Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!!
Kowabunga Man!!!
LC
Who spent some formative years in Malibu in his western bikini watching days
“Southern California AAA , how may I help you?”
“Dude…like my VW van broke down and like I need a lift.”
“May I have your AAA member number?”
“Like Dude…isn’t this it, I mean like I got through…”
“No, sir your membership number, on the card.”
“Oh hold on, like how long is this gonna take …to get a lift?”
“Sir the tow truck should be there within the hour.”
“WHOA, an hour!!! Like Dude there’s some tasty waves with a gnarly break at the trestles…I can’t wait an hour!”
'Why didn’t you say this was was an emergency, we’ll have someone there right away! In the mean try to stay calm and go to your happy place."
In the early/mid-1970s AAA appeared to be anti-Amtrak. Rail service was poorly or incompletely described in its guidebooks.
Fast forward to the 1980s (up through today): AAA is much more “accepting” of Amtrak. Amtrak regularly advertises in the AAA magazine. AAA has a long running promotion with many vendors called “Show Your Card and Save”, and I have routinely used the AAA card to save 10% on Amtrak rail fares. (The discount does not apply to the business class or sleeping car upcharge, and I don’t know if it applies to Auto Train).
Auto Club detailed street maps show light rail lines and station locations. I have never perceived an anti-light rail bias in AAA literature; however, in the past I do recall AAA wanted to beef up regulations on trucks on the highways. The biggest concern was knowing ‘what the trucks are hauling’. I don’t recall what eventually happened with this.
So if we see a surf board strapped to a NS locomotive, we will know who the engineer is. I am assuming from your profile that you work for NS.
That’s understandable, so were the RRs.
In the 70s, that pretty much described Amtrak’s service.
About this GM conspiracy bit. It was not a conspiracy because a conspircacy is secret. What GM did was simply the best business practice according to great economic professors like Samuelson and Freedman and so forth. These guys taught excellent economics if you don’t really value the “Enlightenment” in Adam Smiths formula. In the extreme case it led to documented aiding the the German War Effort and even the Holocaust by two noted USA companies (now both excellent citizens with excellent minority hiring records) even after Pearl Harbor -by one of the two. It led to selling the scrap from the Manhattan west side elevateds to Japan just before Pearl Harbor. GM Bought New York Railways in 1926 and I assure you they were not part of the team that developed the modern (then) PCC streetcar . They had one aim in mind. GM’s direct involvement in New York’s surface transprotation saw the abandonment of the original New York & Harlem Line as the first to go in January 1935, and the last of their lines was the 86th Crosstown, a block from my childhood home, but one of the few that did make sense to convert. With Firestone and Texaco they formed Naitonal City Lines and countless streetcar companies were converted to bus . Sure, about 85% of the street railway and interurban track mileage in th euSA and Canada should have been converted to bus for economic and even service reasons. But not, for example, the LA-Long Beach Pacific Electric line, or Glendale-Burbank to Main St LA. These lines could have been kept and not needed the degree of subsidization that the very inferior bus service required. In Manhattan, pro-bus LaGuardia forced the Third Avenue Railway to sign agreements to convert to buses even though the management was convinced service was better and could be provided more economically by rail on the important Broadway 42nd Street and 42nd St Crosstown routes, and major Bronx routes as well. New Orleans received threats of plant relocation if Canal Street was not bussed. Now after 50 years it is ba
In the early/mid-1970s AAA appeared to be anti-Amtrak. Rail service was poorly or incompletely described in its guidebooks.
and in those days you had real travel agents who cared about there customers
Amtrak was in such bad shape that only hard core would ride
AAA to give them credit does a fantastic job of Selling VIA rail and Amtrak tickets today often without a surcharge. For the Downeaster they have helped me with scedules and tickets when nobody else will. There Portland ME office is one of the best offices to deal with. They even supply me with snowmoble maps. The Problem here is that they have a Lobbist Component through the American Highway Users that is anti-mass transit. It could be that AAA has changed there tune since the artical was written after they realised that many of there members DRIVE to the Park and Ride Commuter Train Stations in order
to save wear and tear on there cars.