February 9, 1946— “KOWFADAKUV!” echoes on in San Francisco, thanks to 1,349 assorted housewives, businessmen, writers, tourists, a Saturday Evening Post cover, and a sergeant sitting out on Iwo Jima. The city’s beloved antiques, those 1888-model cable cars, have beaten back the threat of civic progress. “Kowfadakuv!” which once sang past great-grandpa’s wind-whipped sideburns and which, of course, is English for the rule-book phrase, “Look out for the curve!” is now irretrievably immortal.

When progress recently reared its threatening head, there had been few improvements since Andrew Hallidie contrived the world’s first cable-car line in 1873 to scale the almost vertical San Francisco hillsides. Modern patrons seldom bother to glance inside that small part of each car which is enclosed with side walls and windows, for the accepted legend is that these spaces were filled with passengers at the factory when the cars were built. Most riders just plunk themselves on the benches, paralleling the track and facing out, that form the open front half of the cars, or they cling precariously outside on the step boards, like sardines hanging all over the outside of a can.

The crisis arrived last August. San Franciscans came face to face in their newspapers with the realization that they were about to lose the world’s first—and last—and indubitably most famous cable- car system. It was just that nobody seemed to want the job of running those half-pint cars any more. That, and the increasing laments of some of the clingers-on, who were beginning to assert that antiques ought to be kept in museums instead of in use.

The personnel problem looked insoluble. The utilities commission, which operates the city-owned part of the lines, feared that the conductors and gripmen (cable motormen) would be unable to resist better jobs on electric and bus lines, come September, when a general union sign-up for transportation employees was scheduled. The service, traditionally poor but spectacular, already was undermanned, and the city was forbidden by law to pay higher wages than comparable private industry. That was ninety-seven and a half cents, paid by the California Street Cable Railway Company, operator of the nonmunicipal section of the line, the only comparable industry in the world.

Then came sign-up day with its big surprise. Gripmen and conductors spat on their calloused hands and for some reason utterly unconnected with common sense stuck to their museum-piece jobs. Just one man deserted to an electric-line job—and darned if an electric-line man didn’t ask to replace him!

After that, spontaneously unfolded the project of curing the complaints of the chilled, soggy open-air riders. The women’s chamber of commerce sprang into a save-the-cable-cars campaign and Mead Schaeffer’s September 29 Post cover … helped touch off an explosive burst of civic pride. Housewives, businessmen, other letter writers from Corregidor to Peru, Indiana, expressed rage, shock, despair, disillusionment, and bitterness at the thought of San Francisco without a cable car. From Iwo Jima, Sgt. Martin Sugarman wrote to Chronicle Columnist Robert O’Brien, “Tear down the bay bridges, but leave our cable cars alone!” Fans offered money, offered to take the stump, offered to run the cars themselves. The riders quit complaining.

There was only one dissenter. A guest at a downtown hotel protested that the half-pint cars kept her awake. But she was a hopeless case. She lived in Los Angeles and didn’t even like foghorns.

April 25, 1959—A transit expert, Henry K. Norton, gave himself a little fun recently by journeying 20,000 miles throughout Europe to look at transit facilities in twelve countries. It was purely a pleasure trip. Mr. Norton is … a former member of the New York City Transit Authority, which runs the subways there. [Editor’s note: Norton is also remembered as an advocate of the monorail.]

On his happy holiday Mr. Norton found a remarkable situation in Madrid. Nearly all transit systems in Europe are publicly owned, but the Madrid system is run by private enterprise. Not only that, but it makes money. If you were a stockholder in the Madrid subway, you would receive a dividend of 8 percent. Naturally Mr. Norton’s eyes opened wide at the news.

He sought the explanation, and he found it. “The real secret of Madrid’s success,” he says, “is the siesta. In New York we have two riding peaks–in the morning and evening rush hours. In Madrid there are four peaks. … The Madrid subway gets four rides a day out of everyone instead of two.”

It is disappointing to note that Mr. Norton, despite his acute intelligence, did not draw the logical conclusion from what he himself had observed. If the siesta is what makes the Madrid subway system prosper, why not introduce the siesta into the United States?

In every American city–from Bangor, Maine, to Honolulu and from Miami to Seattle–everyone who uses public transit to get to work would go home about midday to take a siesta. Instead of a hasty bite in a crowded eating-place, there would be a leisurely lunch, followed by a refreshing nap. Then back to the bus, the streetcar, the subway, the commuter train or the ferry for another ride to the job.

All this would take only two hours for most people, three for those living in the farthest parts of large cities or in the suburbs and four for exurbanites. Isn’t it pleasant to think that such a mild little reform, with such a slight loss of time, would bring back prosperity to the transit companies?

CAUTION! DANGER AHEAD!

January 31, 1931—A young man entered St. Lawrence University at Canton, New York, last autumn and confessed that he had never ridden upon a railroad train. One of the officers of the university, an ardent railroad fan, was most interested in this young man and took him, not long ago, for a ride on the local train to Ogdensburg. The boy said that he enjoyed the experience.

There are many boys and girls like this in American colleges today. In my day almost every boy knew the railroad and loved it. But the younger generation today begins to know the railroad as a tradition rather than as a practical or a really close-at-hand necessity.

Not long ago a railroad president went out into the Middle West to the dedication of a railroad station. When it was nearly over, a local banker approached the railroad president and congratulated him upon the elegance of the new building.

“Quite a monument to the railroad passenger business,” said he, in his impressive, bankerish way.

“Mausoleum would be a better word for it today,” replied the railroader.

He was thinking, rather sadly, of that former great factor in American railroading that of late has been slipping pretty rapidly. From a high peak of $1,305,000,000 in passenger-traffic revenues in 1920—the high record of all time—it descended, in an all too brief decade, to $780,000,000 in 1929. Slowly at first; just lately with alarming rapidity—toboggan-slide fashion.

Unfortunately there were, in 1920, problems not only of labor and of labor’s wages, not only of a morale seriously impaired by the long period of government control, but far more portentous, those of that swift-oncoming competitor, the automotive vehicle. The development of the motor car and the motorbus, the perfection of the national highway system, the cheapening of motor fuel all seemed to spell trouble for the important passenger end of the railroad business; while it was felt even then that the motortruck might yet become a serious competitor to the freight end of it.

It has been suggested that the present emergency is large enough to call a railroad convention-presidents, vice presidents and other high executives to continue in session for a week, if necessary, and to thrash out some of the problems that are so vexing to the business as a whole.

At this convention of railroad executives various questions would be pressed:

What shall be the attitude of the railroads toward highways and toward the waterways?

Shall they advocate regulation of the length, weight, and speed of motortrucks and coaches because of their destructive effects upon the highways and the dangers to which they expose private motorists?

What of taxing very heavily such vehicles?

How about meeting the competition of trucks by pick-up and delivery service from the door of the shipper to the consignee?

How about this question of lowered fares?

No battle was ever won by an army not sure of its course and reasonably sure of final victory. Cooperation is vastly more than a word, or a group of words.

It might be possible for the railroads to take a leaf out of the big book in the White House and appoint some sort of capable joint commission to make a careful study of the entire problem in all its many phases. The result of such a study, made by careful and experienced, yet progressive, men should also clear the present atmosphere. It is commended both to the rail carriers and to that far-reaching and powerful organization, the American Railway Association.

The American railroader goes his way slowly—sometimes too slowly. He is facing a real crisis, unquestionably. He has faced other crises—borne of them much more portentous than this one—and has come through them safely and with a smiling face. The present situation is by no means hopeless; the railroads have not ceased to be the very backbone of the nation’s transport system. It is the yellow signal that is displayed, not the red. Caution, not danger.

Monorail: A One-Track Controversy

May 9, 1964—A wealthy Swedish industrialist named Axel Wenner-Gren dreamed of revolutionizing public transportation with dozens of Alweg—a contraction of his name—monorail systems in cities all over the world. As it turned out, Wenner-Gren had to settle for considerably less. His first and only commercial sale was to Disneyland, U.S.A, but he died before this line—five-eighths’ scale and recently lengthened to 2.5 miles—was completed.

Since its founder’s death, Alweg—spurred by a slight, blond, fiftyish promoter named Sixton Holmquist—has stepped up its marketing efforts. Its major accomplishment thus far has been the highly successful Seattle line.

The Seattle monorail turned out to be successful beyond even the dreams of its promoters. The entire cost of building the line—$4.2 million—was recouped in six months. From then until June 3, 1963, when Alweg gave the monorail to the Civic Center Corp. of Seattle, the profits (Alweg won’t say how much) piled in.

The enthusiasm of Seattle toward its monorail is infectious. Typical is Paul Seibert, head of a downtown business association, who says. “We realize this is the Model T of monorail, but even so, it is a heck of a lot better than most of us anticipated. It’s our Eiffel Tower. People actually come all the way to Seattle just to ride the monorail.”

Such comments are heady stuff for the residents of Los Angeles, mired in traffic jams and money problems. They have been offered an alternate plan—but the cost is staggering. The M.T.A., which is charged with planning rapid transit for all of Los Angeles County, has proposed a “backbone” system that includes 19 miles of expensive subway (through heavily congested downtown areas), 38 miles of elevated track and seven miles of surface lines-all for conventional trains operating on steel rails. The total cost of the package is $649 million, requiring a yearly debt cost of $33 million—about $11 million more than could be expected to come in through the fare box.

Alweg, fresh from its Seattle triumph, proposed to build a 43-mile, $187.5 million monorail that would parallel three fourths of the M.T.A.’s proposed backbone route and would be financed by selling M.T.A. revenue bonds to private investors. The proposal, which was contingent upon obtaining the necessary rights-of-way, sounded highly attractive to Los Angeles taxpayers, who would theoretically get their new transit line without ponying up a cent of tax money.

But Ernest Gerlach, chief engineer of the M.T.A., believes without equivocation that monorails cannot do the job in Los Angeles.

“The monorail people,” he says, “are a solution looking around for a problem. The proper problem doesn’t show up very often. I think it probably did in Seattle and at Disneyland. But in planning a system for Los Angeles County, we have to build structures the citizens will accept. There are six different towns on our backbone route, and several of them simply said a flat ‘No’ to any overhead transit system on main streets of their town.”

Alweg’s man in Los Angeles, a lanky, articulate, no-nonsense public-relations man named William Ross—who, incidentally, is handling publicity for the Goldwater primary campaign in California—is bitter about the kiss-off given his company by the M.T.A.

“Sometimes I wonder,” he says, “if they really want to build a system. The basic question in Los Angeles was always: Do we go underground at huge expense to the taxpayers or do we go overhead with monorail with no taxes and the fare box carrying the freight? It was our hope that once our plan was considered acceptable we could go with the M.T.A. into each of the communities along the transit route and sell them on the merits of monorail. I think we could have pulled it off, but we never got the chance.”

Manhattan’s Daily Riot

March 10, 1945—Anything and everybody can happen on the subway in New York. Like the Bowery in the old song, the subway is today the place where they do strange things and they say strange things.

For the visitor, the subway is a bewildering experience. His eyes will be confused by the murky yellowish dimness. His ears will be racked by the crashing, clashing, grating cacophony of the trains grinding against the tracks, a noise that is magnified into thunderous reverberations by the low tunnels.

But millions of New Yorkers stolidly ride the subway to and from their jobs, and they travel—many of them standing up—an average of eighty minutes a day. The New Yorker would be perplexed if the noise and the mobs were to vanish.

As Mayor La Guardia puts it, “New York didn’t build the subways. The subways built New York.” Then he tells you that Queens was just a cow country until the subway system was extended there, and that suddenly the population quadrupled, real-estate values boomed, small civic centers grew up around each subway station, schools were built and paving laid, and apartment houses and stores and churches sprang up.

When the IRT [Interborough Rapid Transit], first of the New York subways, opened in 1904, New Yorkers greeted the new vehicles with a mixture of enthusiasm, curiosity, and fear. A hundred thousand passengers rode the IRT on opening day, and many uproariously traveled back and forth all day, just for sheer pleasure.

La Guardia sits in his office in City Hall and smiles gently when you ask him about crowds in the subway during rush hour. He has been a subway rider himself for a long time. He points to a wall map of New York City. The map is veined by the subway lines. The mayor leans back in his chair and darts his fingers at the map.

“Let me tell you this,” he says:

“Any time we don’t have crowding during the rush hour, there’ll be a receiver sitting in the mayor’s chair and New York will be a ghost town. Why, they talk about the rush hours and the crush and the noise! Why, listen, don’t you see that’s the proof of our life and vitality? Why—why, that is New York City.”

Some of My Best Friends Are Streetcars

December 6, 1947—I began on April Fool’s Day of 1946 after getting out of the Army, which had isolated me on a streetcar-less corner of the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. After landing in San Francisco, I went east to my home in New York and then started out on a transcontinental junket that took me south; west and east again through forty-five cities.

There are only 10 systems in the country that I haven’t ridden, and three of those are small interurbans. My mileage on the tour would have been even higher except for that strike in Los Angeles, which began two days before I arrived there. As the strike kept on, my funds ran low. I finally gave up, but not before setting what may be a world’s record. For eleven days I waited in vain for a streetcar.

Before leaving Southern California, I rode perhaps the chummiest streetcar line in the world-one that very nearly yanks its passengers aboard by the coat collar and helps them to seats. This is the Santa Monica Airline, which treats every straphanger like a stockholder. Despite its high-flown name, the Airline spends much of its time rambling through industrial back yards and darting cautiously across intersections to the shelter of the next alley.

The line is strictly a silent partner in the Pacific Electric Railway, described as the largest interurban system on earth. It does not appear on timetables, is never advertised, and makes only one round trip a day, to hold its franchise.

The same motorman, “Brownie,” has operated its entire rolling stock for years. He believes in giving individual service. While I was on his car, we halted at a corner. Minutes passed. Nobody got on or off.

“Why have we stopped?” somebody asked.

“Mr. Robinson usually gets on here,” Brownie explained. Sure enough, in a couple of minutes Mr. Robinson came tearing around the corner. One regular woman passenger failed to show up at all, however, and Brownie got worried. “Maybe she’s sick,” he fretted. “I certainly hope not. She’s a fine woman.”

Another traction wonder of the West Coast is a trolley route at Portland, Oregon, which spins the traveler through nearly ten complete circles in two and a third miles. There are sixty-seven merry-go-round curves, or an average of one every 180 feet. The trolley shoots up 1038 feet of mountainside to Council Crest Park along grades sometimes as steep as 12 per cent. To check the cars on their dizzy downward trip, the Portland Traction Company has thoughtfully installed ten derailing switches. Each automatically halts cars for nine seconds.

For truly fancy performances in the field of transit, no place on earth can beat Fort Collins, Colorado, smallest town in the United States to boast a trolley system. The town, population 12,250, owns five streetcars and holds two of them in reserve, It operates three at a time on its three single tracked lines: a large loop through the main section of town, a small loop on the other side of town, and a long connecting line.

If each streetcar stuck to its own back yard, the Fort Collins traction system would be as humdrum as any stay-at-home. To give the longest possible ride for the money, however, the city fathers decreed that two cars should serve both loops via the connecting line while the third circles the large loop. Since these complex gyrations are performed on a single-track system, they might be expected to constitute a triple threat to the future of the streetcar.

Fort Collins solves all its safety, switching and passenger-transfer problems, however, with one ingenious small-town stunt. Every twenty minutes all three trolleys in use confront one another in the town square just a few feet short of a collision. Anyone that arrives ahead of schedule has to wait. At the proper moment, the three motormen exchange greetings and drive ahead. Just as a triple collision of catastrophic proportions seems inevitable, the cars swerve and narrowly pass one another on a wye track in the town square. Big-city folks may compare this comedy act with Toonerville Trolley antics, but the municipally owned Fort Collins system holds two impressive distinctions. It has the lowest trolley fares in the country—five cents a ride, six tokens for a quarter or one dollar for an unlimited monthly pass—and it operates at a profit.