Growing up in Pittsburgh

[Donald Galt]

On 26 Jun 00, at 17:14, John Swindler wrote:

> 
> I still recall a college
> professor in a business course commenting (and this was over 30 years ago) that
> without automation and investment, AT&T would have had to employ every women in
> the US as telephone operators to try to handle the volume of phone traffic.  At
> least that is what he claimed.
> 
> I ... suggest
> that the professor's comments about automation and investment has a lot to do
> with the passing of the street railway - and transit in general - industry as
> we knew it.  (It's that economics topic that we don't like to talk about.)
> 

Quite.

However, the telephone company can argue that it has made itself more 
and more efficient over the decades. I'd suggest we can't make anything like 
such a claim when it comes to moving people.

Which is another issue we don't want to face.

Don