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Friday, January 25,1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Transportation At Crossroads
Transportation is no longer something to be taken for granted. The gasoline pump has become a one-armed robber and traveling cross-country in an automobile at 55 miles an hour, begging at each local shady-tree gas station, is a grueling, frustrating experience.
If present trends continue, driving will become the least economical way to travel. Already patronage for private cars has increased, there are fewer cars on the highways, and it is all for the better.
The American obsession with automobiles may finally be terminated by necessity. It could be a whole new adventure for people who have never before deviated from their travel in gas-burning dinosaurs.
Car travel will not become extinct but it will surely dwindle in importance. In places like New York City, which has an excellent subway and bus system and is crowded with pedestrians, a car has already become more of a nuisance than a benefit.
Now that Americans cannot afford to be lavish with fuel, they will become more efficient and more ingenious. And they will rediscover the charm of bicycling, walking or riding the trains.
Nothing builds ingenuity more than adversity. Experimental work with such things as dirigibles and steam-powered cars is being seriously undertaken to provide alternatives to transportation woes.
But the railroad, the great iron horse that altered American history, still drives Midwest and Far West and seemed to be headed for
bankruptcy and extinction, is suddenly the best hope for transportation of the future.
The energy shortage has created a cross-road in the history of transportation. The nation can try to muddle through with the internal combustion engine or it can take on the task of selecting and attractive alternatives.
The railroads have always profitably shipped goods across the country. But the passenger trains have been greatly maligned by railroad executives. Because the passenger trains were a losing enterprise, largely because of poor management, many of the train companies openly discourage passenger patronage.
Public transportation has been hindered in the United States because of the great distances within some cities and between cities. But the expansion of the transportation system should provide the impetus to further develop our badly needed public transportation systems.
Bill Gibson
There is no reason why this country cannot develop an efficient and fast train system to compete with the airlines. Instead of pouring money into building highways, airports and experimental airplanes that will not be as readily utilized because of fuel shortages, some of that money could be spent on putting in new track to handle the fast trains that have worked so well in Japan and Europe.
Cabin Taxis Provide Private Public Travel
The Los Angeles Times
The government salvaged the passenger trains when it assumed partial control and organized Amtrak. But support for the program, especially from the active branch, was sporadic at best.
BY JOE ALEX MORRIS JR.
The Los Angeles Times
HAGEN, Germany—One of the problems with public transportation is that it is too painful.
This, at least, is the conclusion of West German engineers who are trying to cope with the growing strangulation of their cities by the automobile.
It's called *Cat*, *short for* *Cahin Taxi*. It's also the other public transport systems in that.
One possible way out of this impasse is simply to ban cars in the city centers, but this is considered politically unwise. Another possible answer was unveiled here recently.
--It offers a maximum of privacy
To the surprise of some experts, an overwhelming majority answered that they would still prefer to take their cars all the time and not spend a mark on the outskirts and ride a streetcar.
A number of depressing studies back them up. The citizens of Munich, one of the country's worst traffic bottlenecks, were recently asked whether they would switch to the "park and ride" system if the city's bus and streetcar network were free.
- It offers a maximum of privacy.
- It takes people directly to their destination, or within a reasonable distance thereof.
Cat could be the answer to Los Angeles' downtown transportation problems of the next two decades. It would provide a people mover system that would keep automobile traffic out of the city's core. Its advantages over the present envisaged plans include the simple fact that John Q. Public and his family are not obliged to rub shoulders with the public. They can park their cars in garages on the outskirts and switch over to public transportation.
The system consists of small, three-person cabins that travel at speeds up to 25 km/h.
The cabins are powered by linear induction electric motors, which make a not unpleasant humming noise. They travel on rubber wheels, either on a track or suspended from an overhead track.
There is nothing new to the technology of the system. The linear induction motor was invented back in the 19th century and is also being used in high-speed train experiments here that envisage trains going 350 m.p.h. Other sophistication in the system includes a traffic moving and provide cabin traffic moving and provide cabin sensors where they are needed, plus the sensors necessary to keep the taxis a safe distance apart.
A system that operates without people opens the way to other problems, such as vandalism. But officials hope that the mandated order will prevent an orderly disturbance will keep this to a minimum.
The inventors claim that Cat is ideal for cities with under half a million population. They hope to see it installed as supplementary transportation to the subway systems either planned or in operation in 12 major West German cities.
Operating costs will, it is claimed, be low. They stand at 17 pennings per kilometer (about 10 cents a mile) for a cabin taxi with up to three passengers aboard. This compares with 15 pennings a seat for bus travel, and 15 pennings a kilometre for travel in a Volkswagen.
All modern transport systems are expensive, and the cabin taxis will be no exception. The net number of private network stands at about $4 million a mile for the city of Hagen, a total of $380 million.
Whether the cabin taxi system ever gets beyond the present experimental stage depends on the federal government here, which is financing up to 80 per cent of the development work, and also on how it will be managed in order to solving the urban traffic crisis. The cabin taxi has one big advantage over the other systems: It is the least public.
Trains Renew Human Experience
Impersonal Planes, Cars Spoil Joy of Travel
By JEROME LLOYD
Kansan Staff Reenter
Fuel may soon be in very short supply even if the Arab nations do not continue to blackmail the United States. Unless people clamor in a great chorus for the simple joys of cross-country bus travel, it might be a good idea to return to the railroads.
The airlines, which burn so much fuel, are cutting down on those introsified flight schedules that, in the past, have encumbered the skies over airports with winged nonsense—and the price of a ticket is rising. The automobile, so frequently a lethal emotional outlet, will probably be used less in the years to come.
And since a train can transport many more people than an airplane—and burn more fuel, it seems that railroad lines could make great profits on volume alone, and that the price of a ticket could remain fairly low, as long as gasoline prices were moderate and
Train travel is relaxed, safe, inexpensive. Driving, and especially flying, fill any number of people with a sense of foreboding, if not with panic. The train travels you, but it can also physically get you can up and stretch your legs at any moment during the journey.
For a while, he as encounters and deals with the new, he may open up and allow the winds of change to scatter seeds over much of his potential for growth. When he years for travel, he often wishes for nothing quite enough as a challenge his preconceived notions.
The more direct the challenge, the better.
The train brings one face to face with a staggering variety of personalities—rich and poor, educated and uneducated, young and old—a far cry from the almost ordinary people whom one encounters on airplanes.
The great virtue of train travel lies in the domain of experience. A journey is often an exalted episode in one's life, in a major or minor way. Inspiration in the realm of travel means, above all, first-hand experience that refreshes and fulfills the traveler.
And the traveler's appreciation of the landscape, which thrives on his sense of adventure, is heightened not only by his exposure to many different kinds of people but by his physical freedom to explore. He may move to the lounge and meet someone new; he may discover a tablemate in the dining car whom he finds worth knowing in some detail; he may even spend half the day traveling—through his travel—becoming, perhaps deeply, acquainted with a person whom he will never see again.
It is the train that offers the most direct initial challenge to the traveler, although at
Travel by automobile is also poisoned by pockets of sweet disenchment, by identical freeways that tase the driver with the subtle suggestion that he may have been drinking. The sense of saneness has merged with the exotic in the American freeway; by virginal restaurants along the way, where counters of pink and rabbit trash kiss the exhausted mind to death; by depersonalization as mass-produced, a commercialized void, which just might sidle up
times only by default. The atmosphere on many airplanes hardly surpasses that of a cramped peach-colored motel dining room. Frequently the traveler is left brooding over what seems to be a closed-minded spirit of planned dissatisfaction. He will be allotted two cocktails or lightly tendered by his friend, mind-up hostesses with a pristine polished patter.
The train is like a healthy animal which infuses the traveler with the uncompromising saltiness of its own great drive. In the past, the chugging of the locomotive and the acrid smel of coal will remain a constant intimate contact with a great source of power.
to the unwary sleeper with cloying familiarity.
The revival of the train would probably be convenient for everyone. Carefully scheduled night trips between cities like New York and Chicago, Kansas City and Denver, and Los Angeles and San Francisco, could successfully challenge a great effort to keep it off. If were to travel relatively low, there would have to be much less flying and fewer long-distance drives, otherwise, the price of fuel would only go up.
In any case, the railways might revert to coal or electricity. If trains were revived on a large scale, those who had to fly would be more likely to arrive on schedule and those who did not, do so with greater ease and comfort, as people were still being asked to drive less.
Increased train travel might do more than help the United States through an energy crisis. The warmth and the sense of reality offered by the train could be invaluable for Americans, if only because it could help to complain effectively and in large numbers, which flaws in other travel arrangements, which stand in the way of real experience.
The erasht whipped cream that decorates the desserts in the dreamy oases along the freeways, like the contrived atmosphere on board of a luxury yacht or travel that is a window open on life.
Special Focus: Transportation
Car Shipping Transports Tourists
By EILEEN SWIFT
NEW YORK...Drive cars to all cities;"
went the ad in the Village Voice.
"Sip your car to Florida, California & all states," invited the complementary ad in a letter addressed to "the President."
In combination, the two types of ads, plus listings in classified phone directories around the country (usually under "Automobile Transporters" or similar), are creating a booming new transportation business. They match the relocated executive, who needs his car transported across country, with the budget-bound pinyin penny pincher who needs wheels to "Discover America."
the nation-wide AAACON chain claims to be the granddaddy and the biggest in the industry.
Cars being shipped may be cars belonging to executives being relocated, to the elderly who don't want the strain of driving, to diplomatic personnel, and to peripatetic workers. They are located in business field. They may be cars stolen and located by the police and now being
returned to their owners, new cars imported from abroad being shipped from port of arrival, cars being repossessed by finance officers and cars being returned to a rental agent.
Drivers, I found, run the gamut, from hippies to senior citizens, nuns to lawyers, foreign tourists to students heading out to shopping malls, and so on about checking out drivers. They must prove they are over 21 and have a valid driver's license or international driving permit before even going through the police to obtain prints routine mentioned earlier.
In the past year we lost one car out of 25,000" said Paul Zola of AAACON, "and our complaint ratio is under three per cent."
MOST DRIVERS ARE Male and young. Most prefer small economy cars, since they have to foot the fuel bill. Hippies, it appears, are the backbone of the business. Al Rappaport of Drivers Exchange said: "We'd need a good driver and wants to get there than a middledge college professor who thinks he's doing a favor." Haight Abbey, San
Francisco-to-Greenwich Village, New York, is a high-traffic hippie commuter route, he said. "Others follow the guru to the Divine Light Mission in Colorado."
Couples are welcomed, but families with young children are avoided for insurance reasons. Women? They're welcome enough but rarely apply. "You rarely find one girl applying and just occasionally two," said Richard La Forge of Dependable Car Insurance, a company men, because they don't want to take chances and don't go too fast," he said.
Nuns, clergymen and rabbis get a seraphic welcome and agencies are in regular touch with seminaries, convents and Yeshiva institutions. "They are reliable and honorable," he said. "An tutorent Baptist minister, who commutes between missions in Los Angeles, New York and Miami, is a regular driver for Drivers Exchange. 'He's more interested in how many souls he saves en route that in where he goes,' Rappaport wrote.
SENIOR CITIZENS are looked on as 'reliable' but 'too chosy and demanding' to deal with.
Couples are regarded as "usually very reliable." Once, however, a Colorado-bound driver turned midwife when his wife gave birth in the car.
"we notified the car owner of the delay and he was very nice about it," the agent said.
Agencies protect themselves through an industry-wide "nasty file" of bad-apple drivers. Checking one agent's blacklist, we find that the company included "touring in car," "taking repair bill," and "abandoning vehicle after accident," and "responsibility in not delivering car on time." As for auto theft, "With our kind driver, you can be held to a steal a car off the street," one agent said.
The most popular shipping destinations from New York are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Denver and Chicago, and from the West Coast, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
Canada Tries Taxi-Bus Service
Driveway opportunities also extend to Canada and only occasionally to Mexico. As for the sleeping-bag set's dream assignment, the camper-van, driveway companies report they occasionally can offer these.
By DON SHANNON The Los Angeles Times
OTTAWA-In a growing number of cities the citizens call a bus instead of a taxi.
In three suburbs of this Canadian capital, residents now can dial a number and be picked up by a red and white minibus at their door with never more than 30 minutes waiting time. The bus takes commuters to a central point where they can connect with
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
And the bus drivers like it as much as the passengers, with a different route on virtually every run to escape the boredom of the crowd. When there are no "passengers pending."
The whole Ottawa system is an eyepener to Americans accustomed to decrepit and dirty public transit. The regular fleet of 400 buses is clean and well-maintained, diminished by a griezing mechanical crew that 15 buses 20 years old are still in use.
All of this comes for a cash fare of 30 cents or 25 cents if passengers buy four tickets for a dollar. Tele-transpo costs 10 cents more and Tele-stripes cost 20 cents more and 25 cents more during rush hours.
express bus service to downtown Ottawa,
return and be delivered to their door again.
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Those willing to reserve the service for at least five days in the week can buy a pass for $4, entitle them not only to five round trips but unlimited them to the entire trip by reserving the day.
"The United States has had an almost constant decline in the number of people using public transit since World War II." Paine pointed out. "In Canada, we are carrying more people now than during the war."
The newest experiment started in August with a free week's trial and is already the
ougget operation of its kind in North America, serving 140 passengers a day. It wasn't the world's first. Transport officials acknowledge that a one-bus system in Mansfield, Ohio, pioneered the idea several years ago.
And Toronto is expected to take over leadership in size in late October when it inaugurates a system larger than Ottawa's as a feeder for its expanding subways.
Even if it wasn't the first and may not be the biggest much longer, both the operators and the customers think Ottawa's service is the greatest.
Ernestpine, a veteran official of the Ottawa-Carleton regional transit commission who started 21 years ago as a motorman with the system's no longer a luxury but an option, the transpo" drivers almost to a man prefer their new jobs to conventional routes.
"And the public thinks the idea is terrific," he said. "We have already had a lot of demands for the service in other neighborhood."
Paine's comments were corroborated by a passenger in Bell's Corners, one of the three suburbs chosen for the special service because they are off arterial roads. Edith Dunn said she reluctantly decided to get a driver's license so she could chauffeur her husband to work and have the use of the family car during the day.
"Now I don't have to drive and I'm much happier," she said as she returned with a bag of groceries from the shopping center which is the Bell's Corners collection point.
Dunn was the only returning passenger in zone 4 and driver Wilfred Allard had only two pickups on his schedule. Both were previously reserved but a later caller could be picked up on a radio call to the driver after he had left the dispatch point. If there is no demand for service, the drivers skip their normal half-hour run and may either wait at headquarters, help with that may be busier or assist discharger.
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