BEN HEINEMAN

Commuter's Friend

IT seemed as if the only friend the hapless suburban commuter had last week was a bold, brainy lawyer who started in the railroad business a mere four years ago. The man: Ben Walter Heineman, 44, chairman of the 9,096-mile Chicago & North Western Railway, which inaugurated a new commuter plan that could well,serve as a guide to troubled roads across the U.S. They sorely needed help. Last week the Lehigh Valley Railroad moaned that it was going broke from its $4,000-$5,000,000-a-year passenger deficit in commuter-heavy New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, said it would ask the Interstate Commerce Commission to let it end all passenger service. A few days later the Lackawanna Railroad threatened to drop all New Jersey passenger runs unless it was excused from paying property taxes.

The North Western's Heineman firmly believes that, in the Jet Age, "the long-haul passenger business has no future--it is dead." But he also preaches that short-haul commuter service can be both efficient and profitable.

First, though, many roadblocks must be cleared away. "Too many commuters," says Heineman, "use the train only when weather is bad, but drive their own cars to town when the weather is good. Well, if they want a $1,000,000 piece of equipment to be waiting at the station for them every day, they had better pay for it every day." The Heineman plan aims to turn the fair-weather riders into faithful, fulltime riders. To do it, the North Western more than doubled prices of one-way tickets for close-in riders, thus making it costly to be an irregular, close-in commuter. But it scaled down the increase so that there was no change in fares for far-out riders and little change in monthly tickets. Heineman promised a much faster ride for the extra money.

IN times past, North Western commuter trains were slowed down by the necessity of making a multitude of stops within the city, many of them less than a mile apart. Heineman closed 28 stations within Chicago and the close-in suburbs. While the line thus lost 3,000 close-in passengers, it guaranteed better service to its 43,000 far-out commuters, cut their riding time to the Loop by one to 19 minutes.

For a final touch Heineman tossed out the ticket-punching system that has become a symbol of the commuter. So many commuters were slipping past the conductor because he was too busy to punch their tickets on crowded trains that the North Western was done out of $580,000 yearly. Commuters will now carry "flash" tickets, which clip to the back of the seat, are color-coded so the conductor can tell at a glance where each rider must get off.

SOME veterans of the tradition-bound railroad industry are wagering that Ben Heineman's commuter plan will fall flat--and a few are quietly hoping it will, since Heineman is not one of their up-from-the-roundhouse breed. The son of a wealthy Wausau, Wis. lumberman who went broke in the Depression, Heineman studied law at Northwestern University ('36), set up practice in Chicago. In 1954, invited in by dissident investors, he won an acrimonious proxy war for control of the little Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway, boosted earnings fast. In 1956, with one-third of its stock in his control, Heineman went after the much bigger but shaky North Western, was invited in by the board as chairman. A few hours after taking over, Heineman left on a six-week, 9,000-mile tour along North Western's tracks. He learned that what was needed was radical modernization. He chopped the North Western's managerial deadwood, hired bright young railroad pros. He brought in modern bookkeeping machines and mechanized track-laying equipment, completely dieselized the line. He also became the foremost critic of union featherbedding in rails, trimmed his own payrolls from 26,300 to 18,500--but was a shrewd enough labor negotiator to avoid a full-scale strike.

Heineman's fresh ideas and heavy investments have just begun to pay in 1958, a bad year for many another railroad. In the first six months the North Western lost $2,322,000. But then the North Western turned around, brought in ten-month earnings of $3,440,000--despite the $2,000,000-a-year commuter deficit. So confident is Heineman that his new commuter plan will turn red ink to black that he has ordered 36 new, air-conditioned, 161-passenger commuter coaches at a cost of $5,600,000. Says Ben Heineman: "If we can provide a fast, reliable, comfortable ride, then people will ride the suburban railroad, and read the papers and relax in preference to beating their brains out against traffic. It is our conviction that by using ingenuity we can do the job."

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