Another Youtube guilty pleasure popped up this week – this is a GE promotional video from circa 1952. In it the company discusses the challenges of urban transportation and various options to smooth traffic into and out of urban areas. Not surprisingly, electric trolley buses and light rail are spotlighted – GE was a major supplier of electrical components for mass transit vehicles.
The issue is still valid today but I enjoyed the film more for its color photography and multitude of post-war autos, buses, and trolleys. Most of it looks to have been filmed in Los Angeles – you can see the yellow/green/white livery of the old LA Transit Lines; one of the many private transit companies that were consolidated into the LAMTA in 1958. It’s a nice twenty minute sketch of the hustle and bustle of a major city in the early Fifties – in vibrant color during a period that we tend to remember as being in black and white.
GE hammers home one important truth. The vicious circle (more roads means more congestion) has always been known by urban planners but it is NEVER discussed in the media. Even now, politicians agitate for more highways with the promise of lower congestion.
The same vicious circle holds for all bureaucrats in ALL subjects. Agencies always agitate for a “solution” that will make the problem worse, because a bigger problem justifies a bigger budget and more power.
Could his video have been prompted, or at least influenced, by the growing GM/Standard Oil/Firestone (?) “conspiracy” to replace urban rail with buses?
The streetcar ‘conspiracy’ at least in Los Angeles was more urban myth than factual. Light rail was very much in a state of decline at the time due to high operating expenses and poor revenue. Buses simply represented a superior and less expensive solution to the mass transit problem, at least at that time. I recommend reading ‘Railways To Freeways’ by Eli Bail if you can find a copy.
Yep, if not for WWII facilitating a big bump in ridership it’s very possible there wouldn’t have been anything but busses in this video as ridership had been declining in some cases as early as the 30s, many private right of way routes that were ambitiously overbuilt got phased out well before the “conspirators” had any hand in it. And realistically, this wasn’t a conspiracy by private interests to dismantle a public utility, LATL and PE redcars were businesses themselves, owned by railroad tycoons, as were many other lines in other cities in this period. Railroads were as eager to dump them as GM & co were to supply their own rolling stock for mass transit as they got out to focus on more profitable freight operations.
Pretty much every successful public transit system is heavily subsidised one way or the other. Where I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, the real cost of the far is way over double the actual tranit fare.
The same, however, can be said about roads. They are also heavily subsidised and were we to not fund public transportation, the roads would have even more traffic. Ergo, public transit makes the roads less congested.
This has worked pretty well here but there is a great need for more and better public transit. There is no place to build any more roads, or even widen them much.
The problem in building more public transit is it takes the will of all three levels of government to make it happen. At present, all levels are willing to fund infrastructure but at other times, this was not always the case.
Yeah, the problem was back then, at least in the US, the government wasn’t directly subsidizing mass transit the way it does now, rail companies kept them around as a sort of loss leader and as they started to get squeezed by trucking alternatives they had little option but to divest in passenger service to keep their bread buttered. Only after all the private businesses gave up in the 50s and 60s states stepped in to form their own transport authorities to take over operations (like MTA and Metra in Chicago, as well as Amtrak) using tracks shared with the railroad companies that used to run their own services.
I always thought the biggest tragedy of the trolly car getting replaced with busses wasn’t the rails vs tires and electric lines vs diesels part of the “conspiracy” but the outright abandonment and immediate dismantling of their right of ways and infrastructure, that proved much cheaper to tear down than rebuild as mass transit later got subsided.
Pretty much every successful public transit system is heavily subsidized one way or the other.
But that’s a lopsided line of thought, persisting in many places, that transit systems have to “pay for themselves”. We’ve got it lucky that driving doesn’t; I don’t know what gas and property taxes would be like if that were demanded of drivers.
I think the same was true in the SF Bay Area, though my Mom said she preferred the streetcars and interurban (Key) train. Although that may have been just nostalgia. That’s why I put “conspiracy” in quotes. Of course, the streetcars never left San Francisco itself, and light rail made a comeback in Santa Clara County decades later.
So who did GE think was going to spend 17 minutes watching this propaganda film? I doubt the politicians they were trying to (ultimately) influence had the time. As for influencing general public opinion, who in 1952 had the means to watch this? Not many people back then had 16mm film projectors, and videotape had just been invented (and was still B&W only).
So many greenish cars; definitely a different palate than we’ve seen since. I like those old semaphore traffic lights – when did they stop using them?
Car in development at 4:20 looks very modern for 1952, I like it.
Were these shown as the openings during movies? (What is all ads and trailers now.) Or maybe at schools?
There are tons of these sorts of movies around so there must have been *some* audience.
Back in the day, teachers could order, by mail, all kinds of these kinds of “instructional films.” Jam Handy was a famous producer.
I love it. The kids fighting over a “traffic” accident is hilarious. Also, very much “the more things change the more they stay the same…”
What strikes me is that after the kids fight, the parents simply pull them apart, chuckle, and seem to their own son not to fight.
Today I’d expect them to try to pin the blame for the accident and fight on the other father’s son, and proceed to make a Federal case out of it.
What is the GM-like convertible at 2:21 with cut down doors (demonstrating the days of soft springs and shocks and no anti-dive suspension geometry)?
It’s a 41 Cadillac but I don’t know what’s going on with the doors, maybe some lead sled customization?
I like what “Polistra” says. Many of these types of films were shown to middle school and high school students. Well, it was one way to fill up Assembly at schools (oops, should I have said that?) As for the cars, WOW! Love it. This film does appear to have been shot mostly in the Los Angeles area. Great interlude, Jim. You bring to me many memories.
I watched all sorts of educational films (and filmstrips, remember those?) growing up in the ’70s – many of the films were from the ’50s and ’60s – but nearly all of them were put out by educational companies (Coronet Films and such) and occasionally governments or public-interest groups. But very few were from corporations, especially one like this where the company obviously has a political agenda (let’s have more trains and trolleys or whatever it is we make, and add parking restrictions to discourage cars etc. or whatever else we compete with).
Great find, Brophy-san.
I was very struck by the fact that in ’52, I can see no more than a very few pre-war cars, (including the gorgeous Packard convertible that reverses, Car of The Video, that!) Attests to how short-lived cars could be back then, even in sunny California.
Also struck by the orchestral soundtrack: quite elaborate, almost Gershin-esque at times. Rather too pricey to do such a thing for a corporate doco today, huh! Different times for sure.
I’d be very surprised if the soundtrack were anything but stock music that could be purchased or licensed for use in films, rather than custom written or recorded for this particular film. This sounds like several such pieces of music spliced together, with some segments beginning or ending with fade-ins/fade-outs if the timing wasn’t right.
That makes a lot of sense.
As it happens, I’m not the person who should have commented, as I don’t “get” a lot of film music from the era, as it’s all pretty harsh on the ears to me. For example, Citizen Kane can almost be watched, without the music.