Everything that I have read says that the ending of U.S. Mail transport by rail was the killing blow to private railroad passenger business. After the mail contracts ended, there was a torrent of applications to the ICC from the railroads to discontinue the remaining passenger trains. There were still a number of passenger trains that had a good ridership, but the revenue from that ridership without the mail revenue did not support running the trains. I read somewhere that President Johnson was directly involved in transferring the mail contract from the railroads to the airlines, which were in financial trouble at the time. Did this really happen? If it did, was LBJ paying back some political debt?
A lot of passenger trains at the time were hanging on by the strength of their mail contracts. Bulk mail was already being moved to freight schedules to get a better rate and RPO's were losing their reason for existence in a variety of ways. First class mail was increasingly being moved by air for obvious reasons. I seriously doubt that any political influence was being used in making the changes.
In other words, in case you missed it from the previous post...... they would have dropped the trains even if they retained the dwindling mail contracts because the majority of them were not self-supporting even with the mail contract and you had multiple impacts here.
#1 Decrease of riding passenger
#2 Wholesale abandonment or transition of private rail transit and interurban companies.
#3 Reduction of Railway Express Traffic
#4 Reduction of passenger traffic
#5 Pullman exiting the sleeping car business (loss of primarily business traffic).
#6 Construction of the Interstate Highway system as well as multiple new major airports.
#7 Mass migration and decrease in residential concentration from City Centers to Suburbs. City Center rail terminals became harder to reach by car then suburban major Airports (many of the airports had a nice Interstate Highway feeder into them or running right next to them)............with plenty of parking.
#8. Increasing federal rail regulations dealing with passenger rail cars and interurban systems that piled on costs while revenues were decreasing.
Although LBJ was President when the most of the mail contracts were pulled he was not the main culprit. IIRC an upper management individual at the US Post Office (Larry O'Brien?) lead the effort to move the mail off the trains. In 1967 most passenger trains were just hanging on and the loss of the mail contracts was the final straw for many of the railroads. Not too long before this happened though the Post Office had badgered several railroads (SF & UP are two that come to mind) to purchase new RPOs. On the UP some of the new RPOs never got the full paint job.
How long the passenger trains would have lasted if the mail had stayed is anyone's guess. TRAINS magazine had several stories about this pointing out that Mr. O'Brien (?) eventually left the Post Office and went to work for one of the air companies that benefitted from this change. Sure sounds like a conflict of interest to me but remember this was when the Vietnam War was raging so it probably didn't generate that much buzz. I'll see if I can locate the article to fill in the gaps or make any corrections.
Zip codes changed how mail was sorted and allowed for wholesale sorting at regional PO centers.
Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien announces at a news conference that the new first class stamp all but guarantees a letter will be delivered by air mail. By 1969, O'Brien said, the post office will be in a position to ask Congress to eliminate airmail postage rates and merge airmail and first class mail into a single class of priority mail service.
Chicago Tribune, Feb. 17, 1968
NEW U.S. MAIL RATE BENEFITS INDIVIDUALS
The individual mailer will get more for less under new air mail parcel post rates. But for the post office department it is more a matter of better service than saving money.
As the postman takes more to the skyways, railroads will continue to be used, but their role is declining. Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien believes the railroads will remain a vital link in the movement of containers, large packages, and other bulk mail.
The post office expects to pay the railroads about 270 million dollars this year for carrying mail…
Postal authorities said very little first class mail is now being handled by railroads. On first class letters the post office has now what it said approximates a total airlift service.
The department expects to pay air lines about 150 million dollars this year to carry mail. Air mail revenues now total about 114 million dollars annually. But the post office hopes improved handling will eventually cut the loss.
Much of the current airlift service developed in the last year came thru expansion from 14 to more than 500 the number of cities receiving such service. In addition, thru the use of regional networks and air taxi operations, the post office has established within-state air service in 35 states.
Currently the post office has about 741 passenger trains available to handle mail. There were 10,000 such trains 30 years ago and 2,627 as recently as 11 years ago. Post authorities said that in more than two-thirds of the cases, mail was removed from the trains at the request of the railroads.
Bio from JFK Library
Lawrence F. O’Brien was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1917 to parents of Irish birth. He became interested in Democratic politics at an early age, helping his politically-active father circulate petitions, distribute campaign literature, and bring people to the polls on Election Day. After graduating from a Catholic high school in Springfield, O’Brien earned a law degree from Northeastern University. He then served in the Army in World War II at Camp Edwards, interviewing men who had gone absent without leave. He married Elva Brassard in May 1944, and in December 1945 their son Lawrence F. O’Brien III was born.
O’Brien managed three Massachusetts congressional campaigns for Foster Furcolo (1946, 1948, and 1950). He served as Furcolo’s administrative assistant in Washington, D.C. from 1949 to 1950, but by the end of 1950 he and his family had returned to Springfield. In 1951 O’Brien began working with then-Representative John F. Kennedy on Kennedy’s 1952 Senate campaign. O’Brien used his organizational skills to help mobilize an army of volunteers, which eventually helped Kennedy defeat Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. by more than 70,000 votes. O’Brien went on to serve as director of organization for both the Kennedy for President Campaign and the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. After his election, President Kennedy appointed O’Brien special assistant to the president for congressional relations. In this capacity, he won congressional support for Kennedy’s "New Frontier" programs. After President Kennedy's assassination, O'Brien remained in the White House as special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. In his role as congressional liaison, O'Brien was instrumental in the passage of several landmark bills including the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, the enabling legislation for Medicare, the nuclear test ban treaty, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an increase in the minimum wage, and many others. He also served as Postmaster General from 1965 to 1968.
In 1968, O’Brien resigned from his Postmaster General position to work for Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. After Kennedy's assassination in June 1968, O’Brien transitioned to the presidential campaign of Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey and played a major role in planning the Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago. Upon winning the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Humphrey asked O’Brien to serve as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee as well as manager of his campaign.
After Richard M. Nixon won the presidential election in November 1968, O’Brien briefly left politics for the private sector. He returned in 1970 when he was elected Chairman of the Democratic National Committee for a second time. As Chairman he revitalized the party’s organization and fought for equal broadcast time. He became the center of the Watergate scandal in 1972 after officials from the Committee to Reelect the President authorized the installation of electronic surveillance equipment, and five men were arrested for breaking into O'Brien's office at the DNC headquarters.
In 1975, O'Brien became the Commissioner of the National Basketball Association. When he retired from this position in 1984, the NBA Championship Trophy was renamed the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy. Larry O’Brien died in 1990.
I knew it!! It was the Democrats who killed the private passenger trains. And they killed them off so they could institute government passenger railroading = Amtrak. Just like they are pushing Obamacare in order to get rid of private health insurance so we can all pay more for government health insurance. Now it is all starting to make sense. I smell a conspiracy here!!
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