Rumbling Toward Ruin

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America's mass transit is a shambles, and no help is in sight

Nearly 30 million people ride subways, buses, trolleys or commuter trains every weekday in the U.S. Yet everywhere mass transit is either stalling or rumbling inexorably toward ruin. Items:

> In Philadelphia last week, a bumper-to-bumper procession of cars, sometimes ten miles long, inched into the city while subways, buses and trolleys stood idle, sidelined by a strike of 5,000 transit workers, the fourth such in six years. Thousands of commuters from the city's outskirts tried to get downtown via Conrail, but that overtaxed railroad line had to leave hundreds stranded on platforms. Some of the 400,000 Philadelphians who rely on public transit took to bicycles to get to work. The strike, sparked by union protests over the hiring of part-time help and a decision to require maintenance workers to pass proficiency tests, is costing the city $3 million a day in business and keeping 15% of schoolchildren at home.

> In Birmingham, the bus system has been shut down for more than three weeks because of insufficient funding. Some 30,000 riders have been affected, and the school system has signed a contract with the Yellow Cab Co. to provide transportation until the end of the school year. The only proposed solution to the shutdown: nearly halving the 43 routes to 22 and operating only from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., weekdays, a 65% cutback in daily service.

> In Chicago, the nation's second largest transit system (1 million subway, el and bus passengers a day) is going flat broke while the state legislature bickers over funding. Businesses and commuters are already reserving hotel rooms, forming car pools and making other contingency plans for a shutdown that could come as early as this week.

> Boston, which closed down its entire transit system for 26 hours last December, has just enough money to operate its subways and buses (300,000 riders) through the fall. City officials have already been forced to lay off 100 of its 6,700 transit workers, and only narrowly averted a walkout last week by postponing the layoffs of an additional 220 employees.

> In New York, whose transit system is the nation's largest (5 million daily users) and may also be its worst, already beleaguered straphangers were horrified to read headlines predicting a $1.55 fare by the summer of 1983 (vs. 600 today and 300 in 1970) in return for steadily deteriorating service in graffiti-sprayed cars.

How did the U.S. transport itself into this mess? Three groups contributed mightily: pusillanimous politicians who refused to risk their constituents' wrath by asking for fare increases when they were unquestionably essential; inept managers who, despite in many cases handsome salaries and generous expense accounts, proved incapable of managing; and inflexible unions that pushed labor costs sky-high (they account for 77% of Chicago's operating expenses).