MORE Thoughts -- PRCo--2000 -- Owl service

[mrb190]

> >Why do buses run the same place they always did?  1) "We've always done it
> >that way", 2) Lack of imagination, 3) Whenever we tried a new route, it
> >didn't work because the intended patrons were already wedded to their
> >automobiles, and 4) before John Swindler tells it, "There is too much money
> >for transit out there." so we keep right on running the same service and
> >providing government jobs to government workers.

I would guess that for a good number of people, the obvious re-routing of the
replacement buses for route 56 was a significant change.   When I take walks
through  the upper hillside of Lincoln Place where the 56 streetcar once ran on
its right-of-way, I notice how many homes are located there, homes which were
probably built there BECAUSE of the 56 line.  Those folks must have been
inconvenienced by the change to motorization.    Then crossing over Buttermilk
Hollow, there is another plan of homes built during the streetcar's time.  Those
homesteaders were also affected, I'm sure.    Many probably had at least one
automobile in the family by then, but if they were anything like my family, the
auto was in Dad's possession, 99% of the time.
I imagine the West-enders had to make some adjustments as well.  What a great
system that must have been.  Too bad it was so heavily taxed!

> > > And hey... why does the bus system we have still run substantially where
> >the streetcars did, if commuting patterns are changing? If the advantage of
> >buses is they don't require expensive fixed guideway changes, why are
> >changes so long in coming?
>

Good question.   Speaking as a city dweller most of my life, and growing up in
Lawrenceville (which runs along the Allegheny River from the Strip District to
the start of Morningside) I don't think that PAT would have dared change the 88
or 94 streetcar routings, especially the 88, as it continued (and probably still
does today) continue to serve a lot of customers.   I just think the traction
company route planners did a good job of, well, planning.
Funny that the infamous crosstown route, 77/54, continues on as a bus, in almost
the exact same route as the carline.  I think the exceptions are that now
certain trips make a loop through Polish Hill, and also through Bon Air.   Can't
say, for as many trips as I took to Allegheny Center in the 70's and in the
early 80's on the 54C bus, that we ever picked up one single Polish Hill fare!

> Concerning owl service, what there was tended to be hourly in the early 60s,
> but wasn't 88 half-hourly? And I thought there was an owl car on Library.

>
> I knew there was 88 owl service, but I think there must have also been 42
> Dormont owl service as well.  An aunt of mine had to take the cars at around
> 2-3 in the a.m. to make an impromptu trip from Dormont to Lawrenceville back
> in 1966.

> Matt