TR: POLITICAL BLUNDERS

[Fred W. Schneider III]

There was a time, in contradiction to John's thoughts about blank report
pages, when government bureaucrats inspect the reports and demanded
complete reports.

How about the West Penn Railways passenger counts, John.   West Penn was
chastised for failing to report passengers hauled in its reports to the
Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs.  West Penn management
responded that they had no data on passengers.  This is not as
unrealistic as it sounds.  West Penn didn't care how many passengers
they hauled.  Because all routes were divided into fare zones, they knew
how many zone fares they collected.   Really simple ... conductor's turn
in divided by 6 cents a zone equals zone fares.  From the operator's
perspective, that was adequate management information.  Making the
company collect data on passengers who paid those zone fares would
simply be an exercise in redundancy.  But the DIA responded that they
had no concern for West Penn's excuses, and that the company MUST
provide the data retroactively.  So the management guessed at how many
zones the average rider crossed, multiplied the zone fares by imaginary
zones per rider, and gave the state a number to fill in the block.  So
folks, when researching transit history, think before you accept the
gospel.   


John Swindler wrote:
> 
> >Fred W. Schneider III commented:
> >
> >AND THERE WAS ANOTHER GREAT ONE.   One of our managers was cleaning up
> >flood damage after Hurricane Agnes.  Not being an outdoors man, he had
> >no waders to use going into the swamp that had been a building.  He
> >bought hip boots and added them to an expense account.  They were
> >promptly turned down. The next month he disguised them, and added a note
> >to the expense account: "The boots are here.  You find them."  He was
> >reimbursed!  The proper blocks had been filled in. Everybody was now
> >happy.
> >
> >OF COURSE NONE OF THIS RELATES TO TRANSIT DIRECTLY BUT IT DOES GIVE THE
> >OUTSIDER SOME IDEA WHAT REALLY HAPPENS.  JUST CONNECT THE DOTS FROM ONE
> >STATE OR FEDERAL AGENCY TO ANOTHER.
> >
> 
> Here's one about government that does relate to transit.
> 
> Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission requires annual reports from transit
> companies holding PUC certificates (such as Pittsburgh Railways, Penn
> Transit, etc.)
> 
> While gathering some information on the private Pittsburgh area bus
> operators quite some time ago, found that most of the operators filed fairly
> complete annual PUC reports during 1950s and early 1960s.  But apparently a
> few had figured out the system and simply filed not much more then a cover
> page, a notorized page, and a lot of blank form pages.
> 
> The bureaucrats were happy - they had their annual report dutifully filed
> away, and the companies were happy - saved time and money filling out
> unproductive forms, and had complied with letter - if not spirit - of
> regulations.
> 
> However, this did tend to make things a bit more difficult for historical
> research purposes.
> 
> >CGCHISHOLM at aol.com wrote:
> > >
> > > Government intervention costs money.
> > > HUDSON & MANHATTAN bought cars from St. Louis Car Co. with an option for
> >more
> > > cars.
> > > They became PATH and had to put every thing out on bids and could not
> > > exercise the option.
> > > St, Louis won the contract anyway but for more money.
> > > Colin
> 
> _____________________________________________________________________________________
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