Transportation in the New World

This is something I've written up for an ongoing TL I've been working for a while I've named the New World. I'm sure TMOT would enjoy living in my the New World.

Transportation

Automobile
The automobile industry is dominated by five major corporations and their various subsidiaries, nicknamed the Big Five. The Big Five include General Motors, Ford, Studebaker, Chevrolet, and American Motors Corporation. There’s also the Tiny Two, which are two smaller automobile manufactures that haven’t been cobbled up by any of the Big Five; they are De Lorean and Crosley.

For the most part, foreign cars are almost unknown in the United States. The four most important foreign car manufactures that sell in the United States are the German Volkswagen and Porsche, the Japanese Honda, and the British Aston Martin. However, Aston Martin is owned by Ford. Of the four, only Volkswagen and Honda sell enough cars to stay in the top twenty of American sales.

The top five automobile manufactures for 2004 were Ford (1,275,498); Chevrolet (1,234,954); Studebaker (1,144,225); Oldsmobile, a GM subsidiary, (801,600); and AMC (785,918). If you add in all the subsidiaries into the six major manufactures (and add the Diers subsidiary to De Lorean), the car manufactures finished GM, Ford, Chevrolet, Studebaker, AMC, De Lorean, and Crosley. De Lorean became a Studebaker subsidiary in 1988, but it was split off after Congress passed an anti-trust bill against Studebaker.

There are two major types of cars on America’s roads today: compact cars—such as the Ford Pinto and AMC Gremlin—and muscle cars—such as the Plymouth Road Runner, Dodge Charger, and the Ford Fairlane. Luxury cars also sell fairly well, and they include the Packard Cavalier and the Cadillac Eldorado; and similarly, sports cars sell fairly well, and some examples include the Ford Mustang, De Lorean DMC-12, and the Dodge Challenger.

Popular family-sized cars include the Studebaker Hawk, Ford Taurus, Chevrolet Caprice, and the Oldsmobile Aurora. SUVs were very popular in the late Nineties, but in recent years, there popularity has dropped but crossovers SUVs include the Diers Dingo and the Ford Sprite, but regular SUVs like the Kaiser Adventurer and Chevrolet Tahoe still sell, but not in as big numbers. Pickup/car hybrids like the Dodge Rampage, Chevrolet El Camino, and Ford Ranchero are also gaining popularity. Regular pickups like the Dodge Ram, Ford F-series, Kaiser Supreme have been bestsellers for years.

Begging in 2005, all automobiles sold or manufactured within the United States had to be equipped with fuel-flex engines, allowing them to use ethanol. Also begging in 2005, hybrid cars became very popular. The first hybrid was the Studebaker Insight, which first hit the market in 2000. Recent hybrids include the Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Sirius, and the De Lorean XP.

Roads
In 1956, the United States Congress defeated the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, effectively killing a national interstate for many years. Begging in the Sixties, many Americans wanted a system of roads that would get them front Point A to Point B pretty damn quick. The Continental Interstate was built from New York to San Francisco, but that wasn’t enough. In 1967, Congress grudgingly passed the Federal High Way Act of 1967.

Over the next several decades work proceeded on the Federal Interstate system, connecting all the major cities of the United States. The first mile of mile of road was laid down on April 14th, 1969 just outside of Tampa Bay, FL and the first interstate, I-4, was completed in 1971. By 2006, work still isn’t done.

The main roads have two digits, except for three highways which have one, and auxiliary roads have three digits. Even numbered highways go east-west and odd numbered highways go north-south. The interstates are owned, operated, and financed by the Federal government and run by the Department of Transportation. All state highway patrols were organized as the Federal Highway Patrol (FHP) in 1978 as a division of the FBI and later of the Transportation Department.

There are no official speed limits on most interstates, and if there is, the speed limit is generally around 70 mph. All interstates have a minimum speed limit of 45 mph, and the FHP highly suggests a speed not exceeding 80 or 85 mph on most roads. In case of accidents, the Transportation Department has placed several Federally-funded EMT and firefighting stations along the Interstate system.

Rail
The use of mass transit, especially in heavily urban areas, is higher in the United States than in other countries. It is estimated that nearly forty percent of all commuters use the rail system to get to and from work. In 1971, the Federal government temporarily nationalized intercity passenger rail lines under Amtrak, but that quickly failed.

Many large cities—New York City, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles to name a few—have large and extensive passenger lines. In New York City, the New York Metropolitan Railway extends from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Pike County, Pennsylvania in almost half the time as taking a car. High speed bullet trains are capable of reaching speeds of 360 mph, and all major cities have at least on bullet train line.

Subways are also included in the extensive commuter train systems, but aren’t used nearly as much as the trains. Commuter subways are used extensively in Washington, D.C., as the Metro system primarily as a safety precaution. For some parts of the lines, most cities have the trains going underground. A New York-San Francisco underground line has begun construction.

Freight is also carried via the rail. In 1981, after it was realized that heavy semis were damaging the Interstate, the number of semis on the Interstate was significantly limited. Because of this, many companies began shipping their goods via the rail, and there was another boom in rail line construction. However, in 2005, Congress lifted the semi restrictions but the number of semis on the roads has only increased slightly.

Air
Because of the speed of reliability of rail and road transportation, and the fact that many early air disasters killed many and sometimes famous people, air transportation has never been really big. Because of this, there are only three major and private airlines in operation in the United States: Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, and TWA. In 2002, two failing airlines were merged and nationalized to form Amair.

However, begging in 2001, many airlines began to cut ticket prices significantly, in hopes of drawing more passengers. It did work, and within recent years, the use of airlines has increased by nearly 15% and the four major airlines—Delta, Southwest, TWA, and Amair—made record profits in 2004 and 2005.

Airlines mostly use American-made aircraft such as the Boeing 767 and the McDonnell Douglass MD 16. Jumbo jets, such as the Boeing 747, never became really popular because they were large, expensive, and it was hard to fill them with passengers. But with the upsurge in jet travel in the past several years, the McDonnell Douglas MD 13 jumbo jet has been bought in large numbers. Foreign airliners, like the Airbus series, never sold well in the U.S.

Some of the major airports in the United States include Robert F. Kennedy and New York International Airports in New York City, Washington Dulles International Airport in D.C., O’Hare Chicago International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Dallas International Airport.
 
Archangel Michael said:
Air
Because of the speed of reliability of rail and road transportation, and the fact that many early air disasters killed many and sometimes famous people, air transportation has never been really big. Because of this, there are only three major and private airlines in operation in the United States: Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, and TWA. In 2002, two failing airlines were merged and nationalized to form Amair.

Can't see why that same bizarre sense of logic wasn't applied to cars so most of the people still ride horses.
 

The Sandman

Banned
Even with a more extensive train system, I expect you'd still see subway networks in most of the major cities. It simply allows for less congestion and more efficient distribution of trains and stations. I also expect that more work would have been put into the SST, to make flying competitive with the railways.

I do wonder how Studebaker and AMC survived, and I'm also wondering what prevented the OTL shift to foreign cars. Less complacency on the part of our manufacturers?
 
David S Poepoe said:
Can't see why that same bizarre sense of logic wasn't applied to cars so most of the people still ride horses.

A car crashes, the chances of dying are slim. A plane crashes, the chances of dying is great.
 
The Sandman said:
I do wonder how Studebaker and AMC survived, and I'm also wondering what prevented the OTL shift to foreign cars. Less complacency on the part of our manufacturers?

A more isolationist attitude in the United States extends into the Sixties and Seventies, and there's still a large distrust of many foreigners. In OTL, AMC was a merger between Nash and Hudson that bought transmissions and V8 engines from Packard, then Studabaker and Packard merged and then George W. Mason died and George Romney became the leader of the AMC. Romney then developed AMC's own V8 engine. This also coincided with that fact that Studebaker's sells began to drop. In this timeline, AMC doesn't develop its own V8 until the early Seventies and Studebaker remains a top-selling car company.
 
Archangel Michael said:
A car crashes, the chances of dying are slim. A plane crashes, the chances of dying is great.

Your horse collapses from under you and you are thrown, the chances of dying are even slimmer. In a given year aren't there more deaths thru automobile accidents than aircraft crashes? Also the car crashes during the 1940s and 1950s (and probably the 1930s) were more deadlier on the whole. They can not be equated with modern car crashes.

"Congress grudgingly passed the Federal High Way Act of 1967." The Congress passes what the public wants - unless the Federal Government somehow entirely dominates everybody's lives and no one is elected.

Also what I'm trying to figure out is that this 'New World' scenario must be one without a Second World War. One thing that led to the decline of American railroad was that the whole system was worn out by the demands of war transport. Not to mention the giant boost commercial aviation got from taking over former US Army Air Corps demobilized aircraft.
 
Archangel Michael said:
A car crashes, the chances of dying are slim. A plane crashes, the chances of dying is great.

Tens of thousands more people die in automobile accidents than in air crashes.
 
Archangel Michael said:
A car crashes, the chances of dying are slim. A plane crashes, the chances of dying is great.

More importantly, car crashes kill one or two people, and often one of the drivers is responsible. Plane crashes kill a hundred people at a time, and almost never are the passengers to blame. Something about human psychology makes us recoil at risks beyond our control. We also tend to take notice of single, major events, even when lots of little events add up to something big (like how driving in the rain kills more people than all the terrorist attacks ever).
 
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