Until a year ago, the regular patrons of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad were abnormally contented commuters. Unlike many of their brethren who traveled on other lines, the New Haven crowd (35,000 suburbanites on the New York end, 22,000 in Boston) liked their trains; when other commuters cursed and griped about poor service, they smiled smugly and accepted their own discomforts as part of the daily grind. Now all is changed. For months, in the newspapers and at hearings in New York City, Boston and Stamford. Conn., the commuters have complained bitterly about sloppy service, endless delays, dangerous cutbacks in maintenance. All of the invective has been directed at one man, Patrick Benedict McGinnis, 51, the colorful, terrible-tempered president of the New Haven. Stockholders' Darling. Although a good many of the complaints proved on investigation to be justified (in 1955, for example, the New Haven curtailed maintenance by some $3,000,000), the main trouble seemed to be Pat McGinnis himself. He is the son of a railroad gang foreman, and, before he took over the New Haven 20 months ago in a proxy coup (TIME, April 26, 1954), he had a reputation for fiscal wizardry. As head of the New Haven, he continued to keep the stockholders happy (estimated 1955 profits: $10.5 million). He worked hard at his job, spent more than 350 nights aboard his business car—almost always accompanied by his wife Lucile, a decorator and art connoisseur—since taking over. He had big, dramatic dreams for the New Haven that sometimes made his more conservative officers nervous. He proposed, for example, to replace the present mainline rolling stock with low-slung, highspeed, articulated Talgo trains (he has already ordered three), and to string a moving conveyor belt along the tracks between New York and Boston to carry less-than-carload freight. But for all his energy, ambition and ideas, McGinnis made his passengers feel like galley slaves.
He has tried, after the McGinnis fashion, to win the public esteem. He jazzed up the New Haven's freight cars with an eye-catching black, white and Chinese vermilion paint job. (The color scheme was concocted by Lucile McGinnis.) He inaugurated an electronic reservation system, and offered free caboose rides to Cub Scouts. But his public-be-damned attitude kept slipping through. Although 63% of the New Haven's business comes from passengers, McGinnis has an illconcealed conviction that commuters are a liability. He has seemed to go out of his way to aggravate every bad situation and antagonize the commuters with his own tart comments. Items:
¶ When he was asked about unfulfilled promises that he had made after the proxy fight, McGinnis replied testily: "I've given those politicians everything they asked for."
¶ Complaints about the overcrowded Friday-night trains left him unmoved. "If everybody wants to travel on weekends," he said, "they will have to stand."
¶ Complaints about cramped, three-person seats exasperated him. "New Haven passengers don't like multiple-unit cars," he sneered. "They want a bed with each seat—and a bar."