War Crisis

U.S. trolley and bus-line operators are riding smack into the worst crisis in their history: a crush of new passengers, a crying need for new equipment, an acute labor shortage.

Such was the gist of a three-day powwow held last week by the 61-year-old American Transit Association. In Chicago's famed Palmer House, some 800 transit men heard enough criticism, ominous prediction and plain bad news to make most of them sorry they ever made the trip.

Worst news was that business was terrific, would soon be super-terrific. A.T.A's. figure-minded, mustachioed General Manager Charles Gordon clambered on to the speaker's platform in the ornate Red Lacquer Room, bluntly told fidgety delegates what to expect: 20 billion passengers a year by October, 22 billion by December -- a 30% increase over 1941's 17 billion. And after the Baruch rubber conservation scheme hit the headlines, Gordon upped his estimate to 24 1/2 billion.

The problem is how to carry them. Before the war most operators bought only enough equipment to keep things going. Now they could use 33,500 new 40-passenger buses or 19,500 new trolleys--and can get neither. Worse still, extra-heavy loads are wearing bus tires at a faster-than-expected rate with no hope of any volume replacements before December 1944.

Meanwhile the transit labor situation gets worse weekly. Never overpaid, trolley conductors and bus drivers are scampering off to war jobs in droves. In Washington a bus driver was in such a hurry to quit that he jerked to a stop at a traffic light, left a load of puzzled passengers stranded at the curb (TIME, Sept. 7).

Transit men have partly solved their problem by reconditioning old trolley cars, jamming more passengers into every car and bus. They have other schemes too. In Kansas City, a staggered work-hour scheme is calculated to give the Kansas City Public Service Co. the equivalent of 42 new busses; Indianapolis Railways (controlling all local transportation) has slashed the number of stops 40% to 2,700, dropped or shortened seven feeder lines to boot. The Cleveland Transit System recently hitched 31-passenger trailers to regular busses. In Washington, transit bigwigs tested a new device: the "standsit" seat. Spaced ten to 14 inches closer than regular seats, they will increase bus and trolley seating capacity 25 to 40%.

But this is not enough. At last week's A.T.A. conclave ODT official Guy A. Richardson (once Chicago transit boss) flatly accused transit men of "business as usual," too much "conversation" and not enough action. He warned that before the war is over you "will be glad to get any sort of vehicle that will roll on wheels."

The Profit. Only nice thing about the whole situation is that the trolley and busmen are making money--and making it fast. Despite higher taxes and wages, Philadelphia Transportation earned $1,133,000 in the year ended June 30 v. $713,000 last year; New York City Omnibus cleared $738,000 in the first six months against $630,000 a year ago. And the Midwest's Twin City Rapid Transit Co. is making money so fast (six months' profit: $373,000 v. $126,000) that its preferred stock last week soared 24 points to 73, more than three times this year's low.

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