Urban Renewal
The metaphorical “dawn” of the 1970s had never seemed more apt of a term, having followed the sheer darkness and pandemonium that had reigned as the 1960s came to a tumultuous close. That decade, though it had been dominated by social upheaval, saw a great deal of economic uncertainty as well. Indeed, those two concepts were very much intertwined; costly and unpopular overseas entanglements, race riots and high-profile assassinations naturally played havoc with consumer and investor confidence in the world’s largest economy. Heavy industries which dominated American cities in the Midwest and Northeast through to the 1950s – a decade which, not coincidentally, was the focal point of the retro nostalgia which also served to characterize the 1970s – had been facing significant and increasingly rapid decline ever since. It was no wonder that the now middle-aged generation of men and women who had fought in World War II (whether on the battle front or the home front) faced great hardship and alienation, ironically enough in much the same fashion as their children did on the other side of the “Generation Gap”. As the factories closed down, the railroads that had once served as the backbone of passage from sea to shining sea also found themselves facing an uncertain future. The beginnings of this decline, too, could be traced to Those Golden Fifties: President Eisenhower had overseen the development of the Interstate Highway system, which replaced the haphazard, uneven backroads with modern, well-maintained, multi-lane, high-quality superhighways. This had been an ambition of his for several decades, ever since he had participated in an Army convoy which had taken two months to travel across the Continent by road, shortly after the First World War. The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was passed in 1956; the following year, perhaps by coincidence, Major League Baseball’s Giants and Dodgers both departed the Big Apple for the Golden State. New York City – the largest urban centre not just in the United States, but in all of North America – stood alone as the prime representative of what America had once been, and the harsh reality of what it had become.
Though the name “interstate” to describe these highways that Eisenhower had built was technically correct, perhaps “intercity” might have been more precise; these new routes, despite their great lengths and courses running parallel to all the others (at least, those which also moved either north-south or east-west) generally passed through (or near) large urban centres wherever possible. Appropriately enough, cities which had previously tended to be rail hubs inevitably found themselves at the junction of multiple interstate highways. As a result, the passenger rail which had formerly dominated those same hubs fell into rapid, seemingly irreversible decline. The 1950s and 1960s came to be known as iconic automotive decades, and certainly not locomotive ones. The rise of sports and muscle cars and the popular image of them cruising on the open road informed the culture of transportation in the United States in the mid-20th century. Even the hottest competition thereto came in the form of motorcycles, another definitive post-war mode of transport, though the subcultures associated with those particular vehicles were, perhaps, not quite so wholesome and all-American as they were with cars. The wealthy, for their part, preferred private air travel, with modern, luxurious models first becoming available to end consumers in this era; this allowed them something akin to the sense of freedom and adventure felt by barnstormers and thrill-seekers at the turn of the century. As with many other new technologies, the popular name for these kinds of planes came to be associated with the largest manufacturer thereof, Cessna, whose Model 172 Skyhawk became an instant bestseller, remaining so well into the 1970s. With all of these new and exciting modes of transport available to the everyday American consumer, the boring, steady, and dependable locomotive was a mere relic as far as passenger travel was concerned, restricted solely for use as freight. Even that saw declines in the 1970s when contrasted against trucking, which was far more “cool” and “rebellious” and thus indicative of the American Spirit than the comfortable, efficient, and European-style trains. The rise in popularity of Citizens’ Band (or CB) Radio, the preferred mode of communication for truckers everywhere, played a key part in this image; the appeal of talking over the air with complete strangers – previously the exclusive province of call-in radio shows – was infectious, and many people had the radios installed into their station wagons for their own long drives along the interstate.
However, despite the overall popularity of automobiles (and all else which travelled over asphalt), moving into the 1970s, the American companies – such as Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, and American Motors – who had previously dominated that industry saw themselves losing ground to the Japanese (in another recurring theme of the 1970s), for their cars were cheaper and better-made. Manufacturers from the Land of the Rising Sun began to build their own factories stateside, as this would allow them to “beat” the high tariffs that would come from having to import their inventory across the Pacific. This decision had the collateral advantages of creating additional jobs, and stabilizing the automotive industry despite the continuing decline in performance of the stateside manufacturers therein. Additionally, innovation, which had been a hallmark of that particular industry ever since the days of Henry Ford and his assembly line, found itself a new outlet when the Oil Crisis of 1973 created the need for greater fuel efficiency in order to defeat the “gas guzzlers” which were increasingly problematic in the new era of OPEC and trade embargoes. The interventionist administration of President Hubert H. Humphrey supported a bill imposing new fleet-wide average mileage standards, which became the last major piece of legislation passed into law by the lame-duck Democratic-controlled 93rd Congress in late 1974. [1] Denigrated by members of the incoming 94th Congress as “the last gasp of the Great Society”, they nevertheless would not act to repeal that legislation. Simply put, under a framework of regulations called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards, the onus was on the automakers to develop more fuel-efficient vehicles, or face severe penalties for noncompliance. However, because the regulations put into place a weighted-averages measurement system, they would be allowed to continue selling their less-efficient land-yacht models, so long as the new, more-efficient cars they developed sold better. Though compliance would not become mandatory until 1978, most consumers had voted with their wallets by that point, sending many of the most beloved marques of the previous decades to their doom. [2]
But despite the big bump in the road for American automakers, their brethren in the passenger rail industry would still manage to beat them in a race to the (financial) bottom. Several former titans of the business – such as Penn Central and Union Pacific – had each declared bankruptcy and made plans to cease operations by the late 1960s; but such a symbol of American progress and unity no longer being viable would prove a titanic blow to the overall reputation of the American Dream. Thus, the federal government shouldered the responsibility of attempting to salvage the system, which it did under the terms of the Rail Passenger Service Act in 1970. The government would begin funding passenger rail service on a large scale, forming the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (or NRPC) in order to do so. Rail lines merged into the national entity took the brand name “Paxrail”, an eminently topical designation for a country newly released from a certain overseas quagmire. [3] However, all sides clearly intended for this to only serve as a temporary solution, not a permanent one; and, indeed, a more lasting solution was reached, once again, during the twilight years of the “Great Society”. The National Intercity Railways Act of 1973 became the largest-ever public works project in American history [4], creating a mammoth bureaucracy that would fund and oversee all passenger rail in the United States, with the surviving transit companies formally joining into the scheme. In later years, none other than George Takei would take credit for inspiring the creation of this bureaucracy, claiming to have discussed the issue with Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention of 1972. At the time, however, this discussion was said to have consisted largely of Takei coaxing the President into naming the first space shuttle after the USS Enterprise. [5] Takei, in rebuttal, insisted that “it took me all of fifteen seconds to get him to change the name”, and that most of their several-minutes-long conversation was indeed devoted to transportation policy, of which he had always been a fan.
Meanwhile, across the northern border in Canada, that country’s largest city, Montreal, had taken increasing strides toward becoming a major world city since it had famously hosted the Expo in 1967; it rose in the global estimation in a roughly proportional fashion to the decline of New York City, which was just six hours down Autoroute 15 and, after a border crossing, Interstate 87. Montreal had become the first Canadian city to host a Major League Baseball club (which was named for the Expo) in 1969; the National Basketball Association, after having completed their merger process with the rival American Basketball Association in 1974, also saw the addition of a local team (named, like the Expos, for a recent event hosted by the city – in this case, the Olympics) four years later, as part of league expansion into Canada. [6] With the arrival of the Olympians, the island city now had a representative club in each of the four major professional sports of North America at that time, though their football team (the Alouettes) played not for the National Football League, but for the Canadian Football League, as did eight other teams throughout the Great White North. The teams competed for the Grey Cup – which, like the Stanley Cup before it, had been bestowed upon players of the sport by a former Governor-General; in this case Albert Grey, the 4th Earl Grey, had granted the award to enthusiasts of the sport. His grandfather, the 2nd Earl, had served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the passage of the Great Reform Act (and who later gave his name to a famous blend of tea). Interests within the NFL had repeatedly attempted to expand into either Montreal or Toronto, as MLB and the NBA had done, but the government of Prime Minister Stanfield – whose own favourite sport was, in fact, Canadian football – would always threaten to table a bill that would legally prohibit such an occurrence. [7] Amusingly, this was one of the few points of agreement between Stanfield and his greatest rival, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
But in terms of civic planning and infrastructure, the defining triumph of the Montreal region, despite the many developments therein throughout the 1970s, was the completion of the high-speed rail line linking the Central Station in the downtown core with the terminals of Mirabel International Airport – a distance of over 30 miles, or 50 kilometers. [8] Serving as the centrepiece to a vast transportation network linking the island with the airport, the line – nicknamed “the Rocket”, both for its powerful velocity and as an homage to the legendary hockey player Maurice Richard, who attended the opening ceremonies – was completed in 1978, “only” two years after the Olympics had concluded. The Rocket could complete the journey between Central Station and Mirabel in just under twenty minutes – half the time that it would take to make the same trip by automobile, though not including the cumbersome and often frustrating arrangement of securing parking, nor the time-consuming trip from the often fairly remote lots to the thick of the action. In the case of both the airport and the downtown stations, their respective rail platforms were centrally located. The Rocket was able to attain a maximum operational velocity of 130 miles per hour (or 215 kilometres per hour). Canadian Prime Minister Robert Stanfield had accepted an offer from the Montreal Locomotive Works to complete the construction contract, having been very impressed by their prototype; he was also quite ecstatic that the company was based in the city itself, and would therefore be providing jobs for the locals. Construction on the line had begun in 1974, and shortly thereafter the Montreal Locomotive Works were purchased by the conglomerate Bombardier. [9] An acquisition of that sheer scale had to be approved by the federal government, especially given their existing relationship with one of the involved companies. In the end, it was permitted only because Bombardier, too, was a Canadian-owned corporation; in fact, up to that point, they had primarily been involved in the manufacture of snowmobiles, which, granted, were a necessity in the wintery province of Quebec. But most importantly, the Rocket was intended by Stanfield as a potential pilot project for a far more ambitious planned high-speed rail connection which would eventually connect Quebec City in the northeast to Windsor in the southwest; the two cities, over seven hundred miles apart, had most of Canada’s population living within two hours of the corridor of road and rail links between them. [10] An “express” high-speed train following that route would take about six hours to complete its trip; a car making the same journey would arrive in one city well into the evening, if they departed from the other at the crack of dawn. Gasoline was ever-more expensive, and despite manufacturers working to improve fuel efficiency in Canada as well as in the United States (again, not without government incentive to do so), the “gas guzzlers” which so defined automobiles of the 1970s would make any such trip ruinously expensive. Also worth noting, though from a far more hypothetical perspective, was that this distance was actually greater than the one between Boston and Washington, DC - between which lay the largest, most populous and densest conurbation in the United States, described by futurist Herman Kahn as the BosWash megalopolis in 1967.
Meanwhile, Toronto, the second-largest city in Canada (and a perennial rival to Montreal for nearly 150 years by this point) and the capital of the country’s most populous province of Ontario, also saw the construction of a massive infrastructure project. 1976, the year of the Olympics in Montreal, was when a broadcasting tower constructed by and named for the Canadian National Railway (though always properly the “CN Tower”) was finally completed, at which time it became the world’s tallest freestanding structure. [11] Toronto also saw benefits from the continuing expansions of major sports leagues through the 1970s; though it lacked the storied baseball history of Montreal with a Jackie Robinson having played for the city, it still received a Major League Baseball club in 1977, to complement the Montreal Expos. The team was named the Blue Jays, the name being a reference to blue being the primary colour of both the city in general and all the athletic clubs playing there in particular. In addition, a basketball team, the Toronto Huskies, had played for one season (1946-47) in the city shortly after World War II, as part of the Basketball Association of America; that league had merged with another to form the modern National Basketball Association in 1949. The newly formed Toronto Huskies joined the Montreal Olympians as part of the NBA expansion into Canada in 1978, giving “Hogtown” two new clubs in as many consecutive years. [12] The Huskies and the Olympians naturally became immediate rivals, helped along immensely by their play in the very same division of the NBA (the Central Division of the Eastern Conference), in contrast to their more distant situation in MLB and the NHL.
Canada, after consistently paling in comparison to the economic powerhouse that was the United States, had finally gained some ground on them, enjoying a consistently strong economy through most of the 1970s, in contrast to the more erratic situation stateside. However, this was not to say that government efforts to ameliorate the American situation did not bear fruit. In fact, the combined effect of the many infrastructure and industry-boosting laws and regulations passed by the Humphrey administration in tandem with Congress, coupled with his protectionist policies, worked to somewhat revitalize the industrial states of the Northern U.S., nicknamed “the Foundry” [13], not to mention their core cities, most of which had previously been in decline. However, and despite this “Manufacturing Miracle”, in relative terms, that sector continued to decline in those regions as a proportion of the total within the United States – though this decline did indeed slow considerably in contrast to the 1960s. But even the most optimistic statistical findings were not without exception. The Empire State of New York continued to see their standing in freefall, largely tied to that of New York City, which was riddled with crime, poverty, homelessness, unemployment and unrest. Despite the turnaround achieved elsewhere, rehabilitating the Big Apple would take more than just a miracle.
Several Midwestern cities unexpectedly flourished even above and beyond the Manufacturing Miracle of the 1970s. One of the most seemingly unlikely examples was Indianapolis – a rail hub which was completely surrounded by the archetypal rural, agricultural state – quite fortuitously through a confluence of the many forces dominating economics and public policy in the 1970s. The creation of Paxrail, followed by the Intercity Railways Act, prevented what otherwise might have been the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in one of the largest industries in the region. The merger of the ABA into the NBA saw the city’s team, the Indiana Pacers (founded in 1967), joining the top professional league in basketball, that sport which Hoosiers adored above all else. In addition, their nearest and fiercest rivals, the Kentucky Colonels, based in Louisville (two hours down I-65, across the Ohio River), were also an ABA team which successfully merged into the NBA. [14] But Indianapolis (one of those cities which attracted nicknames like moths to a flame) was unique in being a host city not only to an ABA team which joined the NBA in 1974, but also to a WHA team which joined the NHL in 1977. These two league mergers, along with a political amalgamation of Indianapolis proper with the surrounding communities in the rest of Marion County in 1970, earned it the enduring nickname of “Mergertown”. The Indianapolis Racers and the Indiana Pacers both played in Market Square Arena, completed in 1974 under the auspices of then-mayor Richard Lugar, less than two months before he was elected to the United States Senate; Deputy Mayor Michael A. Carroll replaced him, but continued to implement his strategy to revitalize the downtown core through the promotion of new and exciting sporting events, hosted in venues that would surely bring tourists into the region, and suburbanites into the city. [15] It should be noted that this strategy did not take into account the already-established Indianapolis 500, one of the Triple Crown of Motorsport, though it certainly helped to cement “Mergertown” as a sports mecca at the heart of the Crossroads of America. Perhaps this reputation precluded the need for the construction of a major amusement park, which followed in the wake of the success of Disneyland – perhaps the crowning creative achievement of Uncle Walt in his lifetime, and certainly the one which had the greatest impact on the travel and recreational activities of families throughout the United States.
Much as I-65 linked Mergertown with Louisville, across the Ohio, I-74 linked Indianapolis with Cincinnati, which was situated on the Ohio, and in the state of Ohio. The two cities not only shared an interstate, but also a status as home to a WHA-turned-NHL team; in the case of Cincinnati, the Stingers. However, Cincinnati, unlike Indianapolis, did have a shiny new theme park in King’s Island (completed in 1973), though it was actually located in the fairly remote suburb of Mason. [16] Cincinnati also did not quite enjoy the booming success of Indianapolis, but it was nonetheless given a new lease on life in the 1970s primarily through notoriety, as opposed to solid public policy. “The Queen City”, as it was known, had by happenstance been chosen as the setting of the cult sitcom WMTM in Cincinnati; the quirks attributed to the city were matched in real-life by the man who was Mayor when the show began its run, Jerry Springer. [17] The earnest and eloquent Springer, known for his serious, thoughtful demeanour, had been an advisor for the ill-fated Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968; after that position had expired, courtesy an assassin’s bullet, he decided to transition to a run for Congress, losing against the incumbent Republican, Donald D. Clancy, in 1970. However, his valiant run in a tough district for his party impressed President Hubert H. Humphrey, who urged him to run for a second time, along with taking up a key role in the 1972 Presidential campaign for the Buckeye State. Springer juggled both tasks with aplomb, helping Humphrey to narrowly clinch Ohio and won the seat of OH-02 against Clancy in a rematch. His victory was short-lived, though, as he was easily swept aside in the Republican wave of 1974, but he reluctantly acceded to the demands of local Democrats in running for municipal council the following year. In 1977, he was elected Mayor; WMTM, dutifully, occasionally mentioned “Mayor Springer” in various episodes. He, in turn, played along in consistently referring to the (fictional) station as being “home to the best music in the tri-state”. [18] With regards to sporting events beyond hockey, though Cincinnati lacked a professional basketball team, their Bengals had played football since 1968; the Cincinnati Reds, on the other hand, had played since 1881, making them one of the oldest teams in Major League Baseball.
And then there was Denver. Like Montreal, it had flourished in the years following its hosting of the Olympics (though those of the Winter, rather than of the Summer) in 1976. The Olympic Sports Arena built there housed the Denver Rockets [19], a basketball team that had been a charter member of the ABA, and the Colorado Rockies, an NHL team formerly located in Kansas City before travelling west along I-70, in the very same year that the city had hosted the Olympics in the first place. Sport, perhaps more than was the case in any other American city to thrive in the 1970s, was very much the lifeblood of Denver. Even as a tourist attraction, the “Mile High City” and its environs were primarily known as the site of some of the finest skiing in the world; newer outdoor activities, such as snowboarding and snowmobiling, also became very popular. However, the high mountains were treacherous, and accidents were plentiful. Indeed, for those wealthy travellers flying their own private planes to Colorado, there was an additional element of thrill and danger even beyond the typical risks of flight: the Cessna 172 had a maximum operational height of 13,500 feet above sea level, as the lower air pressures at higher elevations proved insufficient to keep the craft airborne. As it happened, the highest airport in the United States, Lake County Airport, was located in Leadville, Colorado; its location made it a potential stop-off for private flights from many points in the American Southwest. It was 10,000 feet above sea level, which was enough to make taking off and staying in the air quite an exhilarating challenge for the aspiring pilot. Despite perhaps managing to be an even bigger sports mecca than Indianapolis, the Denver suburbs were selected to play host to a brand-new amusement park, this one intended as a true theme park in every sense of the word. Science-Fiction Land, inspired in parts by the pulp novels, movie serials, and comic books of yesteryear, by venerable genre films, and by popular television shows and movies of the recent past and present (including all the usual suspects – Star Trek, Journey of the Force, Galactica, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Moonraker, among many others) broke ground in Aurora, Colorado, in 1979. [20] An eccentric by the name of Barry Ira Geller – truly, the Howard Hughes of the modern day – served as the impresario behind the theme park, but it was perhaps a testament to the economic recovery and the drive for free enterprise which characterised the mid-1970s, not to mention the strong fundamentals and good growth in Colorado in general and Denver in particular as a result of the post-Olympics boom. And the buzz that surrounded the construction – seemingly out-of-this-world promises about the coming attractions and events that were in store – were enticing, even enthralling. The 1970s being a decade of nostalgia, as infrastructure and modes of transportation tried to rebuild themselves to the heights of past glories, it was not altogether surprising that – coupled with other contemporary factors – the gradual return of the Moonie Loonies may well have reared its ugly head about as close as most people got to the stratosphere…
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[1] IOTL, the CAFE standards were passed in 1975, under the Ford administration.
[2] Compliance becomes mandatory as of the starting day of the first new fiscal year on or following January 1, 1978, for each automaker.
[3] “Paxrail” was the working title IOTL, as well, before the NRPC instead settled on the name “Amtrak”, which remains in use to this day.
[4] The National Interstate Highways and Defense Act was valued at $25 billion in 1956, making it the most expensive public works program in American history up to that point. Adjusted for inflation, this would be equal to $40 billion in 1973; however, because the common masses are judged by the media to have a problem ascertaining the time value of money, the Intercity Railways Act need only exceed the original $25 billion to be valued as the most expensive public works program in American history, even if it is worth less than $40 billion in 1973 dollars. (For the record, $25 billion in 1956 is equivalent to over $210 billion in today’s dollars. Also, term “billion”, as is always the case with American numbering, refers to the short scale of one thousand million, or 10 raised to the 9th power).
[5] Whether Takei – an avowed fan of public transit, IOTL and ITTL, actually did as much as he claimed he did to convince Humphrey to enact a nationwide railway bureaucracy is to be left to the individual interpretations of each reader. Granted, it probably wouldn’t take much to talk Humphrey out of naming a shuttle Endurance; but Takei is a politician, and at the time that he was quoted as taking credit for the decision, Humphrey was already dead and… well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
[6] The National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association did not merge until 1976 IOTL. Putting an effective moratorium on negotiations for several years was a lawsuit proceeding through the courts; IOTL, Congress came close to circumventing it but ultimately let it run its course. ITTL, on the other hand, the vote goes the other way, and both sides are at the negotiation tables by 1973. Note that the basketball merger still precedes the hockey merger by three seasons.
[7] This actually happened IOTL in 1974, when a team from an American football league (and not even the NFL; this was a bush-league that didn’t last two seasons) attempted to play in Toronto. The bill passed second reading (there are three readings in the House of Commons before they move on to the Senate, and then Royal Assent) before the owner of the team backed down. Today, it is widely accepted (due to cultural protectionism being a cornerstone of Canadian public policy) that a similar law will develop if the NFL ever attempts to establish a presence in Canada (the reason why they are the only one of the major leagues which has never done so).
[8] The high-speed rail line was tentatively planned, but never built (and nor were most of the highways, for that matter). No such line would exist in all of North America until the Acela Express began operations in 2000, along the aforementioned Northeast Corridor, though on average at much slower speeds than even the relatively modest 130 miles per hour managed by the Rocket ITTL (in the 1970s, mind).
[9] Bombardier purchased Montreal Locomotive Works in 1975, IOTL, as part of its initial expansion into the railway industry (they have since also gone into aviation). Not coincidentally, Bombardier built the Acela HSR line IOTL.
[10] The Quebec City-to-Windsor “corridor”, named after the train which travels from one to the other IOTL, is an incredibly vital route which is, essentially, the backbone of the Canadian economy. However, the train (part of the VIA rail system, essentially the Canadian answer to Amtrak) is not high-speed, and rough calculations place the cheapest ticket prices at about equal to the cost of a road trip by car, with at least the same travel time (and that’s being very generous with the number of stops by car). The much greater opportunity cost involved with an HSR route as an option (assuming that prices are relatively even, and they would have to be subsidized to that point in order to become viable in car-loving North America) makes it far more attractive.
[11] The CN Tower remained the world’s tallest freestanding structure (an oddly precise superlative which, nonetheless, most Torontonians have memorized) for just over three decades IOTL, before being dethroned by the one-upmanship construction blitz that was Dubai prior to the recession (just prior, in fact – in 2007). Note that at the time of construction, the builders did not expect the tower to hold the record for very long, let alone for three decades. Such are the happenstances of history.
[12] It should be noted that the NBA did not attempt this “Canadian expansion” until 1995 IOTL, at which time they moved into Toronto… and Vancouver. By that time, the “Huskies” name had been completely swept under the rug due to post-Jurassic Park dinosaur hysteria and thus, the name “Raptors” was chosen instead. (The Vancouver team became known as the “Grizzlies”, a name which has since served them well in Memphis, a city on the Mississippi Delta, thousands of miles from their habitation range.)
[13] The “Foundry” is a historic name for that which, IOTL, would become known as the “Rust Belt”, a name which only achieved widespread prevalence in the early 1980s, by which time the “Manufacturing Miracle” is well and truly apparent. Consider it a “scouring” of the Rust Belt, if you will. And yes, that pun would have gone into the body of the text if it weren’t an anachronism.
[14] The Kentucky Colonels were (quite notoriously) left out of the NBA-ABA merger IOTL despite their strong record and popularity with audiences, but (as with the WHL) the larger pool of teams from the earlier merger ITTL enables their salvation. This allows the Colonels-Pacers rivalry which dominated the ABA to carry on into the NBA.
[15] As Lugar was unsuccessful for his 1974 Senate bid against Birch Bayh IOTL, he continued as Mayor of Indianapolis until 1976; his successor, William H. Hudnut, was first elected in 1975. Hudnut had briefly served as a Congressman, representing IN-11 (an Indianapolis-area seat) from 1973 to 1975; but ITTL, he won his Congressional re-election bid in 1974, thus necessitating the need for Carroll to step up and replace Lugar upon his midterm resignation that year (winning a full term in his own right the following year).
[16] Those of you who are fans of The Brady Bunch (which, I remind you all despite your shocking apathy, does not exist ITTL) may recall the family visiting King’s Island in a late fifth-season episode (so late, that Cousin Oliver actually joins them). Mason is actually not that far from inner-city Cleveland, but Barry Williams (who played Greg Brady) remembered it being so in his Growing Up Brady memoir, and his recollection suits my purposes for evoking a sense of time and place.
[17] Yes, that Jerry Springer. Yes, he really was a Democratic insider in the late 1960s and ran for Congress in the early 1970s. Yes, he really did serve on Cincinnati City Council through the 1970s, even becoming Mayor in 1977. However, IOTL, he did not run for Congress a second time, instead running directly for Council in 1971, where he remained until he resigned in 1974 after having been caught hiring a prostitute (his cheque bounced). He was actually returned to Council the following year (an early example of the Clintonian “sex scandals boost electability” factor), subsequently becoming Mayor. His career since then has… well, let’s just say it’s been a mixed bag.
[18] Based on a persistent rumour of OTL references on WKRP in Cincinnati to a “Mayor Springer”. His term ended in 1978, so the overlap between it and the show’s run was vanishingly small, if indeed it existed at all. IMDb (which, granted, is perhaps even less reliable as a resource than Wikipedia) explicitly disclaims the rumour.
[19] IOTL, the name was changed to Nuggets in 1974, the year of the merger ITTL. Given the more space-happy atmosphere of society in general (especially with the big boost from Moonraker that year), Rockets remains in place.
[20] Science-Fiction Land was planned IOTL, but never happened, partly because the economy was a disaster in the late-1970s, and partly because the idea simply collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. It’s highly unlikely that what Geller has conceptualized for the park will ever be fully realized, but at the very least, we’re going to get an honest stab at it. After all, TTL is probably the most hospitable for such a bold gamble!
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My thanks to e of pi for his advice and suggestions in the making of this update, as well as for directly assisting during the editing process.
And so, there you have it! Something of an overview of how cities in the United States (and Canada, for a comparison and contrast) dealt with the 1970s ITTL. This is probably one of the more economics-heavy updates you’ll be seeing in this timeline, and I’ve deliberately left out most of Reagan’s actions, because that’s what the Appendix B update this cycle is going to focus on. But hopefully, this ties up a few loose ends from earlier updates, and gives you an impression of what politicians are going to be attempting as we move into the 1980s. But on the whole, manufacturing is a far more robust sector in the United States as the 1970s draw to a close ITTL, even though the “Manufacturing Miracle” is far more a clotting of the wound than actual healing. Then again, it’s not as if Americans ITTL will have cause to refer to anything else in this era as a miracle…
The metaphorical “dawn” of the 1970s had never seemed more apt of a term, having followed the sheer darkness and pandemonium that had reigned as the 1960s came to a tumultuous close. That decade, though it had been dominated by social upheaval, saw a great deal of economic uncertainty as well. Indeed, those two concepts were very much intertwined; costly and unpopular overseas entanglements, race riots and high-profile assassinations naturally played havoc with consumer and investor confidence in the world’s largest economy. Heavy industries which dominated American cities in the Midwest and Northeast through to the 1950s – a decade which, not coincidentally, was the focal point of the retro nostalgia which also served to characterize the 1970s – had been facing significant and increasingly rapid decline ever since. It was no wonder that the now middle-aged generation of men and women who had fought in World War II (whether on the battle front or the home front) faced great hardship and alienation, ironically enough in much the same fashion as their children did on the other side of the “Generation Gap”. As the factories closed down, the railroads that had once served as the backbone of passage from sea to shining sea also found themselves facing an uncertain future. The beginnings of this decline, too, could be traced to Those Golden Fifties: President Eisenhower had overseen the development of the Interstate Highway system, which replaced the haphazard, uneven backroads with modern, well-maintained, multi-lane, high-quality superhighways. This had been an ambition of his for several decades, ever since he had participated in an Army convoy which had taken two months to travel across the Continent by road, shortly after the First World War. The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was passed in 1956; the following year, perhaps by coincidence, Major League Baseball’s Giants and Dodgers both departed the Big Apple for the Golden State. New York City – the largest urban centre not just in the United States, but in all of North America – stood alone as the prime representative of what America had once been, and the harsh reality of what it had become.
Though the name “interstate” to describe these highways that Eisenhower had built was technically correct, perhaps “intercity” might have been more precise; these new routes, despite their great lengths and courses running parallel to all the others (at least, those which also moved either north-south or east-west) generally passed through (or near) large urban centres wherever possible. Appropriately enough, cities which had previously tended to be rail hubs inevitably found themselves at the junction of multiple interstate highways. As a result, the passenger rail which had formerly dominated those same hubs fell into rapid, seemingly irreversible decline. The 1950s and 1960s came to be known as iconic automotive decades, and certainly not locomotive ones. The rise of sports and muscle cars and the popular image of them cruising on the open road informed the culture of transportation in the United States in the mid-20th century. Even the hottest competition thereto came in the form of motorcycles, another definitive post-war mode of transport, though the subcultures associated with those particular vehicles were, perhaps, not quite so wholesome and all-American as they were with cars. The wealthy, for their part, preferred private air travel, with modern, luxurious models first becoming available to end consumers in this era; this allowed them something akin to the sense of freedom and adventure felt by barnstormers and thrill-seekers at the turn of the century. As with many other new technologies, the popular name for these kinds of planes came to be associated with the largest manufacturer thereof, Cessna, whose Model 172 Skyhawk became an instant bestseller, remaining so well into the 1970s. With all of these new and exciting modes of transport available to the everyday American consumer, the boring, steady, and dependable locomotive was a mere relic as far as passenger travel was concerned, restricted solely for use as freight. Even that saw declines in the 1970s when contrasted against trucking, which was far more “cool” and “rebellious” and thus indicative of the American Spirit than the comfortable, efficient, and European-style trains. The rise in popularity of Citizens’ Band (or CB) Radio, the preferred mode of communication for truckers everywhere, played a key part in this image; the appeal of talking over the air with complete strangers – previously the exclusive province of call-in radio shows – was infectious, and many people had the radios installed into their station wagons for their own long drives along the interstate.
However, despite the overall popularity of automobiles (and all else which travelled over asphalt), moving into the 1970s, the American companies – such as Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, and American Motors – who had previously dominated that industry saw themselves losing ground to the Japanese (in another recurring theme of the 1970s), for their cars were cheaper and better-made. Manufacturers from the Land of the Rising Sun began to build their own factories stateside, as this would allow them to “beat” the high tariffs that would come from having to import their inventory across the Pacific. This decision had the collateral advantages of creating additional jobs, and stabilizing the automotive industry despite the continuing decline in performance of the stateside manufacturers therein. Additionally, innovation, which had been a hallmark of that particular industry ever since the days of Henry Ford and his assembly line, found itself a new outlet when the Oil Crisis of 1973 created the need for greater fuel efficiency in order to defeat the “gas guzzlers” which were increasingly problematic in the new era of OPEC and trade embargoes. The interventionist administration of President Hubert H. Humphrey supported a bill imposing new fleet-wide average mileage standards, which became the last major piece of legislation passed into law by the lame-duck Democratic-controlled 93rd Congress in late 1974. [1] Denigrated by members of the incoming 94th Congress as “the last gasp of the Great Society”, they nevertheless would not act to repeal that legislation. Simply put, under a framework of regulations called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (or CAFE) standards, the onus was on the automakers to develop more fuel-efficient vehicles, or face severe penalties for noncompliance. However, because the regulations put into place a weighted-averages measurement system, they would be allowed to continue selling their less-efficient land-yacht models, so long as the new, more-efficient cars they developed sold better. Though compliance would not become mandatory until 1978, most consumers had voted with their wallets by that point, sending many of the most beloved marques of the previous decades to their doom. [2]
But despite the big bump in the road for American automakers, their brethren in the passenger rail industry would still manage to beat them in a race to the (financial) bottom. Several former titans of the business – such as Penn Central and Union Pacific – had each declared bankruptcy and made plans to cease operations by the late 1960s; but such a symbol of American progress and unity no longer being viable would prove a titanic blow to the overall reputation of the American Dream. Thus, the federal government shouldered the responsibility of attempting to salvage the system, which it did under the terms of the Rail Passenger Service Act in 1970. The government would begin funding passenger rail service on a large scale, forming the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (or NRPC) in order to do so. Rail lines merged into the national entity took the brand name “Paxrail”, an eminently topical designation for a country newly released from a certain overseas quagmire. [3] However, all sides clearly intended for this to only serve as a temporary solution, not a permanent one; and, indeed, a more lasting solution was reached, once again, during the twilight years of the “Great Society”. The National Intercity Railways Act of 1973 became the largest-ever public works project in American history [4], creating a mammoth bureaucracy that would fund and oversee all passenger rail in the United States, with the surviving transit companies formally joining into the scheme. In later years, none other than George Takei would take credit for inspiring the creation of this bureaucracy, claiming to have discussed the issue with Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention of 1972. At the time, however, this discussion was said to have consisted largely of Takei coaxing the President into naming the first space shuttle after the USS Enterprise. [5] Takei, in rebuttal, insisted that “it took me all of fifteen seconds to get him to change the name”, and that most of their several-minutes-long conversation was indeed devoted to transportation policy, of which he had always been a fan.
Meanwhile, across the northern border in Canada, that country’s largest city, Montreal, had taken increasing strides toward becoming a major world city since it had famously hosted the Expo in 1967; it rose in the global estimation in a roughly proportional fashion to the decline of New York City, which was just six hours down Autoroute 15 and, after a border crossing, Interstate 87. Montreal had become the first Canadian city to host a Major League Baseball club (which was named for the Expo) in 1969; the National Basketball Association, after having completed their merger process with the rival American Basketball Association in 1974, also saw the addition of a local team (named, like the Expos, for a recent event hosted by the city – in this case, the Olympics) four years later, as part of league expansion into Canada. [6] With the arrival of the Olympians, the island city now had a representative club in each of the four major professional sports of North America at that time, though their football team (the Alouettes) played not for the National Football League, but for the Canadian Football League, as did eight other teams throughout the Great White North. The teams competed for the Grey Cup – which, like the Stanley Cup before it, had been bestowed upon players of the sport by a former Governor-General; in this case Albert Grey, the 4th Earl Grey, had granted the award to enthusiasts of the sport. His grandfather, the 2nd Earl, had served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the passage of the Great Reform Act (and who later gave his name to a famous blend of tea). Interests within the NFL had repeatedly attempted to expand into either Montreal or Toronto, as MLB and the NBA had done, but the government of Prime Minister Stanfield – whose own favourite sport was, in fact, Canadian football – would always threaten to table a bill that would legally prohibit such an occurrence. [7] Amusingly, this was one of the few points of agreement between Stanfield and his greatest rival, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
But in terms of civic planning and infrastructure, the defining triumph of the Montreal region, despite the many developments therein throughout the 1970s, was the completion of the high-speed rail line linking the Central Station in the downtown core with the terminals of Mirabel International Airport – a distance of over 30 miles, or 50 kilometers. [8] Serving as the centrepiece to a vast transportation network linking the island with the airport, the line – nicknamed “the Rocket”, both for its powerful velocity and as an homage to the legendary hockey player Maurice Richard, who attended the opening ceremonies – was completed in 1978, “only” two years after the Olympics had concluded. The Rocket could complete the journey between Central Station and Mirabel in just under twenty minutes – half the time that it would take to make the same trip by automobile, though not including the cumbersome and often frustrating arrangement of securing parking, nor the time-consuming trip from the often fairly remote lots to the thick of the action. In the case of both the airport and the downtown stations, their respective rail platforms were centrally located. The Rocket was able to attain a maximum operational velocity of 130 miles per hour (or 215 kilometres per hour). Canadian Prime Minister Robert Stanfield had accepted an offer from the Montreal Locomotive Works to complete the construction contract, having been very impressed by their prototype; he was also quite ecstatic that the company was based in the city itself, and would therefore be providing jobs for the locals. Construction on the line had begun in 1974, and shortly thereafter the Montreal Locomotive Works were purchased by the conglomerate Bombardier. [9] An acquisition of that sheer scale had to be approved by the federal government, especially given their existing relationship with one of the involved companies. In the end, it was permitted only because Bombardier, too, was a Canadian-owned corporation; in fact, up to that point, they had primarily been involved in the manufacture of snowmobiles, which, granted, were a necessity in the wintery province of Quebec. But most importantly, the Rocket was intended by Stanfield as a potential pilot project for a far more ambitious planned high-speed rail connection which would eventually connect Quebec City in the northeast to Windsor in the southwest; the two cities, over seven hundred miles apart, had most of Canada’s population living within two hours of the corridor of road and rail links between them. [10] An “express” high-speed train following that route would take about six hours to complete its trip; a car making the same journey would arrive in one city well into the evening, if they departed from the other at the crack of dawn. Gasoline was ever-more expensive, and despite manufacturers working to improve fuel efficiency in Canada as well as in the United States (again, not without government incentive to do so), the “gas guzzlers” which so defined automobiles of the 1970s would make any such trip ruinously expensive. Also worth noting, though from a far more hypothetical perspective, was that this distance was actually greater than the one between Boston and Washington, DC - between which lay the largest, most populous and densest conurbation in the United States, described by futurist Herman Kahn as the BosWash megalopolis in 1967.
Meanwhile, Toronto, the second-largest city in Canada (and a perennial rival to Montreal for nearly 150 years by this point) and the capital of the country’s most populous province of Ontario, also saw the construction of a massive infrastructure project. 1976, the year of the Olympics in Montreal, was when a broadcasting tower constructed by and named for the Canadian National Railway (though always properly the “CN Tower”) was finally completed, at which time it became the world’s tallest freestanding structure. [11] Toronto also saw benefits from the continuing expansions of major sports leagues through the 1970s; though it lacked the storied baseball history of Montreal with a Jackie Robinson having played for the city, it still received a Major League Baseball club in 1977, to complement the Montreal Expos. The team was named the Blue Jays, the name being a reference to blue being the primary colour of both the city in general and all the athletic clubs playing there in particular. In addition, a basketball team, the Toronto Huskies, had played for one season (1946-47) in the city shortly after World War II, as part of the Basketball Association of America; that league had merged with another to form the modern National Basketball Association in 1949. The newly formed Toronto Huskies joined the Montreal Olympians as part of the NBA expansion into Canada in 1978, giving “Hogtown” two new clubs in as many consecutive years. [12] The Huskies and the Olympians naturally became immediate rivals, helped along immensely by their play in the very same division of the NBA (the Central Division of the Eastern Conference), in contrast to their more distant situation in MLB and the NHL.
Canada, after consistently paling in comparison to the economic powerhouse that was the United States, had finally gained some ground on them, enjoying a consistently strong economy through most of the 1970s, in contrast to the more erratic situation stateside. However, this was not to say that government efforts to ameliorate the American situation did not bear fruit. In fact, the combined effect of the many infrastructure and industry-boosting laws and regulations passed by the Humphrey administration in tandem with Congress, coupled with his protectionist policies, worked to somewhat revitalize the industrial states of the Northern U.S., nicknamed “the Foundry” [13], not to mention their core cities, most of which had previously been in decline. However, and despite this “Manufacturing Miracle”, in relative terms, that sector continued to decline in those regions as a proportion of the total within the United States – though this decline did indeed slow considerably in contrast to the 1960s. But even the most optimistic statistical findings were not without exception. The Empire State of New York continued to see their standing in freefall, largely tied to that of New York City, which was riddled with crime, poverty, homelessness, unemployment and unrest. Despite the turnaround achieved elsewhere, rehabilitating the Big Apple would take more than just a miracle.
Several Midwestern cities unexpectedly flourished even above and beyond the Manufacturing Miracle of the 1970s. One of the most seemingly unlikely examples was Indianapolis – a rail hub which was completely surrounded by the archetypal rural, agricultural state – quite fortuitously through a confluence of the many forces dominating economics and public policy in the 1970s. The creation of Paxrail, followed by the Intercity Railways Act, prevented what otherwise might have been the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs in one of the largest industries in the region. The merger of the ABA into the NBA saw the city’s team, the Indiana Pacers (founded in 1967), joining the top professional league in basketball, that sport which Hoosiers adored above all else. In addition, their nearest and fiercest rivals, the Kentucky Colonels, based in Louisville (two hours down I-65, across the Ohio River), were also an ABA team which successfully merged into the NBA. [14] But Indianapolis (one of those cities which attracted nicknames like moths to a flame) was unique in being a host city not only to an ABA team which joined the NBA in 1974, but also to a WHA team which joined the NHL in 1977. These two league mergers, along with a political amalgamation of Indianapolis proper with the surrounding communities in the rest of Marion County in 1970, earned it the enduring nickname of “Mergertown”. The Indianapolis Racers and the Indiana Pacers both played in Market Square Arena, completed in 1974 under the auspices of then-mayor Richard Lugar, less than two months before he was elected to the United States Senate; Deputy Mayor Michael A. Carroll replaced him, but continued to implement his strategy to revitalize the downtown core through the promotion of new and exciting sporting events, hosted in venues that would surely bring tourists into the region, and suburbanites into the city. [15] It should be noted that this strategy did not take into account the already-established Indianapolis 500, one of the Triple Crown of Motorsport, though it certainly helped to cement “Mergertown” as a sports mecca at the heart of the Crossroads of America. Perhaps this reputation precluded the need for the construction of a major amusement park, which followed in the wake of the success of Disneyland – perhaps the crowning creative achievement of Uncle Walt in his lifetime, and certainly the one which had the greatest impact on the travel and recreational activities of families throughout the United States.
Much as I-65 linked Mergertown with Louisville, across the Ohio, I-74 linked Indianapolis with Cincinnati, which was situated on the Ohio, and in the state of Ohio. The two cities not only shared an interstate, but also a status as home to a WHA-turned-NHL team; in the case of Cincinnati, the Stingers. However, Cincinnati, unlike Indianapolis, did have a shiny new theme park in King’s Island (completed in 1973), though it was actually located in the fairly remote suburb of Mason. [16] Cincinnati also did not quite enjoy the booming success of Indianapolis, but it was nonetheless given a new lease on life in the 1970s primarily through notoriety, as opposed to solid public policy. “The Queen City”, as it was known, had by happenstance been chosen as the setting of the cult sitcom WMTM in Cincinnati; the quirks attributed to the city were matched in real-life by the man who was Mayor when the show began its run, Jerry Springer. [17] The earnest and eloquent Springer, known for his serious, thoughtful demeanour, had been an advisor for the ill-fated Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968; after that position had expired, courtesy an assassin’s bullet, he decided to transition to a run for Congress, losing against the incumbent Republican, Donald D. Clancy, in 1970. However, his valiant run in a tough district for his party impressed President Hubert H. Humphrey, who urged him to run for a second time, along with taking up a key role in the 1972 Presidential campaign for the Buckeye State. Springer juggled both tasks with aplomb, helping Humphrey to narrowly clinch Ohio and won the seat of OH-02 against Clancy in a rematch. His victory was short-lived, though, as he was easily swept aside in the Republican wave of 1974, but he reluctantly acceded to the demands of local Democrats in running for municipal council the following year. In 1977, he was elected Mayor; WMTM, dutifully, occasionally mentioned “Mayor Springer” in various episodes. He, in turn, played along in consistently referring to the (fictional) station as being “home to the best music in the tri-state”. [18] With regards to sporting events beyond hockey, though Cincinnati lacked a professional basketball team, their Bengals had played football since 1968; the Cincinnati Reds, on the other hand, had played since 1881, making them one of the oldest teams in Major League Baseball.
And then there was Denver. Like Montreal, it had flourished in the years following its hosting of the Olympics (though those of the Winter, rather than of the Summer) in 1976. The Olympic Sports Arena built there housed the Denver Rockets [19], a basketball team that had been a charter member of the ABA, and the Colorado Rockies, an NHL team formerly located in Kansas City before travelling west along I-70, in the very same year that the city had hosted the Olympics in the first place. Sport, perhaps more than was the case in any other American city to thrive in the 1970s, was very much the lifeblood of Denver. Even as a tourist attraction, the “Mile High City” and its environs were primarily known as the site of some of the finest skiing in the world; newer outdoor activities, such as snowboarding and snowmobiling, also became very popular. However, the high mountains were treacherous, and accidents were plentiful. Indeed, for those wealthy travellers flying their own private planes to Colorado, there was an additional element of thrill and danger even beyond the typical risks of flight: the Cessna 172 had a maximum operational height of 13,500 feet above sea level, as the lower air pressures at higher elevations proved insufficient to keep the craft airborne. As it happened, the highest airport in the United States, Lake County Airport, was located in Leadville, Colorado; its location made it a potential stop-off for private flights from many points in the American Southwest. It was 10,000 feet above sea level, which was enough to make taking off and staying in the air quite an exhilarating challenge for the aspiring pilot. Despite perhaps managing to be an even bigger sports mecca than Indianapolis, the Denver suburbs were selected to play host to a brand-new amusement park, this one intended as a true theme park in every sense of the word. Science-Fiction Land, inspired in parts by the pulp novels, movie serials, and comic books of yesteryear, by venerable genre films, and by popular television shows and movies of the recent past and present (including all the usual suspects – Star Trek, Journey of the Force, Galactica, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Moonraker, among many others) broke ground in Aurora, Colorado, in 1979. [20] An eccentric by the name of Barry Ira Geller – truly, the Howard Hughes of the modern day – served as the impresario behind the theme park, but it was perhaps a testament to the economic recovery and the drive for free enterprise which characterised the mid-1970s, not to mention the strong fundamentals and good growth in Colorado in general and Denver in particular as a result of the post-Olympics boom. And the buzz that surrounded the construction – seemingly out-of-this-world promises about the coming attractions and events that were in store – were enticing, even enthralling. The 1970s being a decade of nostalgia, as infrastructure and modes of transportation tried to rebuild themselves to the heights of past glories, it was not altogether surprising that – coupled with other contemporary factors – the gradual return of the Moonie Loonies may well have reared its ugly head about as close as most people got to the stratosphere…
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[1] IOTL, the CAFE standards were passed in 1975, under the Ford administration.
[2] Compliance becomes mandatory as of the starting day of the first new fiscal year on or following January 1, 1978, for each automaker.
[3] “Paxrail” was the working title IOTL, as well, before the NRPC instead settled on the name “Amtrak”, which remains in use to this day.
[4] The National Interstate Highways and Defense Act was valued at $25 billion in 1956, making it the most expensive public works program in American history up to that point. Adjusted for inflation, this would be equal to $40 billion in 1973; however, because the common masses are judged by the media to have a problem ascertaining the time value of money, the Intercity Railways Act need only exceed the original $25 billion to be valued as the most expensive public works program in American history, even if it is worth less than $40 billion in 1973 dollars. (For the record, $25 billion in 1956 is equivalent to over $210 billion in today’s dollars. Also, term “billion”, as is always the case with American numbering, refers to the short scale of one thousand million, or 10 raised to the 9th power).
[5] Whether Takei – an avowed fan of public transit, IOTL and ITTL, actually did as much as he claimed he did to convince Humphrey to enact a nationwide railway bureaucracy is to be left to the individual interpretations of each reader. Granted, it probably wouldn’t take much to talk Humphrey out of naming a shuttle Endurance; but Takei is a politician, and at the time that he was quoted as taking credit for the decision, Humphrey was already dead and… well, I’m getting ahead of myself.
[6] The National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association did not merge until 1976 IOTL. Putting an effective moratorium on negotiations for several years was a lawsuit proceeding through the courts; IOTL, Congress came close to circumventing it but ultimately let it run its course. ITTL, on the other hand, the vote goes the other way, and both sides are at the negotiation tables by 1973. Note that the basketball merger still precedes the hockey merger by three seasons.
[7] This actually happened IOTL in 1974, when a team from an American football league (and not even the NFL; this was a bush-league that didn’t last two seasons) attempted to play in Toronto. The bill passed second reading (there are three readings in the House of Commons before they move on to the Senate, and then Royal Assent) before the owner of the team backed down. Today, it is widely accepted (due to cultural protectionism being a cornerstone of Canadian public policy) that a similar law will develop if the NFL ever attempts to establish a presence in Canada (the reason why they are the only one of the major leagues which has never done so).
[8] The high-speed rail line was tentatively planned, but never built (and nor were most of the highways, for that matter). No such line would exist in all of North America until the Acela Express began operations in 2000, along the aforementioned Northeast Corridor, though on average at much slower speeds than even the relatively modest 130 miles per hour managed by the Rocket ITTL (in the 1970s, mind).
[9] Bombardier purchased Montreal Locomotive Works in 1975, IOTL, as part of its initial expansion into the railway industry (they have since also gone into aviation). Not coincidentally, Bombardier built the Acela HSR line IOTL.
[10] The Quebec City-to-Windsor “corridor”, named after the train which travels from one to the other IOTL, is an incredibly vital route which is, essentially, the backbone of the Canadian economy. However, the train (part of the VIA rail system, essentially the Canadian answer to Amtrak) is not high-speed, and rough calculations place the cheapest ticket prices at about equal to the cost of a road trip by car, with at least the same travel time (and that’s being very generous with the number of stops by car). The much greater opportunity cost involved with an HSR route as an option (assuming that prices are relatively even, and they would have to be subsidized to that point in order to become viable in car-loving North America) makes it far more attractive.
[11] The CN Tower remained the world’s tallest freestanding structure (an oddly precise superlative which, nonetheless, most Torontonians have memorized) for just over three decades IOTL, before being dethroned by the one-upmanship construction blitz that was Dubai prior to the recession (just prior, in fact – in 2007). Note that at the time of construction, the builders did not expect the tower to hold the record for very long, let alone for three decades. Such are the happenstances of history.
[12] It should be noted that the NBA did not attempt this “Canadian expansion” until 1995 IOTL, at which time they moved into Toronto… and Vancouver. By that time, the “Huskies” name had been completely swept under the rug due to post-Jurassic Park dinosaur hysteria and thus, the name “Raptors” was chosen instead. (The Vancouver team became known as the “Grizzlies”, a name which has since served them well in Memphis, a city on the Mississippi Delta, thousands of miles from their habitation range.)
[13] The “Foundry” is a historic name for that which, IOTL, would become known as the “Rust Belt”, a name which only achieved widespread prevalence in the early 1980s, by which time the “Manufacturing Miracle” is well and truly apparent. Consider it a “scouring” of the Rust Belt, if you will. And yes, that pun would have gone into the body of the text if it weren’t an anachronism.
[14] The Kentucky Colonels were (quite notoriously) left out of the NBA-ABA merger IOTL despite their strong record and popularity with audiences, but (as with the WHL) the larger pool of teams from the earlier merger ITTL enables their salvation. This allows the Colonels-Pacers rivalry which dominated the ABA to carry on into the NBA.
[15] As Lugar was unsuccessful for his 1974 Senate bid against Birch Bayh IOTL, he continued as Mayor of Indianapolis until 1976; his successor, William H. Hudnut, was first elected in 1975. Hudnut had briefly served as a Congressman, representing IN-11 (an Indianapolis-area seat) from 1973 to 1975; but ITTL, he won his Congressional re-election bid in 1974, thus necessitating the need for Carroll to step up and replace Lugar upon his midterm resignation that year (winning a full term in his own right the following year).
[16] Those of you who are fans of The Brady Bunch (which, I remind you all despite your shocking apathy, does not exist ITTL) may recall the family visiting King’s Island in a late fifth-season episode (so late, that Cousin Oliver actually joins them). Mason is actually not that far from inner-city Cleveland, but Barry Williams (who played Greg Brady) remembered it being so in his Growing Up Brady memoir, and his recollection suits my purposes for evoking a sense of time and place.
[17] Yes, that Jerry Springer. Yes, he really was a Democratic insider in the late 1960s and ran for Congress in the early 1970s. Yes, he really did serve on Cincinnati City Council through the 1970s, even becoming Mayor in 1977. However, IOTL, he did not run for Congress a second time, instead running directly for Council in 1971, where he remained until he resigned in 1974 after having been caught hiring a prostitute (his cheque bounced). He was actually returned to Council the following year (an early example of the Clintonian “sex scandals boost electability” factor), subsequently becoming Mayor. His career since then has… well, let’s just say it’s been a mixed bag.
[18] Based on a persistent rumour of OTL references on WKRP in Cincinnati to a “Mayor Springer”. His term ended in 1978, so the overlap between it and the show’s run was vanishingly small, if indeed it existed at all. IMDb (which, granted, is perhaps even less reliable as a resource than Wikipedia) explicitly disclaims the rumour.
[19] IOTL, the name was changed to Nuggets in 1974, the year of the merger ITTL. Given the more space-happy atmosphere of society in general (especially with the big boost from Moonraker that year), Rockets remains in place.
[20] Science-Fiction Land was planned IOTL, but never happened, partly because the economy was a disaster in the late-1970s, and partly because the idea simply collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. It’s highly unlikely that what Geller has conceptualized for the park will ever be fully realized, but at the very least, we’re going to get an honest stab at it. After all, TTL is probably the most hospitable for such a bold gamble!
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My thanks to e of pi for his advice and suggestions in the making of this update, as well as for directly assisting during the editing process.
And so, there you have it! Something of an overview of how cities in the United States (and Canada, for a comparison and contrast) dealt with the 1970s ITTL. This is probably one of the more economics-heavy updates you’ll be seeing in this timeline, and I’ve deliberately left out most of Reagan’s actions, because that’s what the Appendix B update this cycle is going to focus on. But hopefully, this ties up a few loose ends from earlier updates, and gives you an impression of what politicians are going to be attempting as we move into the 1980s. But on the whole, manufacturing is a far more robust sector in the United States as the 1970s draw to a close ITTL, even though the “Manufacturing Miracle” is far more a clotting of the wound than actual healing. Then again, it’s not as if Americans ITTL will have cause to refer to anything else in this era as a miracle…
