"Getting There" - Thank You Oz Griebel

 Every commuter on Metro-North owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to one man:  Oz Griebel.  He is the reason we can ride the new M8 rail cars.

Much has been written since Oz’s passing (at age 71) this week from an auto accident while jogging, especially about his two unsuccessful runs for Governor.  I remember distinctly in the debates with Stefanowski and Lamont how Griebel would take off his suit jacket, roll up his sleeves and jump into the fray.  His energy and passion were electrifying.

But what seems to have been just a small footnote in those tributes was his work at the first Chairman of the Transportation Strategy Board, or TSB.  This was a body created in 2001 and tasked with developing a 20-year vision for our state’s transportation future.

I served alongside Griebel in a regional body and was impressed with his work, doing deep dives into the problems with our highways, commuter trains and airports.

Once I joined him and other TSB members on a road trip to Port Elizabeth, NJ to see the region’s largest container port where thousands of shipping containers were off-loaded from megaships and onto trucks which then drove up I-95 to New England.  This was not just a perfunctory windshield tour but an intense grilling of our Port Authority hosts with Griebel leading the discussion. 

One solution to those trucks clogging our highways was the “feeder barge” concept, moving the containers off the ships and onto barges which would then be towed to Bridgeport, New Haven and points north.  Sadly, the idea never came to pass.

But when it came to prioritizing spending on Connecticut’s transportation, the TSB’s first report singled out one item:  ordering new rail cars for Metro-North.  That was the idea I pushed hard for many months and Oz got it done.

Still, it was not until 2006 that the first M8 cars were ordered and they didn’t go into service until 2011. 

Not only did the TSB come up with prioritized projects, they came up with a plan to pay for them:  a combination of a state gasoline tax increase (which has been unchanged since 1997), a sales tax surcharge and, you guessed it, tolls.

Griebel was a businessman.  He knew it wasn’t enough to come up with a “wish list” like Governor Malloy’s pie-in-the-sky $100 billion, 30-year “Let’s Go CT” scheme or Governor Lamont’s sci-fi like dream of “30-30-30” commuter rail service screaming down the tracks from city to city.  Griebel took the TSB’s mandate and delivered a workable plan… which, of course, fell on deaf ears in the legislature.

Governor Malloy’s thank you gift to Griebel was replacing him as Chairman and eventually eliminating the TSB completely.

I spoke with Griebel for a column last year, revisiting his work as the tolls debate revved up.  He told me “It was like that movie ‘Groundhog Day’,  It was the same people we saw at the TSB debating the same issues ten years later.”

But while “Groundhog Day” had a sweet ending, our state’s debate over transportation drags on with little progress.

Had the TSB’s recommendations been adopted, their 20-year vision for the future would be close to completion.

Griebel is gone.  But at least one of his ideas for rejuvenating Metro-North did come to pass.  I shall think of Oz and say a small prayer of thanks to him each time I see an M8 car rolling down the track.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

 

"Getting There" - The City Island Monorail

 

Looking for a fun day-trip for the family?  Don’t miss City Island, a boat-centric New England style “village” just off the east coast of The Bronx.   In addition to some of the city’s best seafood restaurants, City Island was also home to a monorail over a century ago.

The three-mile line from the Bartow train station on what was then the Harlem River branch of the NY, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (near what today is Co-Op City in the Bronx) through Pelham Park, over a rickety bridge and ending at the Island.  It would replace the slow, forty minute ride to the resort in a horse-pulled trolley with a three to five minute adventure zooming along at a mile a minute.

City dwellers heading to the beach wanted to get there fast and a monorail was not only speedy, but modern and exciting.

It was bankrolled by August Belmont Jr. (after whom Belmont Park racetrack is named) who had financed much of the construction of the City’s IRT subway, often touring that subterranean investment in a private rail car.

Belmont was intrigued with the monorail when he saw it demonstrated at an exposition and especially liked its ability to bank into curves at higher speeds… a design feature that would doom it on its first trip.

This monorail was unlike those we know today as it actually ran on three tracks:  two guiding it from the top, hung from support piers and a single track on the ground over which it was propelled by electric motors.

Belmont used the old horse-drawn tram’s right-of-way he owned along the route to lay out his monorail, known as “The Flying Lady”.  But it took so long for Belmont to find money that his franchise from the City was about to expire so work was rushed to completion.

The line had just a single car…yellow, cigar shaped and about 75 feet in length.  Inside it was equipped with movable rattan-covered chairs.  It was hardly luxurious, but if it hit its goal of running 60 mph it would only be a three-minute ride, so who cared.

On opening day, July 16 1910, the crowds grew anxious to be among the first to ride this marvel of transportation’s future.  The car, designed to carry 40 passengers, was soon jammed with about 100.  When the car groaned into motion it made the first two curves just fine.  But while tilting into the third curve, the “Flying Lady” just flopped on her side.

Fearing that electric lines might be dangling from the overhead towers, the conductor locked the doors as pancaked passengers struggled to get out.  Some of the inaugural riders were injured but there were no deaths.

Among those injured was Howard Tunis, inventor of the monorail, who suffered a broken rib but told waiting reporters he could rebuild the train, chalking up the incident to “a minor mishap which occurs daily in every scientist's laboratory."

“The Flying Lady” was uprighted and her roadbed strengthened and service resumed, albeit at slower speeds.  But the damage had been done and the combination of costly lawsuits and dwindling ridership led to the point that the line went bankrupt and the last train ran in April 1914.

Today City Island is still a summer destination, but one best accessed by car or bicycle.

 

 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

 

"GETTING THERE" - Shipping Containers Changed Our World

They’re just a big metal box, but they’ve revolutionized the transportation world in the last decades, enabling global trade at unimaginable levels and changing all of our lives.  The story of the invention of the shipping container is an unheralded part of transportation history.

In the old days, freighters carrying cargo overseas loaded and unloaded pallets or bails of cargo, one at a time.  I witnessed this myself as a child when my father, a real fan of the seas, took me on cargo ships as a passenger on trips from the Great Lakes to the Caribbean.

At each port the ship would dock and a swarm of dock workers would clamber aboard, open the hatches and descend into the cargo hold, loading single crane loads, one at time.  Then they’d load new cargo repeating the pattern in reverse.

Though these were small freighters it could take a day or two in port to finish the process, an incredible waste of time and costly labor.

In 1952 American trucking magnate Malcolm Mclean thought there must be a better system, so he came up with the idea of a metal shipping container which could be loaded at a factory, carried to ports on his trucks, loaded onto vessels and sent on their way.

The container would safeguard the contents, be easier to load and unload and save time for ships in port.  In 1956 he bought two war-surplus oil tankers and converted them to carry his boxes.  By 1959 customized cranes had been developed to expedite their handling.  And in 1962 the world’s first container port opened at Port Elizabeth, NJ.  The system was a huge success.

While the old system of stevedores cost shippers almost $6 a ton to load and unload, the container system cost sixteen cents a ton.  When a longshoreman’s union leader was asked what he thought of McLean’s container ships he’s quoted as saying “I’d like to sink that son of a bitch”.

Not only was port time cut, but the off-loaded shipping containers could be put on a chassis and hauled by truck (you see them on I-95 every day) or loaded on special rail cars and moved by train.  Some containers were also outfitted with refrigeration units to keep perishable cargoes fresh, bringing new fruits and vegetables to our food markets.

In the late 60’s international standards were set for containers’ dimensions, the most common being 53 feet in length with up to 3000 cubic feet capacity and a maximum weight of 30 tons.  A box that size can hold a lot of cell phones, fresh bananas or textiles.

By 1982 McLean’s dream of saving time and money by standardizing shipping put him on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans with a net worth of $400 million.  But a few years later he declared bankruptcy owing $1.3 billion after he gambled on rising oil prices which never materialized.

Today megaships capable of handling over 10,000 shipping containers are the largest vessels afloat carrying cargoes around the world.  But even before the COVID-19 pandemic sank the freight industry, the US’s imbalance of imports to exports left American ports with thousands of empty containers.  Drive on the NJ Turnpike past Newark Airport and you’ll see them towering to the east of the highway.

Because they’re relatively cheap and still sturdy, old shipping containers are now being repurposed for everything from housing to cafes.  Some have even been converted into glass-sided swimming pools.

 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media.

"Getting There" - China Leads The World

Which is the number one country in the world for transportation?  Certainly not the United States.  Not even countries in the EU.  No, you have to look farther east, as Marco Polo did in 1271, to find the future… in China.

I’m so tired of ignorant Americans chanting “we’re number one”, when we are not.  Not in healthcare, education and clearly not when it comes to using transportation to bolster our world trade.

Compare our crumbling interstate highway system, much of it built during the Eisenhower administration, to China’s superhighways, twice the mileage of our own.

Or look at our decaying railroads versus the 15,000 miles of high speed rail on the Chinese mainland, making Amtrak’s Acela look like a toy train (145 mph vs. 220 mph, one train for 300 passengers per hour vs. China’s 1000 passenger trains departing every 15 minutes).

We keep hearing of the Trump administration’s plans for rebuilding our infrastructure, but nothing ever comes of it.  We pay lip service to that crucial investment but never appropriate it as the priority it should be.

Meanwhile, China keeps spending $300 billion a year on its roads, rails and ports… much of that money coming from bargain-loving American consumers. Crucially, part of that investment is focusing overseas, creating a new Silk Road to markets in Europe and Africa.

Beijing has promised $8 trillion in loans to developing countries to build deep water ports and rail terminals to service China’s 1000+ container ships delivering its products overseas.  Compare that to the US’s merchant marine fleet, just 175 American owned vessels.

China has invested heavily in the port city of Gwadar Pakistan, linked to western China by rail.  And in the tiny African nation of Djibouti, positioned strategically at the mouth of the Red Sea, China not only built and owns the super-port there but has established its first overseas military base there with 400 troops.

Djibouti itself is just a toe-hold in Africa, but the port is connected by a Chinese-built railroad to nearby land-locked Ethiopia, one of the wealthier countries in Africa and anxious to acquire Chinese-made products.

Of course, China is only doing what other empire-building countries like Great Britain and the US did in the past, issuing loans to countries that they’ll never be able to repay while providing lucrative markets for their products… kind of a lose-lose situation for the debtor markets.  When Pakistan and Djibouti can’t repay those Chinese loans, use your imagination to guess what they’ll have to give up instead.

To protect those Chinese-built ports and megaships, China’s People’s Liberation Navy is enjoying rapid growth, soon to rival the US Navy’s capabilities in the Pacific.  By 2030 they will have 530 warships and submarines.

Even the land route from China to Europe is being revived with rail.  There are now three trains a day departing the industrial and technology hub at Xian traveling Marco Polo’s old route west through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Georgia carrying containers filled with electronics and textiles.

The transcontinental journey takes about two weeks but is cheaper than air and faster than shipping.  It’s not a bullet train, just efficient low cost transportation through 60 countries with 5 billion potential customers.

So while the Trump administration battles China with tariffs and empty rhetoric (like calling COVID-19 “Kung Flu”), the Chinese leadership is playing the long game. 

We are not only getting outspent by Beijing, but outsmarted.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

"Getting There" - Racial Justice on the Railroads

In the history of American transportation, there is one crucial intersection between railroads and civil rights:  the formation in 1925 of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car porters by A. Phillip Randolph.  This was the first predominantly African-American labor union in the US.

PULLMAN CARS

It was in 1859 that George Pullman launched the first deluxe railroad sleeping cars bearing his name.  They were an instant hit, offering middle and upper-class passengers the comforts of home.

All of the Pullman Car conductors were white but the porters who tended to the passengers were black.  Many of them were former slaves as Pullman theorized they would be used to the subservient roles of lugging baggage, making up the sleeping berths and serving the white passengers’ every whim.

After they retired for the night, passengers would place their shoes in a small compartment accessible from the corridor where the porters would retrieve and shine them.

LONG HOURS, LOW PAY

Pullman’s porters had to be on call 20 hours a day, serving passengers and tending to boardings at intermediate stations

Porters worked 400 hours per month with their time off being uncompensated.  They had to pay for their own uniforms, meals and shoe shine kits.  Between runs, even away from home, they paid for their own lodging. The hours they spent before and after each trip preparing and cleaning the car were also unpaid.

In 1926 the average porter earned $72 a month in wages and averaged $58 a month in tips.  In contrast, Pullman’s white conductors (who had a union) earned $150 for a 240 hour month, plus benefits and a pension.

Still, Pullman’s black porters made a good income compared to others, allowing many to enter the middle class in railroad hub cities like Chicago and St Louis.

NO RESPECT

As one historian put it, a Pullman porter had the best job in his community and the worst job on the train.  There was no room for promotion.

Passengers often referred to Pullman porters by demeaning names like “boy”, or “George”, applying the first name of the cars’ owner.

UNIONIZATION

In 1925 A. Phillip Randolph started organizing The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under the rallying cry “Fight or be slaves”.  It took a decade of court battles and the threat of a national strike before the union was recognized in 1937, giving porters a big wage hike and a 240 hour per month work schedule.

Randolph and others in the Brotherhood went on to become leaders of the civil rights movement.  One porter, Edgar D. Nixon, helped organize the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott after Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955.  While Nixon was working the rails he had a young minister assist in that battle… Martin Luther King Jr.

Among other famous Pullman porters were future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, activist Malcolm X and photographer Gordon Parks.

By the 1950’s train service was in decline and in 1959 Pullman closed up its sleeping car business.  Some porters went on to work with the legacy railroads and a few were still around when Amtrak took over.

In 1995 a museum dedicated to Randolph and his work for the Pullman porters was opened in Chicago in one of the original row houses George Pullman constructed as worker housing at his plant.  The museum is now collecting the names and histories of past porters and their descendants to celebrate Randolph’s contribution to black history 

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

"Getting There" - Where's The Legislature?

Where the heck has the Connecticut legislature been for the past few months?  With so many pressing issues, why haven’t they met?

Oh, they’ll tell you it’s because of safety that they couldn’t convene. But we know better.  Plenty of state legislatures… even the US House of Representatives… have carried on the people’s business virtually or well-masked while our pols went AWOL.

No, Connecticut’s lawmakers finished the budget and just scurried home, leaving the running of the state to Governor Lamont by executive order.  Now they’re jealous of his success.

Ned Lamont is no Andrew Cuomo, but most Nutmeggers think he’s done a pretty good job as his poll ratings have never been higher: 78% of respondents in a recent Q Poll said he was doing a good job handling the pandemic.

So now our legislators are saying they’ve been left out?  Seasoned members of the House tell me their leadership “ceded governing” to Lamont while others told me, “I’m anxious to come back.  I shake hands for a living”.  Well, not anymore.

Not that legislators haven’t been busy.  Doubtless your State Rep and Senator’s been filling your social media feed with pictures of them passing out face masks, gathering donations for food drives and dining al fresco to help local business. 

And your mailbox is doubtless stuffed with their long, anguished e-letters about “living in extraordinary times” and “adapting to the new normal”.  They talk about helping constituents navigating the state’s bureaucracy, which is their job.

All that’s super.  But what about fulfilling their real responsibility… making laws?

Having quarantined, done their volunteer photo-ops and social media updates, now, finally, they’re ready to get back to their work.

BEWARE THE IMPLEMENTER

Sometime this month our lawmakers will return to Hartford for a quick session but one fraught with danger… not to their health, but to the public good.   They’re going to meet, debate and vote on “the Implementer”.

You see, after a bill becomes law, legislators must “implement” it to make it go into effect.  Easy stuff… if that’s all they do.

But instead, The Implementer may become a giant Christmas tree, laden with special bills, good and bad, taken in one up-or-down, all-or-nothing vote.  Some of these “emergency certified” bills have had hearings, but most have not.  Why slow up the lawmaking process by actually engaging the public?

Worse yet, in this hyperspeed law-making process, many lawmakers aren’t even given time to read, let alone understand, what they are voting on.  Leaders just deliver a 500-page document that they then must vote on in 48 hours.

Think of all the topics these lawmakers played hookey on for the past three months:  sports betting, vaccine mandates, absentee ballot reform, police accountability and, yes, transportation investment.

Lawmakers didn’t have the guts to vote on tolls.  So why rush through these crucial issue now instead of waiting ‘til the next session?

Should our elected representatives vote on these issues in just 48 hours without putting these “ill-conceived, poorly drafted, and hastily reviewed” bills (as one Republican called them) through the usual committee review, public hearing and debate process?  I think not.

Even if we agree on the need for some of these measures, shouldn’t they all be reviewed and voted on separately, not force-fed as an all-or-nothing “dog’s breakfast” (as one veteran described it to me)?

However well-intentioned, the end does not justify the means.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media

"Getting There" - The Cranky Commuter

Call me a curmudgeon, but I’m getting cranky about transportation these days.  For example:

FACE MASKS:

Why is it so hard for train and subway passengers to wear a face mask?  Does the MTA really need to do a PSA campaign (with pictures!) showing that a mask around your neck or not covering your nose and mouth isn’t protecting anyone?  Apparently so.  Non-compliant passengers are either stupid or uncaring, or both.

Here’s the solution:  just like the old days when Metro-North had smoking and non-smoking cars, let’s have masked and unmasked cars.  Let the unmasked idiots ride together, get sick and stop commuting, freeing up more space for the rest of us.

THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT

The LIRR has a nifty new app that riders can use to see which cars on their train are crowded and which ones aren’t, encouraging social distancing.  If Metro-North really cares about social distancing, bring that app to our trains, now.

COFFEE, TEA OR NOTHING?

The airlines say they want us to fly again, but they’re doing little to make us feel safe.  They proclaim that passengers should wear face masks, but they don’t enforce the rule.  They say they’ll keep middle seats empty, but don’t.  They can sanitize each plane ‘til the cows come home but it won’t protect us from one unmasked, asymptomatic bozo.

Now the airlines have suspended drink and food service, instead handing out plastic bags with small bottles of water and a few snacks… but no booze.  Passengers can BYO food, but not alcohol.  I guess the airport bars, if they’re open, will be really busy as passengers self-medicate before their next flight.

TRAFFIC & TRUCKS:

As I predicted, as New York City opens up commuters are opting for the relative safety of their own cars instead of taking the train.  That means traffic on our highways is building again, approaching pre-pandemic levels of congestion. 

Meantime, where are the Connecticut State Police?  Why are trucks driving faster, often in the left hand lane, with impunity?  And why does I-95 sound like a speedway at night, with muscle cars and motorcycles defying the speed limit and common sense as they treat the interstate like a drag strip?

AMTRAK CUTS

There’s good news (some) and bad (lots of it) about Amtrak.

On-time performance is getting so good that some trains are arriving ahead of schedule.  That shows how padded the old timetable has been.

The other good news is that Amtrak’s next generation of Acela is undergoing testing and should be in service by 2021.  Too bad there won’t be any passengers to ride them.

Though train service from Washington to Boston is slowly returning, ridership is not.  At least not yet, especially in other parts of the country.  So the railroad has announced it is cutting daily service to just three days a week on long distance runs outside of the northeast, starting October 1st. 

My rail fan friends are going nuts over the announcement, but to me this makes sense.  If there’s no ridership, why run shorter but still near-empty trains?  While the Northeast Corridor trains used to come close to turning a profit, the long distance trains have always been a money loser.  So in tight times, let’s prioritize and put the trains where the passengers are.

Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media