Transport America Redux

OOC: About three years ago, I wrote a mini-TL about how America could be different if the United States hadn't just focused on the Interstate Highway System for its future transport needs. I'm trying again now, with new knowledge and ideas. Feel free to kick in and contribute.

Part 1 - The Beginnings

The United States of America emerged from World War II as the world's most powerful nation, in large part because it had almost entirely escaped the scourge of war. With Europe and most of Asia in ruins, the United States faced new challenges, namely making sure fascism was buried for good, and ensuring that communism didn't spread across Europe, something which had a real possibility due to the poverty most of Europe faced as a result of the war. This was in addition to fixing its own flaws, many of which had been made very obvious by the War.

In America, the War effort's logistics had put an immense strain on American railroads, which they had managed to handle, though it had taken a terrible toll on their physical plant and equipment. Diesel locomotives in the 1950s quickly replaced steam locomotives, in large part driven by the high maintenance costs of steam locomotives and the fact that General Motors, American Locomotive Company (ALCO), Fairbanks-Morse and other companies provided very lucrative finance offers on diesel locomotives, and when combined with the success of General Motors' E and F series diesels and ALCO's legendary RS-3 road switcher, convinced railroads that diesel power was the way to go. There was a few cases where this wasn't universally followed - namely in the Northeast, where electrification had done by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1930s, and in many parts of the Pacific Northwest, where electrification had been done to allow crews to not be suffocated by steam locomotive exhaust in several of the long tunnels on Rocky Mountain railroads.

The prosperity of the post-WWII era had fully set in by 1950, which caused a massive growth in America's middle class. Between well-paying jobs and GI benefits, Americans came home to prosperity. There was wrinkles, of course, but overall, America progressed rather notably in the 1950s.

Into this, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the famed WWII general who had commanded the invasion of Europe in 1944, was elected President of the United States in 1952. Eisenhower's first term saw the end of the Korean War, which while a major problem hadn't turned into World War III, in large part because the Soviets were unwilling to turn it into one. But Eisenhower could see quite clearly that America's changes would require things to change at home as well. America's new wealth and the locations of many of the plants built during the war saw millions of Americans move out of the major cities, towards new, wide, expansive suburbs. With this came millions upon millions of new cars on the roads, which in itself created something of a problem for America's transport system. Eisenhower, who had been part of the famed Lincoln Highway convoy in 1919 and had seen the usefulness of Germany's autobahns as the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during the late stages of WWII. Eisenhower would go on to point out that the Interstate Highway System would not only allow efficient movement of goods and people across the country, but would allow for more efficient movements of troops and supplies in the event of a war or invasion - things which were increasingly a concern in the mid 1950s, owing to the belligerency of the Soviet Union.

But with his characteristic forethought, Eisenhower noted that while the Interstate Highways would be important, he knew that America's railroads had far more than carried their weight in World War II, and he felt that America's security would be best assured by making sure America was "the most mobile society in the world". With this, Eisenhower lobbied for the Transport America Act, which was put before Congress in March 1956.

The Transport America Act was the largest public works program in the world at the time, and it has vast implications. In addition to authorizing some $25 Billion over 20 years to build some 41,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. The Act also included federal loan guarantees to mass transit companies across the nation (which would ultimately result in dozens of streetcar companies being able to return to solvency in the 1950s and 1960s) and both substantial loan guarantees to, and reduced legislation on, American railroads. The plan's railroad provisions had strings attached - Washington wanted the money spent on improvements to the lines themselves. This wasn't looked down on by the railroads - they had, to a man, spent massively on track repair and improvement as well as diesel locomotives, and as such the federal loans and assistance were very welcome indeed.

Despite the great many obvious benefits of the Interstate Highways and the much-improved railroads, some balked at the costs of the plans. But international circumstances made those concerns far more paramount. In June 1956, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, which had become one of the world's most important waterways, critical to Europe's energy supply and the defense of European colonies and outposts in the Far East. Egypt's action had been done largely as the country was trying to raise funds for the Aswan High Dam project. Egypt's decision to recognize the People's Republic of China also caused friction. In October, the Soviets invaded Hungary to crush a nascent independence movement, and Great Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt to retake the Suez Canal. These actions caused furors all around the world. These two simultaneous crisises proved two separate points - Hungary proved that the Cold War was indeed very, very real, and the Suez Crisis, which caused an energy crisis all around the world, made it clear that the world was an uncertain place, and that America needed to be as ready as possible for whatever came next.

The Suez Crisis ultimately resulted in the British and French withdrawing and effectively ending France and Britain's status as global powers. While historians would debate America's demand that Britain and France pull out for decades to come, it did make the point very clear to American legislators. The Transport America Act was passed by the 85th United States Congress with wide support on January 29, 1957 and signed into law by Eisenhower on February 11, 1957, one of the first actions of Eisenhower's second term as President. Transport America got a surprising boost in 1957 with the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Little Rock Nine, which galvanized the Civil Rights movement in the United States, which would result in major changes in America in the 1960s.

The first highways began with the funds of the Transport America Act began construction in Kansas and Missouri in February 1957, and the first railroad to take advantage of the loan guarantees was the Pennsylvania Railroad, which announced the building of a replacement for its obsolescent Poughkeepsie Bridge on March 11, 1957. A week after that, the first loan to a mass transit firm was cleared, going to Pacific Electric Railway company in Los Angeles on March 16, 1957, the loan which ultimately saved the company - and would begin its massive rebuilding and redesigning through the 1960s.

America also saw its first major railroad mergers at this time, when the Norfolk and Western Railroad purchased the Virginian Railway in 1959 and the Erie Railroad and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western in October 1960. While these two merger were relatively small ones - two small lines merging for efficiency reasons and a big one buying out a considerably smaller (but highly profitable) rival - but it was a sign of what was to come.

By the end of the 1950s, steam locomotives had largely disappeared from American railroads, with the last regular-service steam operations on American railroads coming in 1960 on the Norfolk and Western, Illinois Central and Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range railroads. Union Pacific's legendary passenger 4-8-4, number 844, would make UP the only American railroad to never dieselize completely, and steam would operate on short lines we;ll into the 1960s, and steam engines would serve industrial operators as late as 1981. Diesels had, for all intents and purposes taken over from the steam engines which had dominated American railroading for more than a century. But while this was a big change, it had nothing on the future......

Wide spread electrification of the railroads across the US. The Pennsylvanian and Milwaukee Road were the only two RR in the US to have large scale uses of electric engines in freight and passenger service at the time. With other lines going this way they would have the advantages of scale in the development and implementation of electric service. Electric engines of that time were two to 3 times as powerful per unit as the conventional diesel-electric units, GG1 used by Pennsylvania-4260hp, Little Joe's used by the Milwaukee road-5500hp, EMD GP9 diesel electric-1750hp. With electrification of the lines they would be able to sustain higher speeds with less units being used and less maintinance per unit.

Interesting - the railroads will no doubt carry a heavier share of freight right up to the present day.

Give me speed baby, lets see streamliners pull passenger trains at 125mph to virtually create the 200-500 mile HSR niche.

Part 2 - The 1960s, Changing American Cities, Airliners and Automobiles

The 1960s opened with the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, which had by 1960 become a vicious argument. Governor Orval Faubus' actions in Little Rock, Arkansas over the Little Rock Nine made it clear that America had a very long road to go with regards to race relations. But there were a few surprises in this.

After WWII, many black GIs entered the police forces of many places across the nation, which was openly encouraged by many cities in order to help diffuse racial tensions, which had nearly boiled over on more than one occasion during WWII. These black police officers had by the early 1960s grown into a powerful force in their own right, though in many cases, particularly in cities like Los Angeles, Detroit and New York, the black officers were more frequently assigned to majority-black neighborhoods. While many racists looked down on this in the 1960s, to those who wanted to end segregation, this was a very positive development. The aftermath of WWII had in many cases laid the groundwork for the end of segregation in America, as in the minds of a great many people, it was hard to claim that Black Americans were inferior to their white counterparts when they had fought with distinction in a great many cases.

In addition to this, the plans for keeping the mass transit systems of US cities running well proved to be worth their weight in gold, especially as cities such as Detroit sought to redevelop older neighborhoods. In Detroit's case, several black neighborhoods were demolished for either highways, parks or both, which caused the population densities of outside areas to go through the roof. In this regard, the Detroit Department of Transportation was steadfast in its wish to expand mass transit lines farther out into the city and its suburbs, partly in order to help ease the crowding and transport problems. These realities were common in many US cities, though Detroit, the home of the American Automobile Industry, would go on to be one of the foremost examples of this forethought. While cities with high population densities would often go for subway lines to be built, the idea of streetcars and interurbans didn't go away - some saying this was in large part because of the subsidies provided to them, which its backed claimed that the auto industry opposed - though in the case of General Motors, they had no issues with it, in large part because of their extensive involvement in most aspects of the American transportation industry. If Ford, Chrysler and American Motors had issues with it, they didn't make them public, and by the early 1970s most American cities which had kept their streetcar or elevated rail routes would be very glad they did so. The rail lines in many cases became community lifelines, and allowed poorer Americans to be able to move out to newer areas without worries about transport. Most major US cities had stopped discriminating against minorities long before President Johnson enshrined equal civil rights into law in a series of legislative acts in the 1960s, but old habits, particularly among residents, died hard.

The Watts Riot, in Los Angeles in 1965, caused a mess in itself. The Civil Rights movement was already fracturing by this point, helped along by the pieces of the movement which considerably more hardline and extreme than the leaders of the movement, particularly Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the others who sought to end segregation peacefully. The actions of Bull Connor and other very loud defenders of segregation didn't help matters in that regard. But after the 1965 riots in Los Angeles and the Civil Rights Act (making racial discrimination in housing illegal), came many movements and groups of people who would not give up their communities, stating that they would improve the inner cities and make it so that American cities would remain the standard of the world. While these movements were not always successful, they did have an impact. Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and Great Society initiatives proved to be a help here. Urban renewal, fueled in part by the Transport America Act, did cause some frictions, but overall it proved ultimately to be economically beneficial, though many urbanists for years later would call the building of interstates often divisive and bad for the cities themselves.

Transport America's provision removing the laws that had forced railroads to get approval to changing freight rates actually ended up being a benefit in this regard as well. While to a man the fares on commuter trains in major cities did rise, they helped the railroads' financial situations - commuter-dedicated lines such as the Long Island Railroad were on the verge of bankruptcy at the time, and being allowed the ability to change fares wound up going a long way towards improving the profitability of these operations, which were still mandated by the Interstate Commerce Commission. By the late 1960s, concerns about traffic led to expansions of commuter rail lines, not so much because of environmental concerns as much as people not liking to get stuck in traffic.

For the freight railroads, Transport America had in many ways been a Godsend, but the Interstate Highway System was most definitely a curse, as traffic over the 1960s quite noticeably moved from rails to roads. By the mid-1960s, however, several railroads had figured out ways to counter this. Out of this need to co-exist and compete with the trucks came the now-ubiquitous sight of trailers on flatcars. The Pennsylvania Railroad, which had been particularly hard-hit by this problem (as most Northeast Railroads were), came to an agreement with Schneider National in 1965, running dedicated trains for Schneider, where trucks would be loaded, tractors and all, onto specially-designed 80-foot-long flatcars with flip-down ends. The "Truck Rail" service began in March 1966, and proved to be a substantially-profitable enterprise for the Pennsy, to the point that most of the other railroads had copied it by the early to mid 1970s.

Passenger trains proved to be a much tougher nut to crack, owing in large part to the commercial airliner now competing against it. The first flights of the de Havilland Comet, Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, led to a massive growth in air travel, and the rapid development in air travel over the 1960s and into the 1970s, culminating in the Boeing 747's first flights in 1970. Passenger rail traffic in the United States dropped like a rock in the 1950s and 1960s, owing in large part to this, though several railroads continued to make efforts to keep the best such services alive.

Perhaps the biggest changes of the 1960s in railroading was in motive power. The "second generation" locomotive era began with the General Electric GP30, General Electric U25B and Alco Century 420, which all hit the market between 1960 and 1963. Alco's efforts found problems with its Model 251 diesel engines, which led to Alco ditching its own engine designs in favor of Caterpillar units in 1968 - these problems gifted the second-place spot in the market to General Electric. Most of the American railroads bought these new units, which would ultimately have very long lives for most of their customers just as their predecessors had. Such was the power shortages and financial problems of Northeastern railroads that some Alco RS series and General Motors E and F unit engines, built during WWII or shortly thereafter, would serve their owners into the 1980s, and some second-generation units would serve into the 21st Century.



Santa Fe EMD GP30 on Cajon Pass in 1989



Alco Century 420s of the Apache Railway in 2003



A freshly-painted Conrail U25B at Croxton, New Jersey, in 1980

The 1960s saw the acceleration of the merger that ultimate came to define the American railroad industry. The mighty Pennsylvania was one of the railways foundering, and it, like many other railroads, sought salvation through mergers and acquisitions. The Truck Rail service forced the Pennsylvania to expand its operations, which led to its seeking to take over parts of the insolvent New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad in 1969. The ICC, recognizing that the New Haven was falling apart, forced the Pennsylvania to acquire the whole company, costing a bunch of extra money and caused the Pennsylvania to face almost immediate financial difficulties. When combined with the New York Central's 1970 buyout of the Reading Lines and its taking over the Western Maryland railroad in 1972 - thus giving the NYC a strong presence in the Pennsylvania's territory - the costs of this caused Pennsylvania's financial situation to decay.

Out West, the mergers began with a big one, as the Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy and several smaller lines became Burlington Northern in 1970. This was, if anything, just a formality - the lines had been owned for many years by the same people, and they had for many years had their headquarters in the same building in St. Paul, Minnesota. A condition of the ICC allowing this merger was that BN had to give up some of its traffic share to the Southern Pacific and Milwaukee Road, which led to a brief period of profitability for the latter.

The decline of industry in some parts of the United States made for additional problems for railroads, seeing traffic bases erode. Restrictive union contracts didn't help profitability, and additional problems caused issues for some rail lines, perhaps the most famously being a derailment of a New Haven freight train off the Poughkeepside Bridge on August 25, 1969, which resulted in seven cars filled with chemical waste from a chemical plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, falling into the Hudson River, which resulted in a cleanup job that would take years to finish - and in the process, result in the shutdown of the 1889-vintage bridge, in favor of Pennsylvania's new bridge, some eight miles north of the old bridge. (In an incidental twist, the cleanup of the New Haven mess exposed the massive PCB contamination of the Hudson River, which caused most of the river to be banned from fishing, and in many places for swimming as well, in 1970, a situation that stayed until 1988.) Indeed, as financial problems hit many railroads, deferring maintenance and reducing the money put towards track repair and upkeep became common, as many loans provided under Transport America in this case soon began being used simply to stay afloat.



Pennsylvania Railroad's Hudson River bridge, near Rhinebeck, New York, inaugurated in September 1963



The old Poughkeepsie Bridge, built in 1889, closed to traffic in 1970, became a pedestrian bridge in 1993

The situation came to a head in September 1971, as the Pennsylvania, Rock Island and Milwaukee Road lines all went broke within a few weeks of each other. Those bankruptcies would ultimate set the stage for very big changes in the American railroad industry in the 1970s.....

Part 3 - Disasters, Mergers and Union Wars

After a series of bankruptcies in the fall of 1971, 1972 and 1973 turned into massive brawls for the American railroad industry. The bankruptcy of the Pennsylvania in particular hurt badly - their bankruptcy had caused its car fee payments to abruptly stopped, which caused several other smaller lines to hit the ground in the winter and spring of 1972. It had been a fear before the Pennsylvania's bankruptcy that there was simply not enough traffic to for all of the area's railroads to survive, but by mid-1972, that was the reality.

The economic malaise of the early 1970s was not helping this. While President Nixon's wage and price controls, enacted in August 1971, helped to slow the economic problems of the country, it didn't by any means stop it. The energy crisis of 1973 made matters worse still, as it caused a massive rise in costs for railroads, which while able to change freight rates, found themselves unable to make up the massive rises in fuel prices. This fact hurt across the board. Making matters worse was Hurricane Agnes, which struck the US in June 1972, causing particularly extensive track damage in the United States northeast. This contributed to Erie Lackawanna and Chessie System's 1973 bankruptcies, and the 1974 failure of the New York Central. By 1975, most of Northeastern railroading was in bankruptcy, and while the courts were trying hard to make things work, in many cases the money problems were having a dramatic effect.

This came to a head on May 15, 1975, when the Beaver Bridge at Monaca, Pennsylvania, owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, failed spectacularly, dropping two trains, a coal train and a chemical train, into the Ohio River. Some eight locomotives and 56 freight cars were lost in the process, and the mess spilled over a million gallons of a number of caustic solvents into the Ohio River. The Beaver Bridge disaster was the largest environmental catastrophe in American history, killing virtually all life in the Ohio River from western Pennsylvania to Southwestern Indiana, and toxicity in the water, despite environmental work and desperate attempts to stop toxic spills, contaminated the water supplies of over four million people, with 86 deaths ultimately attributed to the disaster. After an ICC investigation found structural deficiencies in the 65-year-old bridge, the Pennsylvania immediately found itself hammered by hundreds of class-action lawsuits, alleging environmental and human damage as far away as Arkansas.



The aftermath of the Beaver Bridge failure

Unable to allow the company to fail, the United States Railroad Association stepped in. The USRRA proposed the temporary nationalization of the Pennsylvania and a number of other roads, in order to have them combined into a single railroad system, which would ultimately be sold off to private investors again. The USRRA had originally proposed a government bailout of the Pennsylvania, but after Beaver Bridge they had the good sense to know that this was politically impossible. On October 18, 1975, the laws creating Conrail were proposed in Congress, and after considerably debate, on February 5, 1976, they were signed into law by President Ford. This law provided funding to keep all of the railroads expected to enter the new company, Consolidated Rail Corporation, operational until such time as Conrail could be fully formed.

The New York Central and Erie Lackawanna were offered entry into Conrail but refused, figuring that they could survive. By this point, both of these two companies had worked out agreements with Western railroads, allowing smooth flow of traffic off of one railroad's lines onto the other. Ultimately, Conrail's original proposal included the following railroads:

- Pennsylvania
- New York, New Haven and Hartford
- Boston and Maine
- Lehigh Valley
- Ann Arbor
- Maine Central
- Central of New Jersey
- Pittsburgh and Lake Erie
- Bangor and Aroostook

The plan relied on New York Central and Erie Lackawanna to provide competition in Conrail's territory, and the Delaware and Hudson, which since 1974 had been owned by its employees, was assigned large amounts of trackage rights, allowing them to operate as far west as Cleveland, as far east as Boston and as far south as Washington. The D&H was at the time in no shape to take advantage of the opportunity, but following investments in the 1980s into the employee-managed railroad, the firm's business expanded dramatically.

Conrail's planning process got a curveball tossed into it in March 1977, when the failing Milwaukee Road asked for inclusion into Conrail. This proved to be an issue, as while the Milwaukee Road was able to hook to Conrail directly, it would make Conrail a transcontinental line, which could well make for an unfair advantage for the government-owned company, which the USRRA was seeking to avoid. Despite that, the opportunity was just too good to pass up, and Conrail owning the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Extension would provide a great rival to the dominant Burlington Northern in the Pacific Northwest and across Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas and Minnesota. On August 27, 1977, President Carter approved this. The final system plan was released on March 5, 1978, and Conrail began operations on August 1, 1979.

Conrail caused a massive series of shakeouts. The transcontinental route had surprised a number of its rivals, and a series of mergers followed. The first post-Conrail was the merger between the Missouri Pacific and Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific on April 1, 1980. The new railroad took the name Rock Island Pacific, using a variant of the latter's light blue and white paint scheme. Just six weeks after the merger, the Rock Island Pacific was part of a landmark deal. Four railroads - the Western Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande Western, Rock Island Pacific and Erie Lackawanna - all signed a deal designed to make the lines move freight as freely and easily as possible, and pledging to help this process along by integrating union and operating rules as soon as possible, and in an amazing step, creating a committee between them to co-ordinate their activities. All four justified this by pointing out that all of them were surrounded by bigger competitors, and that such agreements would help all of them survive, and that all of the companies would entirely keep their independence. It was a bold play, but an ultimately successful one. The Delaware and Hudson would ultimately also join this arrangement, doing so in 1987. Ultimately, all five railroads would expand their arrangements to include allowing all of each others' motive power on all of their lines, which would lead to come wild locomotive consists by the mid to late 1980s.

This arrangement, while smart, infuriated the unions, which by this time mad largely boiled down to the United Transportation Workers Union (UTU) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (BLE). The UTU was hostile to many railroads, and after a bitter strike in 1978 with the Norfolk and Western, few of the railroad companies had any wish to work with them. But changes in the management of both unions in the late 1970s, when combined with the financial problems that plagued most of the railroads in America, proved to be a major kicker for the unions to change many practices. The biggest change, which was forced into Conrail (much to the anger of many Conrail employees) was extending the work day for engineers and crewmen from 150 miles to 250, which while a major increase was not hard to do - a 250 mile day, even with job changes and the like, was often around six hours and seemingly never more than eight. This, along with a reduction in crew sizes, saw the workforce of many railroads drop like a stone in the 1980s, though for those that remained, working conditions usually improved.

While the mergers of the 1960s and 1970s had made for major impacts on the business, in most cases positive ones, President Carter and the managers of the ICC had become concerned about the potential of monopolies, a proposal for a merger between Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads in 1982 was turned down, and a similar proposal later in the year between Norfolk and Western and the Southern Railroad was also turned down. On August 11, 1984, the ICC declared a moratorium on railroad mergers, citing concerns over monopolistic results in many areas of the United States. While this moratorium was originally only for 18 months, it would effectively become permanent after some time, though smaller acquisitions would still be approved after February 1986.

March 28, 1979, is a normal day at the nearly-new Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Transport America's reauthorization in 1976 included a development which was to change most of American railroading. A provision entered into the bill was to build a number of dedicated terminals for truck/train interactions, allowing the Truck Rail system used by the New York Central to be used on many railroads. There terminals, built in the 1970s and early 1980s in many American cities, allowed for truck-on-flatcar service to become far more common. A 1980 amendment to the Transport America Act also provided greater funds for technical modernization, a decision brought on by the second energy crisis following the Iranian Revolution in 1979. These funds, along with a boom in traffic, allowed for modernization and prosperity to take hold on American railroads for the first time in a generation in the 1980s, and it took hold in a big way......

Interesting stuff, Mann. I'm subscribing.

Part 4 - The New World

As the 1980s dawned, the number of American heavy-hauler railroads had dropped dramatically from where it had been a decade before. There was good reasons for that - there had been too many railroads and simply not enough traffic to support them, but things had started to change.

Indeed, the 1980s opened with a political bang. President Jimmy Carter had found himself facing many problems, and to the shock of many, Carter found himself against a primary challenger, Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Many had predicted Ted Kennedy would follow in his late brother's footsteps, but few had predicted he'd do so in 1980, as the United States faced economic and social problems at home, and the messages of his competitors, former California governor Ronald Reagan, looked like they would take hold and well. That didn't stop Kennedy, however - and facing the likelihood of a party split and the likelihood of him not being able to get re-elected, Carter backed off, announcing he would not seek re-election. Kennedy easily won the primary, but he had a long road to take on Reagan.

Long road or not, Kennedy went for it, and even when taking into account his own personal problems and past history, he still worked his best to move past it - and the 1980 election went from being a Republican walk to a real fight. Kennedy blunted Reagan's major strength with regards to defense with his choice of running mate, Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson of Washington. Reagan was up for the challenge, however, and 1980 turned into one of the wildest political fights in modern times. Reagan ultimately came out ahead, but with Democrats holding both chambers of Congress, Kennedy still had the clout to make Reagan listen to him, even after his presidential loss. But 1980's political season, and a wide range of political opinions and ideas, had captured imaginations, and much like the 1960s, the 1980s really saw the country pick up where it had left off. Political scholars would call the 1980s the decade "Where the concerns of business and labor, rural and urban, Democrat and Republican, left and right, found themselves in more than a few cases chasing common goals." Kennedy and Reagan had been bitter rivals, but America's demands soon forced them to think outside of their ideological leanings, in both cases.

Reagan early 1980s tax cuts and supply-side economics faced concern in Congress, and demands from the American left to help fix inequalities. While at first there was much bitterness - a rolling series of strikes in 1981 and 1982 caused substantial problems in much of the America's union-dominated industries, railroads included - by the mid-1980s, many businessmen were finding out that unions and labor were not as hostile as many of them believed, and many unions found themselves willing to sacrifice constant wage rises if it would ensure the jobs of members. Combined with growing consumer confidence, deregulatory efforts and a weaker US dollar helping exports, it led to a massive surge of economic growth in the United States in the 1980s. Many Democrats, including Kennedy himself, admitted that Reagan's economic plans were working, but that he didn't pay enough attention to the needs of poorer and working class Americans, which the Democrat-controlled Congress was quite willing to work for. In cases, the two goals dovetailed - Reagan's passing of landmark healthcare reform legislation in 1982 had been significantly shoved along by Kennedy and House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and Reagan signed the bill into law after economists made it clear to him that such bills would end up helping America's industrial and working class sectors - which proved to be true. While Reagan held steadfast to his belief that the malaise of 1970s America was in large part related to excessive regulations and misguided welfare programs, he found himself unable to swing an ax - but found Congress and both parties willing to make changes.

With this confidence, the economy booming and industrial output growing every day, the 1980s saw every transport industry trying their damndest just to keep up, and the railroads were no exception. After the 1970s oil shocks, plans for electrification of rail lines moved rapidly in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Conrail took the lead here, with its electrification being stretched from Harrisburg, PA to Cleveland and Columbus, OH, as well as the Pacific Extension's electrification being extended from Seattle and Tacoma, WA to Glendive, Montana, including closing the Milwaukee's electric "gap", taking advantage of the extensive hydroelectric power of the Pacific Northwest. electrification was particularly appealing in mountainous areas, especially with the raft of powerful electric engines that entered the market in the 1970s and 1980s, including GM's potent GM10B and AEM-7 units, and General Electric's E60, which had proven a failure in passenger service but ultimately would become a major success as a freight locomotive. In addition, Conrail's fleet of WWII-era GG1 electrics went into their expansive Altoona, PA, shops for reworks between 1981 and 1984 - the old monsters had racked up many miles, but Conrail studies found that even with the high costs of refurbishment - removing PCBs from electrics and asbestos from the engines were expensive jobs, and frame cracks were becoming an issue in many of them - they would be saving money against the cost of new engines, and Conrail easily recognized that the legendary engines were still status symbols. Alco, now formally allied with Caterpillar in the locomotive business, focused its efforts on diesels, with their new "Millenium" series diesels first rolling out of its Schenectady, New York, plant in the summer of 1981, powered by potent Caterpillar 3654 turbodiesels.



General Motors GM10B demonstrator at Altoona, PA, in 1981



General Electric E60FTs of the Deseret Western Railways leaving a mine at Rangely, CO, in 1995

Conrail had been formed with the knowledge that they need to massive improvements to the physical infrastructure of the railroad, and with many of its WWII-era engines long beyond worn out, Conrail bought virtually anything they could get their hands on between 1979 and 1984 and from all three major locomotive makers, and rebuilt many members of their fleet that could be rebuilt - a number of their worn Alco RS-3s were rebuilt by the Altoona shops with General Motors prime movers and Fairbanks-Morse electrical components. These rebuilds were common in the industry, as most railroads had such shops and it was cheaper in many cases to rebuild units than buy new ones. especially as traffic picked up in the 1980s.

Railroads in the 1980s began increasingly to deal with bulk traffic and containers or trailers on flat cars, owing to customer demands to be able to move loads quickly and efficiently. The goal of all the railways was to beat the trucks, and they got very good at it through the 1980s. Southern Pacific Railroad's invention of cheap, durable FRP 'skids' in the late 1970s helped, too - with universal size skids, even small shippers could move loads by rail, thanks to pickup and delivery services - at first, the railways provided these themselves, but by the mid-1980s all the railroads had contracted this job out to trucking firms, or in many cases the firms themselves would provide the skids, which then they would deliver, loaded, to the railroads. Conrail made good on a sad incident in its past in 1981 in a similar matter - a truckers' strike with the firm which specialized in shipping Maine potatoes caused firms to turn to rails again, ten years after poor interchange service by the Pennsylvania had caused much of the crop to rot on sidings in the winter of 1969-70. Conrail's service in this case was immaculate, and even when three trucks delivered to the New York Central instead, NYC still handled the loads to their destinations ahead of schedule. Many of the firms returned to the rails in 1982, and the firms involved vowed never to let what happened in 1969-70 ever happen again. The American automakers proved to be big rail shippers as well - parts, chemicals, paints and raw materials in, finished automobiles out, and even many imported ones went onto autoracks at the ports in Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Los Angeles, Houston, Jacksonville, Baltimore and New York, taken to distributors by rail.

With traffic problems largely becoming cases of too much of it rather than too little, railways began working with each other. The five-line alliance was the first in a series of alliances. New York Central hooked up with Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern, while the Norfolk and Western began working with Union Pacific. The Canadian lines started getting into the act, too. with Canadian National Railways getting trackage rights across the Illinois Central Gulf in 1984 all the way to New Orleans, and the Erie Lackawanna scoring a coup to supply General Motors' massive Oshawa and Scarborough assembly plants near Toronto, Ontario with auto parts, using CN's lines around Toronto do so.

Passenger traffic also picked up, as well. Amtrak had been formed in 1977 to handle the crumbling remains of America's passenger rail network, but at Congress' insistence, they got considerably bigger and bigger appropriations in the 1980s, with those appropriations enshrined in Transport America's reauthorization in 1986. Several railroads - including the New York Central, Denver and Rio Grande Western, Rock Island Pacific, Santa Fe and Southern Railway - had chosen not to work with Amtrak, preferring instead to run their own flagship trains and get state help in running more local services. Many of these became Amtrak services in the 1980s in any case, but the overall goal of most of the lines was to keep their flagship trains - Super Chief, 20th Century Limited, Rio Grande Zephyr, Southern Crescent and Rocky Mountain Rocket - as symbols of the company. Amtrak, to its credit, did its best to keep standards high. Amtrak did itself a big favor in May 1983, carrying President Reagan, his family, a number of VIPs from Washington to California on a specially-chartered luxury train, aptly named the American President. Reagan was reportedly astounded by his trip, even more so when it was able to blast from Washington to Los Angeles in just 60 hours, averaging 48 mph including fuel and station stops. Reagan and his VIPs, which had been critical of funding Amtrak, had much fewer objections in the years to come, and the American President became Amtrak's flagship luxury liner, entering regular service on January 10, 1984. Over the 1980s, Amtrak began setting up its biggest routes - Empire Builder, Lake Shore Limited, Coast Starlight, Sunset Limited, Silver Star and Texas Eagle - with similarly high standards of service. This cost Amtrak more money at first, but the standards of service offered and the appeal of riding across the nation in luxury rather than flying across it had plenty of appeal, especially on the routes that ran through the incredible rockies. Amtrak's work here saw ridership spike from 21 million in 1980 to 44 million in 1990, and Amtrak got its approval to buy out the ex-Pennsylvania Northeast Corridor from Conrail in 1986, announcing plans to work on the Corridor to allow 150-mph service between Boston and Washington by 199s. Amtrak made the goal - just, but they did make it. To speed this process, Amtrak and its equipment builders, namely Pullman Standard, Bombardier, General Electric and Ingersoll-Rand, sought to license-build a modern high-speed train design, leading to examples of France's TGV, Spain's Talgo, Germany's ICE and Japan's 500 series making test runs on the Northeast Corridor and along the electrified Pacific Northwest route in 1987 and 1988. Amtrak preferred the Series 500 for its smooth ride and lack of power cars (all axles on it are powered, as with the German ICE), but the cost of the trains - the Japanese units cost a whopping $65 million each - was seen as prohibitive. But General Electric and Pullman Standard said they could make a similar train for $25 million a unit, and that the major cost difference was because of the exchange rate, which was rather in Japan's favor at the time. Amtrak got its choice, and twenty-eight of the 500 Series clones, named the Acela 1, were built between 1990 and 1993, with another 22 ordered in 1997 after the service proved popular. Amtrak was able to fix the cantenary problems between New York and Washington, and the trains in March 1993 were permitted to go the full 150 mph speed the trains are capable of on the route. The service proved to be Amtrak's cash cow - by 2010, the Acela carries over seven million passengers a year. A Acela 1 for the US was slightly (12 inches) taller than its Japanese counterpart, and is outfitted with more powerful General Electric wheel motors, giving the American versions faster acceleration than their Japanese predecessors. Seating some 950 people when loaded right up, the Acelas were so successful that they, by 2005, were taking up the majority of transportation needs in the cities they served.



A Japan Railways 500 Series Shinkansen, the Design Amtrak's Acela 1 was based on

Part 5 - The Return of the American City, Amtrak's Liners, Pan Am and the Railroads Hook Up

After the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s saw the first changes that would ultimately remake the United States. With the economic prosperity that was brought on starting in the 1980s, it was little surprise that American cities, which had in many cases been hurt but not killed by the economic crises, were among the first places to start recovering. In many cases, this was coincidence, but in most, it was driven by policies aimed towards that effect.

Industrial output in the United States soared almost 50% between 1980 and 1989, and while it was not a flawless process, it did create millions of new jobs, and added to America's middle class. After stagnating in the 1970s, America's middle class began seeing its wealth rise again in the 1980s. Reagan's policies were given a major boost with the value of the US dollar sinking somewhat between 1985 and 1989, which made it cheaper to make products in the United States and saw the United States' primary industrial rivals, West Germany and Japan, face considerably higher values of their currencies hurting their economic positions. Reagan and the Democrat Congress fought repeatedly over industrial policy, but the overall results were impressive. Reagan's massive defense buildup was helpful in many ways, especially in the technology and shipbuilding industries, which also had knock-on effects in other industries. Between these and other factors, United States' manufacturing employment grew by 10.8 million between 1980 and 1989, even as some industries saw the number of employees brought down by efficiency efforts.

With this, American cities began major redevelopment efforts - but unlike the efforts of the post-WWII era, which had been focused on suburbs and automobiles, the new era of the American City was focused on making it possible for all people to enjoy all a city has to offer, as well as preserving neighborhoods and landmarks. With freeways in many cases being already clogged with traffic, mass transit began to expand in usage, even in wide-area cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, St. Louis and Miami. The first and most obvious operation was commuter rail services. The modern American form of commuter rail services had first been shown to work in Canada, ironically - Toronto's GO Transit had laid the template in large part for modern commuter rail. Instead of driving into the city, drive to a train station and go into the city on the train. When combined with buses and streetcars, it made getting to work without a car much easier for millions of commuters, and without traffic to brave, many took to this option, which in resulted in steady revenues for mass transit systems in dozens of locations across the United States.

In some places, efforts went further than that, even. New York City's neighborhoods in many cases declined badly in the 1960s and 1970s from a combination of urban decay, white flight, economic problems, crime and pollution. By 1980, however, New York was working hard on turning itself around, and the confidence of the time helped. The most notable turnarounds were in the areas of Harlem and Brooklyn, which found many neighborhoods being rebuilt by a combination of citizen action and outside investment. Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Washington and Boston followed in that path, though large-scale redevelopments were not ignored. American cities built more than 750 miles of subway lines and nearly 5000 miles of elevated rail, streetcars and light rail in the 1980s, with the largest subway builder being New York and the largest builder of lighter rail lines being Los Angeles. With this followed thousands of new building projects in the center of US cities in the 1980s and 1990s, to the point that in a number of cases, suburban areas began to be seen as less desirable than the cities themselves, with crime rates being lower in many parts of the major cities and services being better.


A light rail car in Jamaica, New York, in 1993

With traffic swelling virtually every day, the once-tenuous survival of the American railroads was now as solid as a rock. This confidence and growing traffic demands resulted in some massive rebuilding jobs in the 1980s, with one of the biggest being Conrail's extensive rebuild of the former Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension from Tacoma, WA to Billings, MT, a project which began in 1983 and was completed in 1991. The rebuild included concrete ties, 155-lb rail (specially produced for Conrail by Bethlehem Steel's legendary mill in Bethlehem, PA), centralized traffic control and several new bridges, as well as rebuilding the Snoqualamie Tunnel to accommodate double-stacked container trains. Other major projects, such as the rebuilds of the Phoenixville and Black Rock Tunnels by the New York Central, also progressed in the 1980s. With oil prices staying high and nuclear energy still continuously growing in the United States, electrification had appeal for many railroads beyond those who already used electric trains (New York Central and Conrail were the largest such users), and in 1983, Burlington Northern pushed the button, beginning the electrification of its Eastern Rockies routes from Billings, MT to Lincoln, NE, with its lines serving the Powder River Basin coal fields being electrified, which was completed and placed in service in 1987. BN also electrified its Pacific NW routes, following Conrail's lead, with its lines across Stampede and Stevens Pass being electrified in the 1980s.


A Conrail freight near Fort Wayne, Indiana, in November 1992

The 1980s saw coal demand fall, though prices stayed stable. But Hess Energy's decision to go into the business of building synthetic crude oil facilities (using the Fischer-Tropsch process to turn coal into oil) in 1984 changed things. Their first facility, built near Nazareth, PA, opened in 1988. The big facility was able to produce 165,000 barrels of oil a day, and needed suitably huge quantities of coal - which could only be delivered by rail. Hess' plant, using the cheap electricity common in many parts of the United States, proved to be a highly-profitable enterprise, even before Congress began to push for the establishment of more such facilities. These plants added to the traffic base for Conrail and the Erie Lackawanna, as well as for the Delaware and Hudson, which by the 1980s was also funneling iron ore to American steel mills from plants in Canada - most of it came from Quebec and Labrador mines, which then was run by the Cartier Railroad and the Canadian Pacific Railway to Quebec City, where the D&H took over, across trackage rights to Sherbrooke, Quebec, and down their own routes to New York, Rochester and Buffalo, NY. Loads to Bethlehem and Pittsburgh went across Conrail or EL routes. The D&H was in the 1980s the only major railroad owned almost entirely by its own employees (60% of the company's stock was owned by D&H employees) and operated by management that was beholden to those employees. The employee-run railroad proved to be a successful enterprise, in part because of its extensive trackage rights and growing US-Canada trade. It's entry into the WP-D&RGW-RI-EL alliance in 1985 added to this success, as it now had traffic from the other railroads to funnel, namely to Boston using its trackage rights over Conrail's Boston Line.

Amtrak's successful 1983 job of taking President Reagan home to California for a vacation all but ended Congressional opposition to big investments - particularly as most of it was paid for out of Transport America's funds, and the new equipment was making Amtrak's ridership grow rapidly. The idea of setting up ways to help industry adapt to laws made by Congress had firmly taken root by 1983, and this allowed Amtrak's needs - which were a pittance compared to other programs authorized by Congress - to be filled easily. In the 1980s, Amtrak went on a shopping spree, buying over 1400 rail cars, a refit of its entire fleet. All were built in the United States, most of them by Pullman-Standard in Joliet, IL and Barre, VT, and also by American Rail Car Corporation in Flint, MI. Amtrak also ordered a pile of new diesel locomotives in 1986 - in a massive coup for Alco-Caterpillar, they landed the order, somewhat shocking GE and General Motors. The new engines, labeled the Millennium P50AC, were technological showcases. Using 5000 horsepower Caterpillar turbodiesel engines and electronic controls, as well as AC motors and electrics, The P50AC was considerably faster accelerating than the General Motors-built SDP40F, F40PH and E8A diesels, and were more reliable than the GE U30CH diesels also used by Amtrak. The Millenniums would be used on the long-distance routes, which were limited by FRA rules to 80 mph, while Amtrak would order a number of General Electric Genesis diesels for smaller routes in 1989, which were more efficient on smaller trains. Amtrak also ordered a number of Swedish-designed AEM-7 and AEM-10 electrics from General Motors in 1986, which replaced Amtrak's GE E60s and its positively ancient GG1s, which hadn't gotten the rebuilds the freight GG1s used by Conrail had.


A AEM-10 delivering new cars for Amtrak near Richmond, Virginia, in August 1988

The new cars made for service changes. Having long realized that its long-distance routes had no hope of competing with the airlines in terms of speed, they needed to capture the market of those who wanted comfort and style. The new cars came in a striking sky blue and stainless steel paint scheme, and inside LED lights, leather seats, excellent beds and showers and many other amenities went in. All of the long-distance trains, following the leads of the trains still run by several of the freight railroads, gained incredible meal service. This first debuted on the Washington-Los Angeles/San Francisco American President in 1985, and passengers in many cases were astounded with the fare on offer, finding that the service and fare was on par with very good restaurants. Special sleepers were designed to carry families, with four beds for a family. All compartments got toilets, all but the worst ones got private showers. The Hi-Vision cars offered vast views from its top floor and wide-open glass roof. The cars even included wheelchair lifts compartments specially designed for those with disabilities. Coach cars were designed with similar entertainment systems as airliners, and headphones were placed at every seat for usage by passengers.


The American President on the Erie Lackawanna near Indianapolis, IN

Amtrak's improvements were in large part done as a result of competition by others, with the big one done by Pan American World Airways. Pan Am, a legend in the airline business, had first hooked up with the New York Central and the Long Island Railroad in 1972, and in 1974 Pan Am's employees took out newspaper ads proclaiming that Pan Am, as America's unofficial flag carrier, deserved better treatment. The New York Central was one of the railroads to not enter Amtrak in 1977, and it kept operating its passenger trains, largely with Pan Am's help in improving the image and service quality of the railroad. When Pan Am first found itself in financial trouble in the early 1980s, the New York Central answered by investing a massive amount in Pan Am, and from 1981 New York Central's top line trains, including the Broadway Limited and the 20th Century Limited, gained the add on "by Pan Am". The railroad came to agreements to allow air freight the NYC carried to be routed onto Pan Am flights, and was a regular investor in the company. In 1984, Pan Am and the NYC came to agreement for Pan Am to borrow some $2.7 Billion from the railroad firm, allowing Pan Am to resurrect its international routes through major improvements in its service. Pan Am paid back the loan in 1992, two years ahead of schedule. Pan Am's efforts returned it to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly for being willing to go for the absolute latest technology and top-quality service. Pan Am tickets did cost marginally more than many competitors, but you're money bought better service and more comfortable trips.

Pan Am's integration with the NYC was beneficial, and the company also came to deals to move air freight delivered by Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern, which both made for faster freight movements for customers willing to pay and reduced congestion of the railroad's lines. Pan Am in the 1980s also became a regular advisor to the railroads which still ran passenger operations, providing training for customer service officials and consulting on ways to make better service. The company's efforts also resulted in a resurgence of its international routes in the 1980s, helped along by the confidence of the time and their huge loans from the NYC in 1984-85. The efforts paid off in spades for both sides, and by the 1990s, American long-distance passenger trains were the standard of the world, and between Amtrak and the freight railroads they were moving some 58 million passengers a year.

The airlines' biggest glory came in 1984, however - when Reagan announced in his State of the Union Address that America should commit itself to resurrecting the idea of supersonic travel, and Congress backed him up on it, setting up funding for such a program. Pan Am's management testified that such aircraft would be unsuitable for overland routes due to Sonic booms and the relatively short distances, but a supersonic airliner would work wonders on longer routes, and that modern turbofan engines made it possible for such aircraft to have better fuel economy and longer range. Boeing quickly brought back its 2707 as a baseline, but that was where it stopped. Development was extensive on the new project, and Boeing said it could make the supersonic airliner a reality by 1995. They proved to be faster than anticipated.

The Boeing design, designated the 2707-500, was first shown as a model to the public in September 1987, its first flight took off from Paine Field in Renton, Washington, on May 11, 1991. The 2707-500 flew flawlessly, with its newly-developed Pratt and Whitney 4200 engines working flawlessly. The 2707 was capable of flying over land at Mach 0.98 - a speed below the sound barrier but significantly quicker than regular wide-bodies. Where possible, the 2707 could open its taps and blast all the way to a Mach 2.45 cruise speed, with 275 passengers aboard. Boeing tested the airplane extensively through 1991, 1992 and 1993, leading to certifications from many different agencies. When it became clear that the 2707 would be built and fly, orders from long-distance airlines came like rain. Pan Am was the launch customer, to nobody's surprise, and two early examples on the assembly line were allocated to the United States Air Force, destined to become the new Air Force One aircraft. The first 2707 ready for revenue service for Pan Am, Clipper Spirit of America, rolled out of Boeing's Everett, Washington, plant on March 25, 1994, and made its first revenue flight, from Seattle to New York, on April 19, 1994. Two days later, the same aircraft flew with a full load of passengers across the Atlantic Ocean to London, England. The flight was timed with the flight of an British Airways Concorde from Dulles Airport in Washington, racing to see which plane cruised faster - the Boeing product won, cruising at Mach 2.30 over Concorde's Mach 2.02.

Between the relatively-recent entry of the Acela project into revenue rail service and the 2707, many commentators talked about America having a "Need for Speed". Many of these called for the next generation of airliners to move up to just below supersonic speeds, for shorter-range rail passenger service to move up its speed, too, pointing out that Amtrak's Metroliners ran regularly at 125 mph, and figuring that powerful engines could make a diesel-fueled Metroliner move at the same speeds, allowing rail travel to again compete with the domestic airlines. But little did most of these people know that Amtrak and the rail equipment builders were way, way ahead of them......


A United Airlines Boeing 2707-500 at high altitude

This TL looks awesome so far! Also, hooray for Boeing! My grandad used to work there, ya know.

So following this...

Great to see the railway companies making change happening and not simply reacting to it as OTL.

TheUnmentionableSeaMammal said:

This TL looks awesome so far! Also, hooray for Boeing! My grandad used to work there, ya know.

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I'm not done there just yet, either. Better trains in North America means less demand for airplanes, particularly among regional carriers like Southwest and Northwest. This forces Boeing to pay more attention to the international markets and longer-range airliners.

Dunois said:

Great to see the railway companies making change happening and not simply reacting to it as OTL.

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They had to, really, but nonetheless they are doing a lot of adapting. America's industrial output is much, much higher than OTL here, and with that comes better-paying jobs. Combined with better government policies (major healthcare reform was rammed into existence by President Reagan in 1982) and the better standards of living of many middle-class Americans, has fueled much greater rail transit needs. As the coal-to-oil plants become more numerous (and they will ) and other new markets for rail transport come into being, they will have to keep up. But with their wealth (combined profits of $15 Billion+ in 1990), they can afford to innovate, and in doing so they shove along changes.

I too have a need for speed, shame you couldn't get some of those FRA rules relaxed for passenger trains, or better still have railways upgrade to higher class standards so they can cruise at 90 or 110 mph instead of 79 mph.

Riain said:

I too have a need for speed, shame you couldn't get some of those FRA rules relaxed for passenger trains, or better still have railways upgrade to higher class standards so they can cruise at 90 or 110 mph instead of 79 mph.

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That's in the next segment. You think after building a HSR and turning all the long-distance trains into liners on rails that I would forget everything else?

Just pushing my own barrow.

Liners on rails is a big thing here, people take the Ghan, Indian Pacific, Overland for the food and scenery. So much so that the Southern Sprit was introduced to go nowhere in particular, just to cruise around the tracks for a week feeding people and stopping in out of the way places for little tours and small concerts.

Riain said:

Just pushing my own barrow.

Liners on rails is a big thing here, people take the Ghan, Indian Pacific, Overland for the food and scenery. So much so that the Southern Sprit was introduced to go nowhere in particular, just to cruise around the tracks for a week feeding people and stopping in out of the way places for little tours and small concerts.

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Well, the top trains ITTL aren't all that different. They do go places (the longest run is the Texas Eagle, which has a Chicago-Houston-Los Angeles route), but they do so in comfort and style, and admiring the scenery of the American West, which is quite incredible in many places. Speed works for heavily-trafficked pairs of cities, of which there are a few.

TheMann said:

I'm not done there just yet, either. Better trains in North America means less demand for airplanes, particularly among regional carriers like Southwest and Northwest. This forces Boeing to pay more attention to the international markets and longer-range airliners.

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International relations, eh? Well it just so happens that that's exactly what my grandfather worked on! Perhaps he could get a namedrop?

TheMann said:

Speed works for heavily-trafficked pairs of cities, of which there are a few.

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A lot of people don't realise this about the US, or choose to ignore it and think instead about Chicago-LA.