looked to the future with growing concern. Many envisioned the day whentraffic congestion could destroy the economic viability of our cities, make our industries non-competitive in the world and pose a threat to our environment. Acres and acres of valuable land in our cities were being inefficiently used as we attempted to cope with the transportation needs of expanding urban areas. Higher and higher office towers were rising like weeds in the field. The city was becoming a commercial oasis. But room for people and people activities was disappearing. Beginning in the 1960s, there was a great deal of talk about this. Countless con- ferences and seminars were held. Plans were proposed and legislation enacted. First results came in the form of major highway projects, foremost of which was the national interstate highway program. But public transit for our cities stayed on its nostalgic and traditional course as states and municipalities set out to keep alive or expand existing bus systems and conventional subway and street car systems. Needed: Some New Ideas What was badly needed at this point were some new ideas, some daring, some excitement to give public transit a shot in the arm. And, indeed, some new ideas were tried. In Western Pennsylvania, Allegheny County’s Port Authority built and successfully tested the world’s first automated (no operator) transit system. An exciting idea! Visitors from around the world came to see, learn and copy. But this pioneer “Early Action Program” became caught up in the fierce cross-fire of Pittsburgh politics. “Ahead of its time,” cried the old-line politicians, and the County backed off. Instead, it built a circa 1930 trolley system, streamlined and called by the new name: Light Rail Vehicle. More about this unfortunate bit of history a little later. While the U.S. took a hesitant and fragmented approach, we watched other nations making progress. High-speed trains for intercity travel appeared in Japan and then France. The automated transit technology, rejected in Pitts- burgh, surfaced successfully in those countries. The Japanese and French copied it down to the last semiconductor, and even improved it. I had many interesting experiences riding these new systems and meeting the people who were pleased and delighted with their progress. Today they’re sell- ing their improved systems back to us. But they deserve credit for their initia- tive, not criticism from those in America who dragged their feet.Meanwhile, in the U.S., public transportation remained stagnant. The hard core urban transit problem — moving people from the burgeoning suburbs where they now live into the crowded cities where they still work — resisted solution. And intercity public transportation could boast of but one significant advance — the relatively slow “high-speed” New York-Washington Metroliner trains. “Why won't people get out of their cars and ride public transportation?” wailed dozens of governors, mayors, city managers and transportation “experts.” Thave probed this question for more than 25 years, traveling hundreds of thou- sands of miles to study the relationship of transit with commercial develop- ment in scores of cities throughout the world. And, along the way, I’ve directed advanced transit projects. As a result, I believe I’ve come to understand the prob- lems and what it takes to solve them. Some answers have become clear — an- swers that give hope for success in moving people with much greater efficiency in the decades ahead. There is ample technology available. The need for better transportation is there. Urban and suburban development is going strong. The future can be exciting. But transportation gridlock can keep it from happening unless we get our act together and do it now! We must remember that the mission is not only to make it possible for people to get to the center city, but also to make them want to come. Public transit must appeal not only to commuters going to and from work, but also to those who chose to come into town for shopping and enter- tainment and the other “people activities.” Why hasn't this happened before now? More than 25 years of exposure and investigation into this question have produced this answer. For too long we have kept our eye “on the track” as it were — on trains or trolleys that ran on rails and stopped at stations — and produced deficits in the process. Or bus systems that followed the same paths with the same results. The basic planning process used 60 years ago in the 1930s is being followed still today. And that must change. The Essential Elements If we assume that improving the mobility of the American people is both desir- able and do-able, we must recognize the need for concerted action dedicated to that goal. Drawing on my own experience, I believe four elements are essential to reaching this objective. (1) We must have vision. Research and development now at our disposal can provide us with the ability to restore our urban centers through the implemen-tation of new and advanced transportation systems — outside the hard shell of public transit bureaucracy. However, new technology should be used only when it improves mobility and not merely to demonstrate engineering achievement. We should not build new high speed systems until we have provided our urban centers with greater access for public transit to feed and load these systems. High speed rail or magnetic levitation systems will not find a market unless our urban centers have transit systems that will provide or accommodate their pas- sengers. We must stretch our imaginations and reach beyond mere expansions of existing technology to create integrated systems — systems that not only will move large numbers of people efficiently and comfortably within our cities, but will also provide essential people-friendly activities within the system. (2) We must have strong private sector involvement. | am convinced that pub- lic transit needs a “heart transplant.” Its heart until now has been reliance on government funding and centralized direction which continues to just “look down the track.” Its heart in the future must be reliance on private funding and commercial development. Public agencies and political management have performed poorly on their own. Achievement has been found largely in the private sector. It is time to let private business into the transportation arena. Greater participation by private devel- opers and entrepreneurs is essential, not just through assessments or funding but through developers designing, constructing, managing and operating tran- sit systems or segments of systems. Over the past two decades, the innovative transit ideas have come from indi- vidual private developers — men like John Portman (glass elevators), Walt Disney (monorail right into the hotel lobby) and Leigh Fisher (10 horizontal elevators at Tampa International Airport). (3) We must have improved worldwide communications on transportation developments. All of us must obtain a better understanding of how the flow of information both within our country and abroad can speed or block progress. And we must plan accordingly. Without improved direct communication among the transportation authorities, state and municipal bodies and qualified private developers and architects, we will neither learn from our failures nor benefit from our successes. Our planners and political leaders must be informed, for example, about what a system like the one in Lille has accomplished for that city.As part of this communication we must audit performance to avoid trans- planting unsuccessful operations from city to city. As it is now, failures at home often are reported “out of town” as successes, for political reasons. Two of our last center city automated transit systems are failures but have not been so re- ported by their operators. Independent auditing is one of the keys to success in the financial world. It must be used in the field of public transit. (4) We must have coordinated planning. America has been the victim of terri- bly fragmented planning during the past 25 years. What is needed is recogni- tion that increments of a transportation and development network must work together from a business standpoint. First we must improve mobility within our cities, with interested public and private input to meet the varying local requirements. Then we can work on improving movement between cities. But local planning efforts must be done within a framework that recognizes the ultimate goal of interregional, intermodal linkages. Up to now, highway authorities have pushed highway improvement. Rail authorities have pushed rail development. Urban authorities have called for better mass transit, but can’t agree how to do it. Our comprehensive multimodal planning just combines separately planned systems. If we were to plan our ver- tical buildings like we have been planning horizontal expansion, adding transit systems to our cities might look like Fig. lA. This sketch is an exaggeration, of course, but schematically is quite close to the truth. By comparison, the vertical building design of the Hotel Regency in Atlanta provides greater mobility and higher patronage (Fig. IB). Unfortunately, new methods and new technology have been orphaned or left to domestic equipment manufacturers. These domestic manufacturers, in turn, have become discouraged and have been deserting the transit business. The comprehensive planning process must be upgraded to handle increased numbers of people — not only their vehicles — in the center city. Government has given only lip service to participation by the private sector, while continuing to extract additional fees or taxes. Government has consid- ered the role of the private sector simply to hand out money. Private developers have not been brought into transit planning as full participants although they have ideas, initiative and financial resources that are going unused. It is they who have provided the most exciting developments of the past 20 years — the shopping malls and tall building complexes. Public transit has experienced little such excitement, just a repeat of the past. It is possible today to build fast, convenient, low-cost and appealing forms of transportation integrated with people activities — forms of transportation and 2development that the public will patronize and which provide a service that the public will demand. In some places, it’s already being done. In Lille, France and Kobe, Japan fully automated transit systems have been integrated in new town developments. What is happening in such enlightened systems is the disappearance of the con- ventional transit station. “People activities” — shops, restaurants, hotels, theaters, offices — stand right at the doors of the transit vehicle. The secret ingredient that makes possible such people-oriented development is the will- ingness of private developers to provide transit to and from their facilities, doing so at a profit to themselves and at a saving to the taxpayer. Don't get the idea that the future discourages our love affair with the automo- bile. Let me say again that the automobile is the finest individual transportation system in the world. But we must help it out, improve its performance and give it the proper place in the total transportation network. Where the auto gets in trouble is in our urban and suburban high-density popu- lation centers. The key to solving these problems will be found not only in the use of new mass transportation technology, but in development of user-friendly people-transit interface. The conventional “transit station,” as we know it, is obsolete. We don’t need horizontal transit stations any more than we need vertical elevator stations. The interface between people and transit must be an integral part of project development. Public transit systems that supply only a commuter-type service are enormously expensive due to heavy equipment requirements and empty return trips. In the past, we have been expecting transit lines to stimulate commercial develop- ment. But it has to be the other way around. Commercial development must help create demand for transportation. We will only solve the problem of cost and of ridership when we give the customer a transit service that meets his needs. Why haven’t we done it already? Lack of vision, poor communication, uncoor- dinated and fragmented planning which isolates and insulates private develop- ment, all must share the blame. Vision Plus Communication Speaking of the need for vision and communication, a few remarkable people have vision and are just naturally open to new ideas. They love ’em. Walt Disney was such a man. And he was a great communicator.I first met him through my company’s district manager in Southern California, Jack Boggess, who was responsible for doing business with Disneyland. Having dealt with Walt on numerous occasions, Jack knew that Disney had some imagi- native ideas about moving people and felt that he and I should talk. So we in- vited Disney to visit our experimental automated transit project in Pittsburgh and ride the so-called “Skybus.” Disney came, he rode the automated system and he loved it. He invited me to visit California and discuss with his organization new ideas for moving people in the planned Walt Disney World. So it was that my family and I headed for California to get acquainted with Disneyland. On arriving, we took the monorail from the parking lot to the sta- tion opposite the hotel. Of course, we had to carry our bags down the stairs and across the street. I thought, why do we have to do this? I met Disney the next day out in back of WED Enterprises where he had built a long wooden structure for testing a new loading platform to be used in his trans- portation exhibit at Disney World. He opened our conversation by kidding me about Federal money being used to pay for my test track in Pittsburgh, pointing out that his test equipment was all paid for by his private earnings. [ allowed as how he probably got more Federal funding than I did as a result of his 55 percent tax credit. He laughed and said he would have to agree. Then I brought up the subject of our monorail ride from the Disneyland parking lot. “Do it differently at Disney World,” I suggested. “Bring the transit vehicles right into the hotel lobby. Don’t make your guests get off across the street.” Walt liked the idea immediately and asked for sketches. | gave him the sketch (Fig. 2A) to indicate how to design the inside of his Contemporary Hotel. The lobby and monorail vehicles were integrated with all the hotel services. Walt was pleased with the sketch and said that’s how the hotel would be designed. (Fig. 2B) shows how true he was to his word. You get off right inside the hotel lobby. Even the outside of the building (Fig. 2C) is much more dramatic when exciting changes are done well. That idea was accepted easily and Disney followed it completely — no jealousy about pride of authorship. But you're not always working with a Walt Disney. Walt asked for ideas for his EPCOT development, too. This second theme park adjoining the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World was to be a showplace formy new horizontal development transit ideas. Sadly, however, Walt’s death intervened and the new management changed EPCOT (Engineered Prototype of the Community of Tomorrow) to mainly an international exhibition area featuring various foreign countries. EPCOT is indeed a financial success. But the original experimental community or “new town” idea, as well as my oppor- tunity for participation, were lost. How Ideas Travel That often happens to new ideas. Few of us in the transportation arena have the good fortune to work with a Walt Disney. I’ve found during my career that there are four principal ways that important information moves. It can be bought, borrowed, given away or stolen. And sometimes it suffers the worst fate of all. It can be ignored, particularly in high places where it’s urgently needed in decision-making. That has been the fate of many key ideas in the field of trans- portation. But you can’t keep good ideas bottled up for long. There are very few secrets anymore in the world of technology. In America, we don’t live in a goldfish bowl — we live in a sieve. Important technical information leaks out like flour being sifted! The Germans, Japanese, French and other countries have a standard procedure for procuring patent copies, technical articles and any information available on what we are doing with new products or processes. They often have patent in- formation even before it is officially issued by our government. They study it carefully. And they obtain sample products or material early in the manufacturing process — legally or otherwise. Other nations certainly know the importance of information flow. The outside world studies everything America does, good or bad. They copy, improve and even sell it back to us. That’s the way the Japanese got their early lead in such things as high-speed rail, electronic equipment, cameras and computers. That’s the way the French got their lead in nuclear power plants with Westinghouse pressurized water reactor technology. Making it easier for our foreign competitors, much of America’s technical in- formation we don’t even try to protect. We sell it, or give it away. That’s what happened to the automated guideway transit (AGT) technology in the 1960s. Information flowed freely from Pittsburgh to transit experts of many nations — at our own initiative. Since it was partially funded by the U.S. Government, we had to give it away.When Westinghouse and Allegheny County’s Port Authority were running the new, fully automated system on a test track in Pittsburgh’s South Park in the early 1960s — an experiment which, for the first time, completely eliminated the operator in a rapid transit system — a steady stream of foreign experts vis- ited the site. Since direct labor is a tremendous expense in a transit system, these foreign observers sucked up all the information we could give them — voluminous detailed reports, photographs, everything. It was all free! They not only copied our system, but they improved on it. Westinghouse was required to make the information available since the Federal Government furnished about half the funding. But could we get such information for similar projects in Ja- pan or Europe? No way! ‘Today representatives from those same countries are sending in their marketing people, selling U.S. cities and airports the technology we gave away. France, for example, sold its automated transit system — patterned after the pioneering Pittsburgh system —to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and the City of Jacksonville, Florida. We helped make information flow in all directions! And it’s coming right back home “under new management!”CHAPTER TWO An Early Try For Mobility, The Trolley Car nostalgic love for the trolley car. It may have taken you and your first date to the movies. It took the crowd “out to the ball game.” It was Mother and Dad’s way of getting to town to shop or work. I f you are old enough to remember the 1920s or 30s, you probably have a Before the horseless carriage took over our city streets, the trolley was the way to go. It was America’s first real effort to bring mobility into the city. What happened to this noisy, rattling old friend that we used to depend on for mobility? Has it gone the way of the one-horse shay and disappeared entirely? No, but it sure has changed. And its offspring is writing a new chapter in public transportation. The trolley had humble beginnings. It started as a horse-drawn car pulled along iron rails. But it didn’t really become popular until the age of electricity. Electric trolley cars first appeared on city streets only several years after London and New York began to supply electricity from Thomas Edison’s first central electric generating stations in 1882. ‘These trolleys were primitive critters indeed. Their iron underframes were sup- ported by two axles with rigidly mounted wheels driven by electric motors. Because the wheels couldn’t turn right or left, the trolleys couldn’t be longer than about 20 feet. It was in 1888 that Frank J. Sprague devised and successfully installed in Rich- mond, Virginia what could be considered the first electric trolley car line. Look- ing at its primitive deficiencies, it is difficult to understand how people loved this early trolley. But progress was coming. 7In 1897, a new trolley was introduced in Manchester, N.H. with a swiveling, two-axle undercarriage that helped eliminate derailments. And soon thereafter, a trolley with two swiveling trucks permitted the car to go around sharp curves. The trolley grew to 50 feet in length and found increasing use as a mode of interurban travel when roads between nearby cities were still largely rough and unpaved. By the time of America’s entry into World War I in 1917, there were reported to be 18,000 interurban trolleys and a total of 45,000 trolley cars, all electric. This clean and relatively efficient mode of transit is credited with playing a major role in starting the migration of people to the suburbs. The early trolley car not only had efficiency going for it. It was fun! Some trol- leys in the late 1800s had a parlor car (Fig. 3A). In Montreal, a Golden Chariot was operated on recreational runs (Fig. 3B). The trolley seemed to have a per- sonality of its own as it impacted the lives of the entire family. For summertime, it could be boarded from either side along the full length of the car (Fig. 3C). Customized models appeared such as open air cars for sightseeing. So it be- came popular for many types of excursions. Naturally, London insisted on double deckers (Fig. 3D). Use of the trolley spread up and down the east coast and then jumped to the west coast where it spawned the cable car — a San Francisco institution still today. I can still hear the clang-clang of the trolley as I rode every day in the early 30s from Bloomfield, N.J. to Newark to attend classes at the Newark College of Engineering. Some of those same cars still are in use today on a private right-of- way into the city as part of a subway system. Over 50 years of daily use. What a record! The PCC Car The 1930s saw more improvements in the trolley car. Recognizing that they were heavy, uncomfortable and slow when compared with their new rival the automobile, the industry made a major thrust to revitalize them. They orga- nized a Railway Presidents’ Conference Committee in 1931 to design a new and better trolley car. The Committee did a good job. Great technical improvement was accomplished which made the new PCC cars high performance, high-speed vehicles. Theywere an early example of standardization. The first 20 were delivered in 1934 to Washington, D.C. to impress the nation’s capital. My hometown of Pittsburgh received the first generally supplied cars in 1936. These trolleys were much quieter and ran more smoothly than their predeces- sors. The body was made of pressed steel with roof, sides and underframe welded to form one structure. It was mounted on double trucks in which rubber was inserted at all moving joints, replacing steel springs. The new cars moved faster and were more comfortable. Four motors were geared flexibly to each axle to drive the cars at speeds up to 45 m.p.h. New braking assured smooth stops. And forced ventilation drew fresh air through ducts in the roof to relieve the old stuffiness — “air conditioning” circa 1934. The PCC cars not only were more efficient and comfortable, they cost less, thanks to one standardized design. The Trolley’s Decline Fora short time, the transit industry feasted on this sudden progress, manufac- turing more than 2,000 cars. But then the city trolley and interurban systems started to decline. One reason, of course, was the rapid rise in use of the auto- mobile and the development of street and highway systems. America’s romance with the automobile was coming into full bloom. But the second reason was not as obvious. The auto industry and its suppliers wanted no competition from street rail- ways. General Motors and Standard Oil of California started to buy up the trol- ley systems and replace them with diesel buses. Most of the 80,000 electric street cars of the 1920s were gone by the start of World War II. They were sold to other countries, principally in South America where several hundred still are running in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. As spare parts are needed, they simply take another car out of service and “canabalize” it. The most devasting move was the gradual buyout of the $100 million Pacific Electric System lines and equipmentall around Los Angeles. It was accomplished by a combine of GM, Standard Oil, Firestone Tire and others. This was the beginning of LA’s air pollution problem as the burgeoning auto- mobile and bus traffic spewed its fumes into the skies. It still is doing so today. The loss of the private rights-of-way that disappeared in this move will hurt the Los Angeles commuter for years to come, because any successful transit system depends for top performance on separated rights-of-way.By 1949, GM had been involved in the replacement of more than 100 electric trolley systems with GM diesel buses in 45 cities including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Baltimore and, of course, Los Angeles. In April, 1949, a Federal jury in Chicago convicted GM of having conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone and others to replace electric transportation with diesel buses. The penalty? The court imposed a $5,000 fine on GM and con- victed one of its executives. He was fined $1. The eruption of World War II also helped bring famine to the electric street railway industry, of course, as the manufacture of such vehicles was halted to give way to defense production. No more PCC cars ever were built and no fur- ther improvements would be made in the trolley car for the next 40 years. At this point, the trolley’s performance problems lay not so much in the trolley car itself, but rather where it ran — down the center of the street. It had to empty its passengers right into the path of traffic alongside. To try and solve this problem, “safety zones” were built in the streets at busy Intersections, and the motor bus became the alternative method of public transit. Beginning in 1928, a new trolley had been created to help solve this middle-of- the-street limitation. Some cities tried combining the trolley and the motor bus, creating an electric “trolley bus” that could pull over to the curb. It could still make contact with the overhead electric wires by means of a flexible swivel connection for the trolley poles on the roof. The trolley bus was swift and quiet, but it still lacked desired flexibility and it increased total costs. So it slowly yielded to the gas or diesel-fueled motor buses whose fumes increasingly make our cities smell like Kuwait City after Opera- tion Desert Storm. But the trolley car in America wasn’t finished. New ideas began to surface in the 1960s as city officials struggled against overwhelming traffic congestion. They began to hear ideas like separate rights-of-way, tunneling, automated control, high-speed rail and the lure of Federal funds. Like most new ideas, these new advances in transit technology and methodol- ogy encountered bitter opposition from the old line trolley buffs and hide-bound politicians whose nostalgia and resistance to change overcame their judgment. I did make one effort to initiate a trolley automation project in the early 1960s 20with my firm’s local competitor, Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO). But WABCO was uneasy about the Westinghouse work on our newly designed and totally automated transit system and refused to cooperate on trolley auto- mation. Too bad. The trolley car had a lot more life in it, having its separate rights-of-way. Loss of people mobility in our cities has been caused by many things. One of the mistakes was to eliminate the trolley car before there existed a worthy successor. Happily, the worthy successor to the trolley — automated and on its separate right-of-way — now is emerging as one of the heroes in the fight for mobility and integrated people developments. 21eee ae ee Tt , Seal RR rh sp toma lw ae Peay ae le ping ae as: ya aig i eee, te ler — bey odd viet oe aaron saa: sola oliom ll, KD opts ial aa gg supeetgeanalt ; _ : apa Pilea ah hype Haeogeigs al eam De so . i 7 ~ iy eeeCHAPTER THREE America’s Slow Start on Mass Transit hen I first poked my head into the world of mass transportation in W * late 1950s and early ’60s, all automotive transportation projects were in the Highway Department. Mass transit issues were in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We were playing around with a lot of mediocre plans with an old-fashioned Bureau of Public Roads. There was one fine exception, however — the Interstate Highway system. Across the Pacific, Japan was gearing up for a new kind of war — a commercial war. Electronics was the first battlefield and transportation was the second. ’m sure other battle grounds lay ahead. We see evidence of it today. Medicines, small appliances and other products are coming to our shores. The war left the American people with a different mind set than the Japanese. We were getting ready to sample the pleasures and benefits of the peace — automobile trips, new family homes and new household gadgets. We could hardly wait to enjoy life a little. The Japanese people had their minds on a different set of values. They wanted to make up for all the time lost in the futile war. They went to work and to school, requiring no coaching to get their act together. They wanted to win the next competitive test. One of the fields in which Japan benefited from this group effort was public transit, both at home and in exported products. With government help, Japan built its New Tokaido line between Tokyo and Osaka over which the “bullet trains” raced at 150 miles an hour. Today it’s part of the privately-owned Japan Railways. 23I was to benefit from inside involvement with the people who designed and built this line, thanks to a post-war arrangement which Westinghouse had with its Japanese licensee, Mitsubishi. Every two years a new Japanese family would move into Wilkinsburg, a Pitts- burgh suburb, for training at the big Westinghouse plant nearby in East Pitts- burgh. The father would be a young Mitsubishi engineer. Inevitably, the family felt very alone in this foreign country and my wife and I tried to be of assistance to them in shopping, school and home life. One such family in 1948 was that of Takeo Kato. His specialty was transporta- tion, and we did many things together. But after his two-year assignment in the US. ended, I saw no more of him until 20 years later. It was in 1968 when I was responsible for our Mitsubishi license and was visit- ing Tokyo that I had a phone call from Kato. It took me a moment to remember who he was. Then I recalled his stay with us two decades before. He told me he hada luncheon arranged in my honor the next day. I turned from the phone to check my schedule with my Japanese host, a Mitsubishi vice president, who said that luncheon the next day would be impossible. Prior arrangements interfered. Mr. Kato asked to speak with my host. When the Mitsubishi VP got off the phone, he said we indeed would be going to lunch with Mr. Kato tomorrow. I inquired who Mr. Kato was and was told he now was president of a large Mitsubishi subsidiary and was on the Board of Directors. What a long way from that training assignment in East Pittsburgh 20 years before! “1 do what he tells me to do,” said my host. At the luncheon the next day I was seated alongside a very quiet gentleman with graying hair who Mr. Kato introduced as Dr. Hideo Shima. Mr. Kato explained that Dr. Shima had built the high speed New Takaido railroad which featured the famous “bullet trains.” This was a man honored by all nations. Mr. Kato did not quit. He informed me that Dr. Shima would retire from the Japanese National Railroad the next day. I turned and congratulated Dr. Shima. Mr. Kato still did not quit. “You should hire him to help you in your country,” he said, quite firmly. Without hesitation, I did just that. Then Mr. Kato relaxed. 24I later found out that Japanese people follow an old custom. When a person does something very good for you or your family, it is considered to be an “ON.” Such a kindness must be repaid sometime in your lifetime. So it was that Dr. Shima and his wife spent several months with us in America and our families have exchanged visits numerous times over the years. Our most recent visit was from two granddaughters of Dr. Shima. This friendship with the Shima family has given us much joy and enlightenment. I often think how much Americans could learn by befriending our Japanese neighbors instead of being critical of their success. Dr. Shima’s contribution to Westinghouse business certainly illustrates this. At the time of his original visit, we were competing for contracts to build equip- ment for the Metroliners — high speed trains that were to run between Wash- ington, D.C. and New York — and I hoped the man who had made the bullet trains work so well could also put us on the right track. One thing we were working on was a new motor for the Metroliners. So was GE. Both companies were spending several million dollars on the new motor project. After studying what we were doing, Dr. Shima asked me if I knew any- thing about the motors he used on the New Tokaido bullet trains. Then he stuck the knife in. “They're motors designed by Westinghouse at East Pittsburgh in 1933,” he said. “They are very reliable and require very little maintenance.” Instead of using our old motors like the Japanese were doing, we were designing new ones at great cost because we believed they were necessary to handle antici- pated 150 mile-an-hour speeds. So much for new technology. This postscript might be added: the new Metroliner motors that we and GE were working on never were successful. They had trouble at the low operating speeds at which they were run. The Metroliners never could reach their 150 mph designed speed because of the poor roadbed. That’s what Dr. Shima talked about when he turned to engineering . On the top of the Metroliner cars would be those frame-like devices called “pan- tographs” that reach up and make contact with the electric wires overhead, called “cantenaries.” That’s how the train gets its electric power. The pantographs are flexible so they can increase or decrease their “reach” (travel) as the track level varies due to variation in the height of the roadbed. 25Dr. Shima asked how much the travel of the pantographs on these trains would have to change on the Washington - New York run. We made an investigation and found they would have to extend their travel from 16 to as much as 22 feet, depending on the roadbed, the bridges and tunnels. Then he dropped the bombshell. “Between Tokyo and Osaka,” he said, “this distance varies from its regular 16-foot travel by plus or minus one centimeter — temperature compensated.” His pantographs hardly ever move, which permits very high speed and the brushes last a long time. This, he quietly reminded us, is not research. It’s just good engineering. And, he added, unless that roadbed was rebuilt, the U.S. Metroliners would never be able to approach the speeds of the Japanese bullet trains. Where were the gov- ernment consultants who designed the Metroliner system? Why did two large American companies like Westinghouse and GE bid on the project? Embarrass- ing questions. The Metroliners today run occasionally at about 110 miles per hour for short sections of the run. In Japan, the New Tokaido line increased its top speed in 1990 from 150 to about 180 mph., and started to expand the system (Fig. 4A). We will talk more about high speed trains in Chapter 12. Japan organizes for large projects to make sure information flows even to com- peting firms working on parallel projects. It’s in Japan’s interest for that to hap- pen. Japan has few restrictions on how companies can work together, unlike the U.S. On those bullet train motors, for example, Mitsubishi had a license from Westinghouse to produce them, but the Japanese government said Mitsubishi had to share its production with another Japanese company. Westinghouse received royalties from Mitsubishi but not from the second supplier. In fact, Westinghouse people weren’t even allowed to visit the other supplier! Had that other supplier made a manufacturing improvement I don’t think we ever would have heard about it. The flow of information was blocked at that point. Today, a Japanese consortium has been established called HMT — Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Toshiba — that works on jobs requiring the best combination of experience and capability of each company. Similar cooperation also exists in Europe and is particularly effective in large projects. Suppliers learn about the benefits of coordinated effort in other ways — all of which benefits the cus- tomer. U.S. antitrust laws prohibit such combination of effort. American com- panies have to cooperate after the fact and as a separate operation. It’s very 26difficult to compete against the HMT type of combination this way. The flow of information becomes difficult, costly and sometimes impossible. But give credit to the Japanese for organizing to satisfy their customers. After all, customer satisfaction is the heart of good business policy. The Japanese have developed some of their business practices over many more centuries than has American industry. We would do well to explore the basic business practices of those more experienced in this area of customer satisfaction. The Federal Role in Transportation To understand how America’s transportation effort works, let’s look at the role of the federal government. After all, transportation is a national problem as well as a local and regional one. So the Fed’s role is important. When you examine federal transportation actions from the end of World War II to the present day, the contrast between Japan and the U.S. is startling. At the end of World War II, Japan lost no time in launching its economic war. On our side of the Pacific, we were busy cutting duties so we could buy more consumer goods — many of them Japanese products. Everyone had to have a new car, a TV, art work, homes, electronic gadgets, cameras and all the rest. What about our nation’s transportation facilities after the war? Roads were in poor condition and getting worse. The absence of federal transportation plan- ning during the years immediately following the war still is affecting U.S. progress years later. The public agency responsible for highways, the Bureau of Public Roads, was doing little planning, with little funding and no political clout. By contrast, in the early 1950s Japan had plans underway for new transit sys- tems in Tokyo and Osaka. Japan had a national policy on rebuilding commuter railroads and plans for a new high speed rail link between Tokyo and Osaka. Highway planning took second place. It was controlled! In the U.S., the emphasis was just the opposite. Highway planning took top priority with mass transit running a very poor second. Public transit patronage peaked in 1946, then started a decline of about 6 percent a year. Highway activ- ity began to increase at about the same rate. Automobile production was about 2.1 million, then rose about one million cars a year until reaching some 8 to 10 million. A five-year delay in financing a highway or transit system doubled the funding required in the ’50s and ’60s. Many projects suffered from this dilemma.Obviously some serious national planning had to be done, and soon. In 1954, a Committee on Urban Transportation was established to guide local communi- ties in obtaining “the best possible transportation at the least possible cost and aid in accomplishing desirable goals in urban renewal and sound urban growth.” Noble sentiments. That statement covered the water front but did little to fund projects or provide an effective planning process. While there were many meet- ings and conferences, it wasn’t until 1955-1956 that some meaningful things began to happen. Under President Eisenhower in 1955, General Lucious D. Clay — still thinking in wartime terms — reported on and recommended construction of a 10-Year National Highway System to be some 37,000 miles long and funded by $23 billion in federal bonds. In 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act was created. Planning for the Interstate Highway system began in earnest. But it still lacked serious federal funding or formal planning at the state level. However, progress on federal funding came with the creation of the Highway Trust Fund which raised federal taxes on fuels and broke the long-standing policy of not designating a specific purpose for federal tax income. Then the Housing Act of 1954, which had provided funds only for small com- munities, was revised in 1958 to also cover cities. Many cities started planning, although mainly for highways. Transit remained a poor cousin. President Kennedy, a supporter of federal action on transportation, had the subject investigated anew. He led the way to two landmark pieces of federal legislation: the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962 and the Urban Mass Trans- portation Act of 1964. The first of these established strict rules on urban plan- ning. Its 10-step process is still applied today, with minor changes. The second legislation provided funding but only to be released in increments through a separate authorization process. The Interstate and Defense Highway’s program was increased to 41,000 miles and $24.8 billion, to be finished in 13 years. Although this system was just being completed in 1989, and at a cost almost double its original estimate, its benefits are many times greater than forecast. Our interstate highway system is one of the finest federally-sponsored trans- portation projects of all time. Maybe a little late and very light on the mainte- nance provisions, but we do have the finest highway system in the world, as of now.A warning, though. Unless maintenance improves on our highways and bridges, they will be impossible to restore. The maintenance backlog — now about $30 billion — is building up. It must be paid. The longer we wait, the higher the cost will be. Already we are talking about a new super-highway system. We'd better fix the existing one first! But What About Mass Transit? Highway progress is all well and good for automobile, bus and truck travel on the open road, but what about our growing and congested cities? What about mass transit? Much information has been flowing in countless conferences on improving transportation. But, in comparison with highway transportation, little improve- ment has been made in mass transit. The first federal legislation to deal explicitly with urban mass transportation was the Housing Act of 1961. It came in response to financial problems of the commuter railroads across the country. But it provided only low interest loans! While we were talking, Japan was acting, building two new subway lines and rebuilding many commuter rail lines. The construction of the high-speed New Tokaido “bullet train” line from Tokyo to Osaka was completed in 1963. Acclaimed worldwide, this achievement inspired many countries to improve their railroads. HUD moved oh so slowly on mass transit. Finally, two pieces of legislation in 1964 and 1965 spun off transit from the housing agency and formed a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). For public transportation of all kinds, this was an important breakthrough, long needed. Allan S. Boyd was approved as the first Secretary of the new Department. I had met Boyd when he was with The Brookings Institution. He went from there to chairmanship of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Boyd had a wealth of experience and created an efficient organization. He brought together 31 semi-autonomous agencies in a logical and workable manner to create the organization that exists today. With the automobile and highways dominating the thinking and planning in this country, it had taken from 1945 to 1966 to bring urban mass transit into its rightful political and funding position. Actually, the Urban Mass Transit Agency, now the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), was formed officially by a legis- lative act in 1968. I took great satisfaction in attending the White House cer- emonies and receiving fountain pens used by President Lyndon Johnson when 29he signed the two critical acts. And I dined twice at the White House, once with Lady Bird — a delightful woman. Funding Improves But Costs Go Up Funding increases and appropriations came on a more regular basis from 1966 until the 1980’s. Boston, New York, Cleveland and Chicago all received many new transit cars and assistance in financing organization improvements. Cities throughout the U.S. received many new buses, critically needed. Several major new transit systems were implemented — BART in San Francisco, WMATA in Washington, D.C., and MARTA in Atlanta. All were good systems. Late, yes, but they provided a needed minimum service on a daily basis. However, none oper- ated automatically. But then the cost of new transit systems started to go through the roof. There were several contributing factors. As the transit business began to show signs of important growth, the military contractors jumped on board. First came the Department of Defense contractors and then the space activities, with actual transfer of NASA people to UMTA, the public transit agency. Finally, DOT was influenced to employ the more advanced military contracting practices. Due to the questionable progress of UMTA in attracting new passengers, Con- gress pulled in the reins, reduced the funds available and put limits on the fund- ing process. It was apparent that, while the initial funding had been well spent, much lower costs and better analysis were necessary. So the search began for lower cost solutions. The old trolley car was revived. With modifications and high tech improvements it became Light Rail Transit (LRT). Although still basically an old-fashioned trolley car system, it is now sophisticated, with improved speed, acceleration, quietness, energy efficiency, computer control and greater comfort. LRT’s are being installed all across the country, but with limited success. Costs are running over estimates and ridership is falling well below forecasts. Rail transit systems and downtown people movers are encountering similar dis- appointments. For example, in Miami, a rail transit system, combined with a downtown people mover, encountered tremendous cost overruns and rider- ship is running 75 percent below forecasts. Detroit has a similar situation with lower patronage and greater budget problems. In 1974, the Senate Transportation Appropriations Committee directed the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to assess the potential for AGT systems. The OTA report the following year concluded that the $95 million 30spent on research and development up to that time by UMTA had not pro- duced the direct results expected in the form of fully developed urban systems. This conclusion was reached despite the fact that several foreign countries were using our technology and considered it applicable to their cities! Table 1 High Cost, Low Ridership Characterize Recent U.S. Transit Projects Location Length Year Estim. Actual Forecast Actual (Miles) opened — cost cost daily daily ($Millions) riders riders Light Rail Systems Buffalo 6.4 1985 213 529) 92,000 33,000 Portland 15.0 1986 143 214 42,500 19,000 Sacramento 18.3 1987 87 176 50,000 14,000 San Diego 45 1986 31 6,900 4,500 Santa Clara 20.0 1987 276 498 40,000 11,000 Pittsburgh 10.5 1987 480* 542** 67,000 17,500 Downtown People Movers Detroit 2.9 1987 119 210 71,000 11,000 Miami 19 1986 78 140 41,000 12,000 Rapid Rail Atlanta 21.0 1979-86 1,376 2,500 578,000 503,000 Baltimore 14.0 1984-7 450 990 206,500 52,000 Miami 20.0 1984 78 140 41,000 12,000 * complete project estimate * not yet complete Source: Office of Technology Assessment Report To Congress 1988 UMTA (now FTA) was asked in 1988 to report to OTA on the last 10 mass transit projects in the U.S. (See Table |) The data was not encouraging. As a consequence of these disappointing results, two things are happening. Congress is further questioning transit funding, and the FTA is taking new directions in planning and funding methods. Private participation in the plan- ning and funding is an obvious need, but the developers are hanging back.Meanwhile, with streets and highways becoming long parking lots, traffic con- gestion is moving to the suburbs. A new one-year program called “Suburban Mobility Initiatives” was introduced in 1987 and was extended in 1989 for two more years. While it is important to recognize the suburban situation, it really is just a different dimension of the traffic congestion problem in the city. These new programs are directed toward increased private participation and investment. They aim to reduce the need for large federally-supported rail transit systems and, hopefully, to develop a “demand” response instead of just tapping the commuter market. Chances of accomplishing this objective are slim, how- ever. Just expanding the service which already lost a great number of customers will not return them to the fold. The issue remains — patronage — how to get people to ride public transit other than simply commuting to work. The way we have been going at it, there is little demand for systems other than those which serve as a principle commuter ser- vice. And that doesn’t solve the urban traffic congestion problem or the future horizontal development of our most valuable asset — the city. 32CHAPTER FOUR Public Transportation: the battle for funds id I plan my career path? Sure, twice. Then circumstances planned it D for me a third time. And that’s the career that stuck. My first effort at career planning was while a senior in high school. My father had died at age 47 leaving my mother the house and $25,000. This little lady who had only a third grade education proceeded to make a comfortable living with that small nest egg by going to the stock exchange office in Newark every day and playing the market. Well, I was good at math. If my mother with her limited education could do that well in finance, I decided I would be able to do even better with a college education. Fortunately, I never tried to make my living playing the stock market. I probably would have lost my shirt. When it came time to select a major before my third year in college, the nation was still going through the devastating depression. A financial career didn’t look so good now. But I remembered my father’s advice about chemical engineering. He had worked at Standard Oil of New Jersey and had always said chemical engineers come through hard times better than most professionals. So my career path changed. Throughout the "40s and 50s I was primarily a chemical engineer working in electrochemistry. Innovation and development of new production techniques was my field. But, in the early ’60s, my attention was turned to the problems and opportunities of ground transportation. Whether my spare-time work on off-beat technical projects — the artificial kid- ney was one — had anything to do with it or not, about this time Westinghouse made a decision that shifted my career abruptly. As I look back, my earlier ca- reer planning had been worthwhile even though the final shift was not my idea. 33One morning in 1963 I was called into the front office in Pittsburgh and told that I was being appointed to the position of Divisions General Manager, supervising the activities of three Westinghouse operating divisions — Trans- portation, Industrial Repair and Welding. Later three smaller units were added — Utility Repair, X-Ray and Industrial Electronics. Of course, each of these divisions had a General Manager who directed its day- to-day operations. My job was to provide overall supervision and coordination. I must confess that Transportation got my attention right from the start. And it has been my area of greatest concentration ever since. Why? Because I saw there a tremendous, unsatisfied need not only in America but throughout the devel- oped world. It represented a challenge that was exciting. It spread beyond the technical to the political and social. Engineering skill was only part of the chal- lenge. Getting things done in the public arena was the other part. And that fired me up. At that time, the Westinghouse Transportation Division researched, produced, marketed and serviced transit motors, controls and braking systems. And, after 1968, complete automatic guideway transit (AGT) systems and signaling were added to the line. I struck gold at the Transportation Division right at the start. The Division Manager was a big, likable guy named Ray Marcum. Not only was Ray an excel- lent engineer, but he was a fine manager of people. All I had to do was get acquainted with the business and find out what I could contribute. And with Ray’s guidance, that didn’t take long. They didn’t need much help in the techni- cal end, but they sure felt the need for it at the commercial and political end. The transportation business was one of those on-again-off-again affairs. One year business would be booming; the next two years nothing would happen. Customers? We had a lot of good ones. Outfits like the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) that ran that city’s extensive subway network; the Long Island Railroad; the Penn Central Railroad; the Chicago Transit Authority; PATH, the Port Authority’s Trans-Hudson service from Newark to New York City; the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) in the Boston area. Only one thing was wrong with this impressive list of important customers — none of them had any money. And most of their equipment was over-age and in need of repair. Ray took me around to visit each of them and to become familiar with their needs, their systems and their buying habits. 1 soon learned that these busi- 34nesses depended on getting money from the states or local municipalities. And not much was coming in. The transit authorities and the railroads couldn't keep their systems running at a level to attract ridership. The public was abandoning public transportation in droves. My Career Path Is Finally Set The people in charge of these starving businesses knew very well what the prob- lem was. On a visit to Chicago, Ray introduced me to Walter McCarter, the Transit Authority's (CTA) general manager. Walter had always been a hard man for Westinghouse to do business with — he preferred GE — but he knew his politics. When he offered to take us to lunch I got suspicious. And, sure enough, in the middle of lunch he suddenly changed the subject and put the bee on me to get involved with the Institute for Rapid Transit (IRT) and the American Transportation Association (ATA). These organizations, he said, were hard at work in Washington to get legislation passed by Congress that would provide major transit funding. I didn’t realize it then, but Walter had set the course for the next 25 years of my life — working to encourage public and private funding for transit and the development of ways to improve people mobility. That’s still the pattern of my life. All transit authorities operating bus lines, trolley lines and rapid transit systems were members of these two organizations, IRT and ATA. So were the major companies in the transit equipment industry. But there was one catch. The transit authority people held first-class status, but the business memberships were second class — no voting rights. Just send money! Nonetheless, I got in line and went to work. I have since served on many com- mittees of these two organizations. But the assignment that took the most time and was most rewarding was the chairmanship of the combined IRT and ATA legislative committee. That group performed the principal legislative task of both organizations during that period, 1964-68. That task, of course, was to establish an important linkage in the flow of information — the liaison with Congress. One of the first things I learned as I met with congressmen and their staffs was how little they knew about public transportation, even in their home districts. Obviously, the first order of business was to educate these people on the prob- lems. So we stepped up public relations efforts and launched an information program. 35It seemed clear to me that we needed a professional lobbyist — someone who knew his way around Congress, who knew the key Senators and Representa- tives and their staffers. A lot of people don’t like the idea of lobbying, but it’s really a vital information function in those areas where business and politics must necessarily mix. It serves a useful public service as long as it is done with integrity. And that’s the way we set out to do it. We retained a very good man, Paul McGowan, to fill this role. And the results were satisfying. During my time as chairman of the legislative committee we followed three major bills through Congress. One provided major funding for transit, bus and rail; another funded the high-speed New York to Washington Metroliner, and the third established the Urban Mass Transportation Adminis- tration (UMTA). Many of our strategy meetings were held in the evenings when the Senate or House were not in session. I remember one such meeting, at McGowan’s home in Maryland, when the late Tip O’Neill was present. We hoped that this influen- tial Congressman would be helpful in lining up some of the southern and western congressmen in support of pending transit legislation. We had a lot of data on their bus systems that would be useful in Tip’s hands since they were not interested in rail transit projects. The hospitality and food proved to be so good that Tip fell fast asleep on the couch after dinner. I was sitting right next to him, and, to my amazement, when he awoke a few minutes later he picked up on the conversation as if he hadn’t missed a word. He assured us the bill would pass. And it did. Despite my Republican leanings, I was most impressed with his knowledge of the situation and his political acumen. But then, I was only learning what most people already knew about this man. Other political figures weren’t quite as knowledgeable. Senator Pell, who went to Japan and rode the New Tokaido bullet train at 150 miles per hour, assured everyone that the Metroliner between New York and Washington would make the same speed. No way. But, at least, he helped win the votes that passed the Metroliner legislation. One thing our legislative committee never achieved was to gain for mass transit equal funding with highway. As mentioned earlier, the Highway Trust Fund is the only federal fund designated for a specific purpose — building highways. With the help of O’Neill of Massachusetts, Pell of Connecticut, Williams of New Jersey and other congressmen, we presented data to show that transit and rail- roads were just another form of highway. Nice try, but Congress didn’t buy that argument. 36One of the personally rewarding returns from my legislative efforts was to at- tend the signing by President Lyndon Johnson of the large funding bill for tran- sit in 1966. So important was this legislation that the President had a dinner at the White House that evening for those who had contributed to its passage. Just getting into the working part of the White House was a new experience for me. And so were the security precautions involved. You must have a written invitation and your name must appear on the approved list at the guard house where you are to enter at a specified hour. Just before noon I appeared at the guard house. As I handed my invitation to the guard, a long limousine pulled up and I recognized inside the same Senator Pell who had ridden the high speed New Tokaido train and then started the Metroliner project. He apparently had forgotten his invitation. Despite his sug- gesting that his work in transportation was so well known that he should be passed through, it was no dice. He was turned back. However, he must have returned with the needed invitation because he appeared at the President’s elbow when Lyndon was signing the bill. The President must have used and passed out 20 to 30 pens. I got one of them. The dinner was inspiring. There were about 20 people there in addition to the President and his staff. To our surprise and pleasure, Lady Bird Johnson walked. in as we were talking before dinner and she invited us to take a short tour of the White House first floor with her. Our “tour guide” was most gracious and answered all questions with ease. At dinner, I had the pleasure of sitting directly across from the First Lady which made conversation easy. Lady Bird is a smart woman — maybe smarter than her husband. It was clear from her remarks that beautification of America was her thing. I made several efforts to get her assessment of the new mass transit legislation. It was her hope, she said, that we would be successful so that traffic congestion would be reduced sufficiently to allow more people to get into our cities. In this, she obviously shared the hope of most people for an end to traffic congestion. Lady Bird caught me as we were leaving the table and again urged that I volun- teer to help Pennsylvania in the state’s beautification projects. She was a real saleswoman. Too bad she couldn’t have picked mass transit as her contribution to our country. 37During those early years, I received three pens from President Johnson and had dinner with him once more, again to the accompanyment of the U.S. Marine Band. You can imagine how a military band rattles the White House walls. Lyndon wasn’t much for chamber music. He preferred trumpets and trombones. New York’s “Red Book” The problems that the transit industry had with its customers often stemmed from the fact that the transit authorities liked to hold the car manufacturers responsible for as much as possible. Take the matter of new car specifications as an example. The New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) had a “red book” for new car specs. They went by this book on every order for years. Before my time, I under- stand the book was about 1/4-inch thick. Then the government money started to flow and the red book grew thicker. During my period of responsibility for meeting customer demands, the red book doubled in thickness to about 1/2- inch, but we still were able to meet its requirements. By the early ’70s it had doubled again to one-inch in thickness and trouble loomed on the horizon. The expressed purpose of this book was to spell out in detail all transit car speci- fications. Public agencies tend to seek protection behind such books of regula- tions and specifications. These agencies play the role of the perfect expert whose position is fortified by their role as the purchaser. Communication becomes more and more a one-way street. By contrast, in other countries there is better two-way communication in transit projects. The two sides help each other. It has not always been so here. ‘Take this example from the early ’70s when the New York City Transit Authority received funding from the state and the federal government to purchase 750 cars worth $600 million. Not only did these 750 cars have to meet all those red book specifications, but the NYCTA added a time requirement. Every single car had to work for 30 days with no more than three faults. . . all without the avail- ability of adequate test tracks or test facilities. What happened? Not a single car was accepted for service for almost two years. What else happened? The car builder responsible for producing these 750 cars, the Pullman Company, went out of the car business! Eventually, so did the Budd Company as well as St. Louis Car which was the first to abdicate a few years earlier. The manufacture of transit cars has been effectively turned over to foreign com- petition where customers and suppliers do a better job of communicating. U.S. industry had the business and lost it, with transit authorities and suppliers both 38.contributing to this demise. Even the defense contractors, who thought they had a new business opportunity, exited the marketplace. It’s too bad they didn’t persist long enough to learn how to conduct the transit business. Japanese and Canadian companies have worked out deals to establish assembly plants with test tracks in the U.S. This makes it possible for them to meet the 50 percent U.S. manufacturing requirement for federal funding as well as supply a higher quality product owing to their sensitivity to the importance of transit quality control. The U.S. transit business lacked the teamwork and coordination that is found abroad. In Japan, the three parties involved — transit authority, car builder and government — would get together to prepare for an anticipated business project. Information would flow back and forth among all parties. Several years ago I walked down the manufacturing line in a Japanese factory making U S. transit cars. I could see little difference in methods used or quality achieved. It was improved coordination that resulted in overall superior perfor- mance, in my judgment. But attention to quality must be a continuing priority. Even in Japan they now are experiencing quality problems as they face the need for higher manufacturing volume in building the new high speed trains for parts of the country not served by the original bullet trains. The transit business isn’t the only place where poor communications “done us in,” as Eliza Doolittle would say. You can start the list of communications disas- ters with the attack on Pearl Harbor where the U.S. had all the information needed to anticipate the attack before the first bomb dropped, including an operating Westinghouse radar unit that detected the first flight of attacking aircraft. Warning ignored. Sometimes the fault is not a lack of information, but too much information or information not properly screened or analyzed. New York’s red book, for ex- ample, was essentially a depository for every new or changed specification that came along. It takes more time and effort to shorten instructions and make them explicit than it does to lengthen them. Often, the people providing information fear they are not being specific enough. But instead of being concise and specific, they get long-winded. Incidentally, I understand the red book still exists although it’s no longer red. It now requires two volumes, each about an inch thick! But, happily, I can affirm that communications have improved. The transit management in New York deserves credit for creating a better climate for the two-way flow of information 39with suppliers and improving the manufacture of NYCTA transit vehicles in recent years. Sometimes the best way to communicate is through action, not words. That not only makes the information flow but drives the message home. Lou Gambicini, general manager of PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) in New York taught me that. He was, of course, a customer of our Transportation Division which supplied motors, controls and other equipment for his Newark to New York subway trains that ran under the Hudson River. One day in his Jersey City office, I was discussing the progress of a congressional funding bill when he suddenly changed the subject. “George,” he said, “did you ride the subway to get here?” “No,” I replied. “I got a ride over in a friend’s automobile.” “Well, on your way back to New York, do me a favor and ride the subway for at least one stop.” When I left the meeting, I made arrangements to be picked up at the next station to Jersey City which was Hoboken. After waiting several minutes on the platform for the subway train to come, I got a surprise. When it arrived, half the cars were in total darkness. I boarded one of the lighted cars. Then as the train moved through those bumpy, 100-year-old tunnels toward Hoboken, I walked into one of the dark cars. It was scary. And I quickly realized why Lou had asked me to ride the train. The fact that some of these cars were dark was my respon- sibility! My division had just supplied new “inverters” which converted direct current into alternating current for improved lighting. Until 1964, all lights on the sub- way cars were powered by the same 600 volts direct current which drove the motors that moved the car along the tracks. The old lights were dim and blinked a lot with d.c. The new inverters and thyristers would fix that. But they could only handle up to 1,000 volts; larger sizes were not yet available. Obviously, my engineers had tested our new equipment for the conventional 600 volt service and assumed that the variations in voltage — or “spikes” — on the PATH system would not exceed 1,000 volts. Surprise! When we later mea- sured the voltage on the PATH system, some “spikes” exceeded 1,500 volts. At 1,500, the lights wouldn’t work. Soon 2,000 volt thyristers became available from Siemens.Lou Gambicini had employed the most direct method of communication to inform me of the problem. . . he made me experience it myself. Our engineers were among the best in the world. What had been their mistake? They had not tested the new equipment under actual operating conditions in those old tunnels before putting it into service. It was vital information they lacked — a break in the chain. The BART people in San Francisco were to make the same “no on-line testing” mistake when they put their new system into service years later. In order to get their system in operation more quickly, they eliminated all transit car testing on the test tracks which had been provided with government funds. More about this later. Live and. . . sometimes. . . learn. 41Se Sad os ee epee Cooley Gi om Pe el iS TR hat aelidleitg Kee ee ea ey Ue eal (aim Poll eA ary Bogie an slisyelile Lon meee it hte By ap. Fo heer wl maleic rian SLD moe a estilo eile ale 7 vital eit a - oF : ee Peale d NE liee ; 1 7 ; = amlicm 7 oplon ay Gotuaioae t aCHAPTER FIVE The Birth of Automated Guideway Transit (AGT) utomated rapid transit was born in Pittsburgh, but it grew up in places At Lille, France and Kobe, Japan. Why this happened is an incredible story of lost opportunity and partisan politics. It began in the early 1960s when the community leaders of Pittsburgh realized that their famed “Renaissance” had an Achilles heel. Smoke control had cleared the air of soot and cinders. Gone were the old, broken-down buildings which had clogged the “Golden Triangle” where the Allegheny and Monongahela riv- ers merge to form the Ohio. A new concert hall and sports stadium were on the drawing boards. Like the legendary Phoenix bird, a sparkling new city was ris- ing in the place of the old — except for one thing. Transportation. Pittsburgh’s public transportation consisted of an aging, inefficient trolley car and bus system and an east-west railroad system that didn’t go where the city was expanding, that is, north and south. New parkways were being built to help automobile traffic but public transit was in desperate straits, financially, orga- nizationally and operationally. Passengers were deserting public transit and they couldn’t be blamed. They couldn’t count on a trolley or bus coming on schedule. And, when it finally arrived, they were crowded into a slow and uncomfortable vehicle that was too hot in summer and too cold in winter. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had a paperwork transportation organi- zation that remained aloof to local transit authorities. Nor was much assistance for city transit emanating from the Federal transportation agencies either by way of funding or planning. All in all, it was a real mess. a3The Allegheny Conference Steps In But men like Richard K. Mellon and other “hands-on” civic leaders knew what to do about messes. They had tackled a huge one — Pittsburgh — after World War II, with the support and cooperation of the city’s outstanding Mayor David L. Lawrence. They had achieved remarkable results through an organization called the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. Now they de- cided it was time for that group to tackle the County’s transportation problem. So it was that one day in December, 1961, the chief executives of seven of Pittsburgh’s leading industrial companies received identical letters from Patrick J. Cusick Jr., executive director of the Pittsburgh Regional Planning Association which was an arm of the Allegheny Conference. With his letter, Cusick sent each corporate head a report on a recent transit study. He asked them to read it and then come up with new rapid transit ideas for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County that would meet the objectives stressed in the report. Only one of those seven chief executives took Cusick’s letter very seriously — Mark W. Cresap Jr., president of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. He sent it to his group vice president in charge of the company’s industrial and control divisions, Donald C. Burnham, with instructions to “do something about this.” The assignment ended up on the desk of veteran engineer Charles Kerr, one of the company’s top men responsible for transportation engineering. And Charlie Kerr enjoyed challenges. This was his meat! I didn’t know him at that moment, but two years later when I was given respon- sibility for all Westinghouse transportation activities, I talked with him at length about his work on this landmark project. This is his story about the origin of what we now call “automated guideway transit” or AGT. Kerr Finds “Room For Improvement” Kerr started by reviewing the problems of the subway systems in New York and Chicago with which he was quite familiar. First, he told me, they cost too much to build and to operate. They were mostly down in the bowels of the city and did not present a secure environment. Their off-hour service was very poor, and even in busy periods the passengers had to wait too long for the next train. Most of their equipment was designed and built in the early 1900s and was not attractive to city officials who required new improvements in their transporta- tion systems. “There is,” Charlie said, “a lot of room for improvement.” And he set out to design an improved transit system. First he tackled the cost problem. 44“Direct labor,” he told me, “represents 60 to 70 percent of a transit system’s operating costs, so the first thing to do was eliminate the need for an operator of the transit vehicle.” In other words, automate the system just like elevator systems had been automated not too many years earlier. “Next,” he said, “the transit system of the future ought to be pulled up out of the ground for several reasons. One is cost. It costs five times as much to tunnel a transit system as to put it above ground. The other reason is to take advantage of the exciting views of the newly-built cities. Why bury transit vehicles?” Then, Kerr decided, there must be more frequent service. Don’t run long trains 5 to 10 minutes apart. Run shorter trains or single cars at close intervals, like every two minutes or less, around the clock. Since they won't need operators, this won’t be expensive and will attract passengers. The rider won't feel any need to run to catch the transit vehicle if another will be along almost immediately. Charlie added other minor improvements and started to make sketches of the system. He discussed his work with other engineers in the Transportation Divi- sion who contributed more ideas based on equipment they currently were de- signing and building. New solid-state electronics, for example. The engineers told Kerr they could design the propulsion and control system using new com- puter technology which would give exciting control capabilities and longer life with few moving parts. They encouraged him to design a completely automated system which would stop a transit vehicle within three inches of the predetermined spot at every station and respond more safely to traffic conditions than any human operator possibly could. In other words, eliminating the operator would make the system safer. Now Charlie was ready to create a final concept. He made sketches and built a small model of a transit vehicle and its guideway. It included rubber tires, two cement tracks or guideways and a center steel guide beam with horizontal wheels and tires that locked the car to the system. It couldn't go off the tracks. When all was put together, it was surprisingly simple. The Port Authority Plans A Demonstration What should the next step be? The Allegheny Conference did not build things, so Don Burnham and Kerr went to the Port Authority of Allegheny County — the transit agency for the area. That agency liked the concept and decided a demonstration would be needed. Proof that the system works! 45But they decided not to place an experimental project on an existing trolley line. Instead, they would build a test loop in one of the County parks. Looking back on it, this may have been a fatal error. No matter how well the experimen- tal model worked, it still wouldn’t prove safety of operation in actual public transit service. And safety was to be the main point of attack when the ensuing political battles began later on. Nonetheless permission was granted to place a two-mile loop of the new transit system in Allegheny County’s South Park and operate it for the public during the big County Fair which was held there every year. Several variations of the new demonstration system were proposed, ranging from $1.5 million to $15 million in cost. When the specific design was agreed upon, however, the cost was $5 million. Part of that money could come from the county, the city and the state, but obviously Federal funds were needed. So a project presentation was prepared which Burnham, Kerr and the executive director of the Port Authority took to Washington. They called on the Housing and Home Financing Agency which then was responsible for public transit. Secretary Robert Coleman promptly approved more than two and three- quarter million dollars for the demonstration project. As initiated by Westinghouse with assistance from 31 area companies, the budget for the demonstration project looked like this: U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development $2,872,000 Allegheny County Port Authority 886,000 Pennsylvania Department of Commerce 200,000 Westinghouse and other contributors 1,042,000 Total $5,000,000 What Was New? What was really new about Charlie Kerr’s “new system”? Most of the individual pieces were not new. For example, rubber tires on a concrete track or guideway was an old idea. Adding a steel I beam was nothing new either. Nor were elec- tronic components new, It was just putting all the ideas into one system that made it new and different. In much the same way the Wright Brothers had designed the first powered airplane 60 years earlier. They had developed only one really patentable com- ponent — the curved wing. But they had combined everything else in an imagi- native and well engineered way to produce the Wright Flyer. Charles Kerr used the same technique in designing the world’s first automated guideway transit 46system. He didn’t have to worry about patentable components since the use of Federal funds required everything to be made available to the public in any case. The demonstration loop was designed and built over a three-year period. (Figs. 4A, 4B) But in the beginning, even I was somewhat skeptical of a completely automated system. Like most of the people in the Transportation Division, I had been influenced for too long by our rail rapid transit customers to whom the idea of total automation was anathema. The only one at the construction site who really was enthusiastic from the very start was our manager of opera- tions and testing, Dixie Howell. But as installation and testing progressed, enthusiasm grew rapidly among the whole crew. As I was walking around the site one day observing the installation of the guidebeams, it dawned on me that we really were “playing” with a $5 million model train set. I found other people also were looking at it like that. Our enthusiasm spread to the Port Authority organization and people of the transit agencies who visited the site. Their uneasiness about automation disap- peared once they sat down at the computer control console and watched the system operate. With that they came “on board.” I was spending long hours at the site. The longer I was there, the more I became aware that this project was more than a transit system. It was a new tool for safely and conveniently moving people — quiet, fast, automated. It could be an integral part of a horizontal building, performing the same functions as a verti- cal elevator does in a high risk structure. I coined the name “horizontal eleva- tor” because it seemed so similar to the elevator, except operating horizontally instead of vertically. When some people expressed doubts about the name, I ran a contest to reward whoever could come up with a new name for the new product and process. More than 500 names were submitted. Some were pretty good and some were pretty bad. “Horovator” was one suggestion. What a name for an automatic horizontal transit system! If that wouldn’t discourage ridership, what would? In the end, none of the suggested names stood up under scrutiny and the name Horizontal Elevator still stands. It is widely accepted today. We encountered many technical problems during the three-year period of con- struction and test at the South Park site. All were solved one way or another but some opened us up to political sniping that later was to mount into a huge political firestorm. 47One of the first problems arose the morning the system was to be demonstrated to the new Secretary of Transportation, Allan Boyd in February, 1966. I met Allan at the County airport the previous afternoon with a helicopter. As we climbed in, he seemed a little concerned. I asked him what was the matter and he admitted he had never been in a helicopter before. Remember, he had been chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board before taking over as Secretary of Transportation. Fora few minutes we circled over the “Skybus” site. The media had given Charlie Kerr’s system that nickname for headline reasons and it stuck. I told Allan we would be back in the morning for a demonstration ride before he was sched- uled to give the keynote address at the opening of the first Pittsburgh Interna- tional Transportation Conference downtown. But we blew our first PR test. You see, the media was scheduled to get a ride on the system before Boyd got there, but we hadn't counted on a heavy frost during the night. The frost didn’t bother the guideway but it froze a thin layer of ice on the electric current collec- tors. That wouldn’t have been a problem if we would have run the vehicle every hour or so during the night. But nobody had thought of doing that. This was the headline in that evening’s Pittsburgh Press: FROST ON RAILS STALLS SKYBUS. By the time I arrived with Boyd, of course, the frost had melted and the system was working fine. That was just the first of many PR problems we were to expe- rience in the months ahead. Public demonstrations had been started in South Park with the County Fair of August, 1965, before the system was operated under automatic control. Then fully automated operations were demonstrated beginning in June the following year. During the County Fairs of 1966 and 1967 more than 200,000 people were carried safely around the two-mile loop. Public interest was high. No problems, right? Wrong. Our problems were about to start. The local politi- cians began to choose up sides and use the Skybus as their football. 48