contrasted with the even larger amounts which would be needed for the additional land-consuming highways which would be required to carry the loads projected for the rail systems. Even the cost of reproducing the rail facilities in the Philadelphia area shown on this map, would be one-half billion dollars. Instead of wasting this great value by permitting these rail lines to be forced out of business, as a result of their having to compete with Government-supported highway systems, it would be much cheaper for this metropolitan area to support and utilize the present rail systems rather than having the experience of other metropolitan areas which are faced with virtually starting from scratch to build a completely new rail system.

New equipment and large parking areas at outlying points will enable the rial lines shown on this map to perform an essential service in a coordinated and integrated total passenger transportation system. All that is needed is public support for the public services rendered by these rail lines, just as public support is given for other public services such as water, sewer, fire, police, and highway, and air transportation.

The metropolitan areas have found that suburban rail systems will be a physical as well as an economic necessity in the future. However, suburban rail systems need not be viewed as being similar to today's systems which have been handicapped by the railroads' financial limitations as a result of Government restrictions and expenditures to promote all other forms of transportation. With adequate funds, modern technology can provide many innovations and improvements in the facilities and equipment for the present day suburban rail systems. This will make them even more efficient than they are at present and provide the public with faster, more comfortable, and more reliable suburban service at a minimum total cost to the public and the community.

There is a tremendous potential for development and increased capacity inherent in these suburban rail systems. The use and development of that capacity and the provision of similar services where the loads are justified will provide the most economic solution to the congestion problem in our metropolitan areas. This is not wishful or biased theory. It has been demonstrated in practice.

However, the suburban railroads are not in a financial position to do this job alone. As private enterprise, their only solution for the situation they are in is to raise fares, to recover costs, or to completely abandon their services. Our financial situation and the losses we are incurring in operating these services are such that we cannot afford to make capital expenditures for improvements. Neither can the total governments afford to make these expenditures by themselves. Because of the tremendous financial burdens placed upon them by Federal-aid expenditures for highways and other purposes, local governments today are hard pressed for funds and have seen their debt increase over 300 percent in the last 10 years. Therefore, the leadership needs to come from the Federal Government, which has helped to create this physical and financial problem.

I have shown you the problems which we face. I have shown why we cannot afford to provide, let alone improve, these services. I have shown how the Federal Government has poured millions of dollars into capital expenditures for other transportation facilities. This is why we, as private enterprise cannot afford to risk funds for passenger facilities and equipment to compete with these Government-financed modes of transportation. This is why the Federal Government must assist in providing funds for capital expenditures. This is also why the metropolitan mass transportation bill, S. 3278, should be passed, to assist local governments and their public instrumentalities to improve the mass transportation services in our metropolitan areas and give the public the best total transportation system at the least total cost to the public as a whole.

S. 3278 represents an adequate vehicle with which to begin a transportation loan program upon which Congress can build in the future as the program proves to be successful in meeting the real need, which has already been demonstrated. You are to be commended for your prompt consideration of this legislation. Your support for it is urged as a step in the right direction toward solving the increasing transportation problems of our great metropolitan area. If this is not done, then the Federal Government will continue to waste money by destroying the central core of our cities and will then spend more billions to rehabilitate the damage and chaos it has created.

Senator WILLIAMS. Our next witness is Mr. David Berger, city solicitor of Philadelphia.

Good morning.

STATEMENT OF DAVID BERGER, CITY SOLICITOR,

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. BERGER. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of this subcommittee, the city of Philaelphia deeply appreciates this further opportunity to appear at these hearings in support of S. 3278. This bill represents, in our judgment, the most important positive program undertaken by the Federal Government to solve a national urban transportation crisis.

As this committee well knows, we live in an increasingly urban civilization. Such a complicated, interdependent and interrelated pattern of living requires an adequate transportation system. This transportation system is no less than the very circulatory system of the body politic. If, therefore, our metropolitan centers are not to be strangled to death, but if, on the contrary, they are to continue to grow to meet the needs of the surrounding urban communities which are dependent upon them, we must ward off an impending coronary attack in the form of urban transit congestion.

Exclusive reliance upon private transportation, chiefly by the passenger automobile, is foolish indeed and frequently fatal. It is for these reasons that I say to you that there is an urgent necessity for action to solve the Nation's urban transportation crisis.

One of the first and foremost objectives of any transportation program is the improvement and expansion of the available mass transit facilities, especially those which provide commuter service. In Philadelphia, it is the railroads which offer, we believe, the greatest potential for supplying commuter needs. It is in this context that the socalled Philadelphia plan to solve the commuter problem was developed and promulgated. Perhaps because of my personal connection with the consummation of the Philadelphia plan, Mayor Dilworth has asked me to explain briefly the nature and operation of the Philadelphia plan and the relationship of Senate bill No. 3278 to the future of the plan.

In 1956, Mayor Dilworth requested the city solicitor to take immediate action to implement the recommendations of the city's urban traffic and transportation board that is the body which Senator Clark mentioned a few moments ago-a committee comprised of leading financiers, industrialists, transportation experts, labor leaders, and other civic minded citizens. While these proposals included the unification and coordination of all public transportation facilities in the Philadelphia area, naturally emphasis was placed upon the expansion of railroad commuter passenger service.

Fortunately, Philadelphia is already supplied with perhaps the finest basic network of mass transit facilities in the Nation-15 railroad lines traversing every section of the city and connecting the city with each of the surrounding counties. These supplement our rapid transit system of subways, elevated cars, streetcars, and buses. However, as the studies of the board showed, passenger operations over these railroads had become inadequate for present needs and, what is worse, were declining with ever-accelerating speed. As ridership declined, so also did revenues. The railroads' response was twofold: (1) To curtail train service, and (2) to raise rates. But, raising the cost of passenger fares and deteriorating both the frequency and quality of passenger service succeeded only in driving more of the traveling public from using the railroads.

On behalf of the city and its 2 million residents, I repeatedly resorted to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal and State courts to do what I could to halt the wave of train curtailments and fare increases. But such efforts are at best only a stopgap. Certainly, in view of the passage of the Transportation Act of 1958, unilateral action to resist service abandonment and rate increases is doomed to fail.

Accordingly, by 1958, I had concluded and therefore advised Mayor Dilworth that the mass transportation problem could not be solved by fighting to keep trains on the tracks. Instead, I suggested that the city ought to cooperate with the railroads, and by negotiating a series of agreements, develop a broad, comprehensive and long-range program. The basic objectives of these agreements would be to maintain existing service, to add additional trains where appropriate, to reduce fares, and to coordinate with the railroad service local bus and streetcar service.

After months of negotiations, an agreement was successfully concluded with our two local railroad carriers, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Co. For the sum of $320,000, estimated to be the out-of-pocket cost, the railroads operated for a 12-month period approximately one-third more trains on their lines serving the northwestern section of the city at fares reduced on the average of 40 percent.

At the same time, local bus fares were tied in also at reduced fares. Bus service was made available at both ends of the railroad trip and featured a loop bus to take passengers to downtown offices for a 10cent fare. Thus, a person could ride a bus to the station, ride the train to a terminal, and then go to his office. This bargain, if taken advantage of by the average commuter for a year, would save him about $250, not counting the saving on wear and tear of frazzled nerves from bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The success of this project in increasing the use of commuter trains by over 30 percent and correspondingly decreasing the use of the passenger automobile for daily trips into the center of town, has exceeded all expectations. So encouraging were these results that last September a similar agreement was executed with the Reading Co. for additional railroad service over its lines serving northeastern Philadelphia. There is one essential difference for "Operation Northeast." While the city is paying the Reading Co. $105,000 for a 33week experimental period, it retains all fares collected on the additional trains. Thus, in effect, the citizens of the northeast are direct partners with the city in this venture.

So far, the passenger statistics of "Operation Northeast" can only be described as "phenomenal." The latest figures show that the number of passengers carried by Reading trains on this line has more than quadrupled. Revenues have more than doubled-in fact, almost tripled. What is more, our market research reveals that if other improvements besides increased service and lower fares were provided, the success of these pilot projects would be even more startling. it is, we estimate that there are about 2,000 less cars per day in the stream of center city traffic.

At

Thus, for a modest expenditure of approximately $500,000 per year, the city has undertaken two experiments which have definitely proved that there can be a solution to the mass transportation problem.

The city of Philadelphia has moved toward a permanent solution of this problem. Upon thorough consideration and at the conclusion of negotiations among city officials, civic leaders, railroad executives and union officials, a nonprofit corporation has been formed to administer the Philadelphia plan. For the first time an agency has been created whose directorate includes representatives of the gov

ernment, public at large, the railroads and the railroad unions, each of whom has a direct stake in the successful solution of this problem. This corporation is called Passenger Service Improvement Corp. of Philadelphia and is headed by a board of 15 directors. Of these, two are members of the mayor's cabinet, two are members of city council, seven are civic leaders unconnected with the city, two are railroad officials (one each selected by the Pennsylvania and the Reading), and two are union officials selected by the Railway Labor Executives' Association. The Passenger Service Improvement Corp. is intended to do exactly what its name implies-improve passenger service. This corporation will negotiate contracts with the railroads which will provide not only for the continuation of operations northwest and northeast but also for operations on three additinal railroad lines, which are called operations Torresdale and Wynnefield-Manayunk. This will then give us a grand total of six railroad lines within the jurisdiction of the Passenger Service Improvement Corp., during the year 1960. The City Council of Philadelphia is presently considering the basic legislation to carry out these plans. But substantial assurance of the long-range success of Passenger Service Improvement Corp. will be based to a large extent on the passage of the legislation now being considered by this committee. This is because, as I have indicated, the key factor is the introduction of substantial technological improvements, which, although requiring a large capital outlay will more than pay for themselves by permitting large-scale operational economies and foster increased patronage with attendant larger revenues.

I give you those two as examples of that, Senator Williams-the elimination of the so-called stub-end terminals, the 16th Street terminal and the 12th Street terminal of the Reading.

Our plans call for an underground connection between those two terminals so that it will be possible to have one loop railroad which will take people from one section of the city outlying to another section of the city outlying and, in the meantime, make frequent stops in the central part of the city.

Senator WILLIAMS. Are those both Reading terminals?

Mr. BERGER. No, one is the Pennsylvania and the other is Reading. Through the aegis of the Passenger Service Improvement Corp., this nonprofit corporation, assuming that this administration approves the bill, which I hope the Senate and the House will pass, we will then be in a position to apply for the loan which we will need in order to make the capital outlay to make this improvement. But this improvement, we have been assured by our technical experts, will more than pay for itself in terms of decreased operating costs and maintenance costs and increased revenue from additional patronage. This is the kind of thing we have in mind that we call a substantial technological improvement which would be, otherwise, impossible of achievement.

Senator WILLIAMS. I am glad you added that specific term of reducing cost. I am sure this same operating experience that comes out of old-style facilities will be matched all over the country. I know it is true in the New York area.

Mr. BERGER. In fact, I was about to point out, Senator, that the most important, from a short-range point of view, of these improve