The Passenger Train in the Motor Age: California's Rail and Bus Industries, 1910-41 (Historical Perspectivess on Business Enterprise S.) - Hardcover

Thompson, Gregory L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814206093 ISBN 13: 9780814206096

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 1993

Synopsis

In his insightful study, Gregory L. Thompson examines the demise of passenger trains and the rise of buses in California and demonstrates that railroad management's shortsighted response to the growing use of automobiles contributed to its own decline.
After peaking about 1910, the use of intercity passenger trains rapidly gave way to the onslaught of the automobile. For the next three decades, railroad managers tried, but failed, to adapt the passenger train to the new competition. Although previous studies have suggested that regulation and a conspiracy between rail and bus management played a significant role in the decline of the industry, Thompson reaches a different conclusion. Focusing on the California operations of two major railroads and the largest intercity bus company in the United States, he demonstrates that railroad management failed to accurately assess the demand for its service and the costs of providing it. According to Thompson, railroad management's faulty planning and its misleading accounting system eventually did the passenger train in, while superior corporate planning within bus companies led to their success.
Based on previously unseen data, The Passenger Train in the Motor Age offers an illuminating portrait of a critical time in railroad history.

About this title

About the Author:

Gregory L. Thompson is assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ohio State University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0814206093
• ISBN 13: 9780814206096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272