CPUC on discontinuance of Santa Fe Lark & San Joaquin Daylight
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Looks very familiar. I attended a number of ICC train-off hearings in Arkansas, Tennessee and other locations in that era. I was too far from California to make it out there.
MikefromCrete
Engineer
Lark and San Joaquin Daylight were Southern Pacific trains.
The bus/train data for Bakersfield-Los Angeles is fascinating for present considerations (if nothing else, it suggests that even a "slow" train would attract riders above and beyond a "fast" bus there). Also fascinating in general is the hard data on SP's cut advertising budget and, frankly, obvious efforts to make the train inconvenient however possible (e.g. closing ticket offices an hour before departure). I knew they had a "bag of tricks" in that respect, but I didn't realize quite how diverse that bag was.
Yep, the SP Bag of Tricks became the Bible for the other Class Is when they started their "run 'em off" programs back in the 60s.
Sad to see Amtrak adopting some of the same Management practices!
Sad to see Amtrak adopting some of the same Management practices!
The problem with SP is that it is hard to tell the good faith cost-savings efforts (some of the food service tweaks come to mind) versus bad faith efforts aimed at screwing things up on purpose to facilitate train-offs (the total slashing of food service, making tickets hard to buy, etc.). The same applies to a lesser extent elsewhere, but if the data in that application is any indication the breakpoint seems to be somewhere around 1962 (on the basis of the massive slash in the advertising budget...the dip in 1961 seems defensible, but the roughly 65% drop in 1962 appears indicative of a fundamental attitude change).
The other thing that is telling is that ridership on Santa Fe was actually up through the point of that train-off. WP's ridership was down slightly, while UP was sliding hard (in spite of, as I understand it, putting their best foot forward) and SP was driving ridership down. On the one hand, this suggests that Santa Fe was picking up ridership being shed by, for an easy example, the Golden State Route (and adding riders in spite of dropping some trains). On the other...well, let's just say that I'd like to see more data on this front since I think that would be fascinating to see.
Does anyone know where other archived train-off documents such as these might be found? It would be interesting to see the general pattern of cuts and ridership hits.
The other thing that is telling is that ridership on Santa Fe was actually up through the point of that train-off. WP's ridership was down slightly, while UP was sliding hard (in spite of, as I understand it, putting their best foot forward) and SP was driving ridership down. On the one hand, this suggests that Santa Fe was picking up ridership being shed by, for an easy example, the Golden State Route (and adding riders in spite of dropping some trains). On the other...well, let's just say that I'd like to see more data on this front since I think that would be fascinating to see.
Does anyone know where other archived train-off documents such as these might be found? It would be interesting to see the general pattern of cuts and ridership hits.
You can find a lot of California ones just by searching rail related terms along with site:cpuc.ca.gov; I think I've seen as far back as 1950 on there.
My first search actually kicked out a result from 1923 involving what I think was a streetcar. Seeing serious discussion of six-cent fares amused me.
I had a older neighbor who was a retired Espee Agent in Oklahoma City in early 1950s. His name appears in the timetable s from that era. OKC was an offline Agency for Espee but was served by Rock Island's Cherokee which had through cars to Los Angeles via Espee. Whenever Espee management visited him in OKC, they told him he was selling too many through Sleeping Car tickets and needed to find a way to discourage ridership. Management was very happy with the joint Espee/Rock Island freight shipments from OKC.
