If you tear the cities apart by building great throughways through them separating the centers of office space and management and finance and all these other factors through the creation of great open spaces, you will find, I am certain, that you have destroyed the essence of the congestion and closeness of contact, the ease of association of men who are engaged in their various lines of administration and management. You can take certain aspects of the present situation and move them out into the suburbs and far scattered areas. This is now being done, and this will undoubtedly produce a better city. You can take certain aspects of administration and carry them out, but the really central problems which you must recognize exist here in the Government of the United States, in Washington, where men like yourselves have to be in easy access one to the other, in easy access of the professional groups which are related to our whole business life and our community life and our social life.

This ease of human relationships must be preserved, and the greatest cities of the world through past centuries have been cities which made this direct and fertilizing contact between individuals easy, so that it can be an accidental as well as an intentional opportunity for human contact.

The great city is designed for the ease of contact, and it is not only the ease of individual contact for ideas, but it is the ease of contact in the economic world as well. A recent mass economic study in the New York metropolitan region, conducted by the Littauer School of Harvard under a grant from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Bros. says the reason that New York is now the largest manufacturing center in the Nation is not because it has the great producers of labor such as the motor industry and some of the large hard-goods manufacturing operations, but because it has the men, small enterprises, which are able to exist and are able to operate at a profit because of the ease of the internal contacts that take place within the congestion of a great urban center. So that the preservation of congestion under proper conditions is one of the conditions of the effectiveness of the American economy.

So, Mr. Senator, my final word is to say that your bill, S. 3278, represents, in the judgment of myself, after my contacts with the problems of governmental management and planning, an important step in the right direction. It could be as important for the metropolitan development of this country as were the early moves when this Government undertook to give direct help and assistance in the development of rural life in this country.

It seems to me that the most important aspect of your bill from my standpoint is encouragement that it gives to those who are concerned with broad metropolitan thinking with reference to transportation. Second, a comprehensive approach to transportation, looking at all phases of the problem. Third, the introduction of the note of cooperation on all hands instead of fighting about the problem. and trying to shove the responsibility off onto other people.

What we now need is men in public office and in the management of private transportation enterprises who are eager to get together around the table and find solutions. So that your bill, with its introductory statement on policy and purpose, is an important stepping stone in the development of American thought in this field. Your

readiness to include metropolitan mass transportation surveys within the scope of the Housing Act and its amendments is a step in the right direction.

Senator WILLIAMS. Would you care to comment on that? There has been, of course, question as to why the transportation measure is included within a housing bill. It is our feeling that this is the only significant place in all of our Federal planning and program where most metropoltan problems are considered. Therefore, transportation, as one of the most important aspects of the metropolitan situation, should here be included. But that has not been uniformly accepted.

Mr. GULICK. Senator, I can understand that some people would like very much to start a new Federal department to deal with the prob lem of transportation. While this may become necessary in due course, at the moment, the Federal Government's most direct impact in the concentrated metropolitan areas is in connection with the Housing Act.

In connection with that, it was discovered that no progress would be made without development of planning and the encouragement of planning through the slum clearance program. The urban redevelopment program has represented a very important forward step. Senator WILLIAMS. And are these not linked?

Mr. GULICK. This is the link in the process, and there is no reason for feeling that it is an inappropriate step in this connection.

May I point out, however, that as you broaden the function of the Housing Act in this way, you need to give consideration to the limitation of the appropriation which now provides for a limit, as I understand it, in the section 701 as amended in 1954, of a total of $20 million of which over $10.5 million has already been committed. In your appropriation, in the budget for 1961, you have a provision of something like $2 million supplemental. This does not begin to meet the requirements of the expanded act.

Senator WILLIAMS. Commissioner Walker pointed out that defect. It was encouraging, too, that Mr. Walker approves of the planning section and recognizes the planning section would need more money and did not reject the possibility of getting more money for an expanded program planning through inclusion of transportation specifically within that section.

Mr. GULICK. Mr. Chairman, I would also suggest that your_committee undertake to persuade the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, which represents State and local government as well as the National Government, which was set up by Congress in 1959, to undertake specific work in the field of transportation problems. This will require added funds or arrangements on their part in order to do a more effective service. At this stage, we need to proceed by every avenue that is available because the transportation situation is now in a desperate situation in the large urban areas.

As you can see from the emergency approaches that are being followed in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, the bay area of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and many other citiesall of these represent important contributions to American thinking. But the solution is not going to be found solely by catch-as-catchcan approaches.

Senator WILLIAMS. Thank you very much, Mr. Gulick. I know our record is a great deal more complete with your experience and your testimony this morning. Thank you.

Your whole statement, when it arrives, will be included in the record.

We understand that Mr. Gilliss, director of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Los Angeles, has arrived, and we would be glad to hear him now, which will make it possible to conclude our hearings this morning before luncheon.

STATEMENT OF C. M. GILLISS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES METROPOLITAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY

Mr. GILLISS. Mr. Chairman, I will be brief since it is past your lunch time. My name is C. M. Gilliss. I am the executive director of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority. Before joining the authority in 1959, I was director of California's State Department of Public Works and chairman of the California Highway Commission. I have been directed by the authority and Mr. Eyraud, who would be here today if we could get together, to appear before you today in support of the objectives of S. 3278.

In the interest of a complete record, and for the convenience of your staff, here is brief background material about the MTA. The MTA is a self-supporting public corporation of the State of California. Since March 3, 1958, the authority has operated the major bus and streetcar system in Los Angeles and three adjacent counties. The MTA carries more than three-quarters of a million passengers a day on its 91 lines.

Los Angeles is a unique complexity because of its low density of population and its high percentage of automobile ownership. The area comprises some 4,880 square miles in which nearly 7 million persons live.

The people, through the California Legislature, established the MTA in order to have a State agency that could operate efficiently across the artificial political boundary lines of the 150 cities and communities and counties served.

The authority is governed by seven members appointed by the Governor of California to a staggered term of 4 years each. The members serve without salary.

The MTA meets its obligations through money deposited in the fare box. It has no subsidies. It has no recourse to taxes. It is exempt from property taxes, but pays fuel tax.

The purchase of the several private companies that were predecessors to MTA was made on March 3, 1958, and was financed through the issuance of revenue bonds in the amount of $40 million.

The MTA operates 1,495 buses, 89 trolley coaches, and 199 streetcars and trains, and they travel 180,000 miles a day in keeping their schedules; that is more than seven times the distance around the earth.

In addition to the responsibility for operating and improving, where possible, the existing public transportation system, we are attempting to find a fast, convenient, and modern rapid transit system.

By midsummer, we will have completed studies that will show the type of mass rapid transit system best suited for Los Angeles. The

study will show where the lines and stations should be located, what kind of equipment will do the job that we think of when we talk of mass rapid transit, and will answer the question: "How much will it cost?"

In California, we believe we have the finest system of highways and freeways in the United States. Governor Brown recently joked that the Hollywood Freeway was the longest parking lot in the world. These freeways perform an amazing job, and yet they are filled to capacity on the day they are opened.

Enough people come to California to stay every month to establish a brandnew city the size of Reno, Nev.; Biloxi, Miss.; or Independence, Mo. More than 40 percent of these people come to Los Angeles.

It does not take an expert to predict what kind of traffic paralysis faces Los Angeles and the country's other principal metropolitan

areas.

it

We have every reason to believe that southern California will continue to enjoy what is now considered its normal, healthy growth. As grows, the heart of its commerce can go to work. The nerve center of its government and finance can be ready to send out its messages, but unless the transportation arteries are open and free-flowing, the whole body of the metropolis will atrophy.

Speaking to the bill itself, its importance lies not so much in the amount of money provided in the bill, or in its offer to lend money at Federal Government interest rates, plus one-quarter of 1 percent. The significance lies in the recognition by the Congress that improved transit is one of the keys to the orderly development, or redevelopment of the Nation's headquarters cities.

Los Angeles could certainly use some study or planning money and perhaps could qualify under this bill. But when we get really down to the problem of building even a primary system of mass rapid transit, we are speaking about a project twice as costly as Hoover Dam. Senator WILLIAMS. How much is that?

Mr. GILLISS. Hoover Dam cost $160 million. We are talking in the neighborhood of $350 million to $450 million.

If Los Angeles were ready to build today, its rapid transit system, the reasonable share it could expect from this $100 million might be eaten up in the rising costs during the few months necessary for this bill to pass and for our application to be approved.

Senator WILLIAMS. Of course, your situation is unique, but in most cities, the metropolitan areas that we think of in terms of acute mass transit needs, there are abundant existing facilities that are becoming deteriorated and being abandoned. You have to start from scratch, do you not?

Mr. GILLISS. We do on the fixed system, Senator. We have the flexible system that belonged to three private companies. Those private companies were losing money and cutting back service. Eventually, we could see a city without public transportation. That is why the MTA was charged with the two jobs-the one to operate the existing systems and improve it, if possible; the other to develop a mass rapid transit system.

Senator WILLIAMS. You had a system of railroad passenger service at some point.

Mr. GILLISS. Yes, we did.

Senator WILLIAMS. This, as we understand it, has been largely abandoned. Is that right?

Mr. GILLISS. Almost altogether.

Senator WILLIAMS. Does that mean that the rail rights of way have been taken for other purposes?

Mr. GILLISS. At least half and, more correctly, three-quarters of the rights of way are gone. They have become parkways for avenues and the rails have been taken up and the rights of way abandoned or sold.

Senator WILLIAMS. Have you reached a point in your thinking and planning that you feel there will be a need of now creating a rail rapid transit system?

Mr. GILLISS. The need is already here.

Your staff had a list of some questions that related to the bill, and I believe that the committee is entitled to some straight answers to those questions.

In Los Angeles we believe we are doing every possible thing toward achieving a solution to our transportation problem. We have the cooperation and understanding of the highways and planning groups. This is unusual because, in a sense, we are competitors, with them for moneys.

We in Los Angeles are attempting to find a system that can be financed with revenue bonds, because that is the authority we now have in the State act, although to many, such financing appears to be highly unlikely. Certainly, Federal partnership in one of several ways would help a great deal.

It has been said that the metropolitan areas of the United States cannot afford a modern mass rapid transit system. I think it can just as reasonably be said that the metropolitan areas cannot afford not to have an up-to-date mass rapid transit system. No one can really calculate the man-hours, equipment time, and delay to commerce occasioned by the traffic jams on the Nation's highways. Certainly, the aggregate of these costs would quickly buy the relief that an adequate mass transit system offers. These metropolitan areas are the headquarters cities through which the public and private business of the whole Nation flows. They are the capital cities for the function of commerce and government.

Speaking specifically to the "priority" section of the bill on page 6, line 3, I suggest that this language might defeat at least one stated purpose of the proposed legislation. If I understand the bill correctly, it intends to provide moneys for the study and planning for a mass rapid transit system. The priority language would require that an agency have workable plans before it would qualify for money to make the plans.

Senator WILLIAMS. No.

Mr. GILLISS. It would not?

Senator WILLIAMS. We hope that priority provision will stimulate planning. Authority for funds for planning is separate and

apart from this section.

Mr. GILLISS. It is?

Senator WILLIAMS. Yes.

Mr. GILLISS. Thank you, Senator, for a clarification.