[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh 7-Charles Street abandonment

[Shirley Tennyson]

    No, John, no "can of worms". You have it right.
The 1903 consolidation to  form Pitts- burgh Railways Company was done
with 99-year ;leases.  That way, P.R.Co did not have to buy the 99 ?
other companies.     In 1926 or so, there was a bankrupcty which was
reorganized by shaving the lease payments rather than rejecting them but
this was not sufficient for the Great Depression, cut-wage political
buses, and FD Roosevelt's order just to P.R.Co to pay six days pay for
five days' work. We wonder if BM-Firestone etc put him up to it as hat
is when PCC cars were bought along with ACF=Brills, No GMC.  We do know
the Judge who was first involved with Pat was "connected" to GM. That is
how John Dameron got in and deposed Harley Swift
In 1950, P.Ry.Co operated NO buses. They contracted with Pittsbrgh Motor
Coach for shuttle and feeder routes at a hue loss to P.Ry.Co  and let
P.M.C. Co operate the "Throuh" bus routes separately. That is where you
got the Route 9 North Side Through Bus. They had a 25 cent fare for
premium service with a seat for every passenger, but the City of
Pittsbrgh and Anne X. Alpern, al- ways anxious to remove street cars,
used the Great Depression as an excuse to force the 25 cent bus fare
down to trolley rates. PUC compromised at 15 cents with tickets at maybe
12.5 cents. Trolley was 8.33 cents or a dime cash. That ended a seat for
every bus passenger. The Through bus routes never carried route numbers.
There were about a dozen of them including one to Charleroi which the
1938 barkruptcy forced them to sell to Blue Ridge Bus, the big bus
subsidiary of the Hagerstown & Frederck Ry. It really put a crimp in
long haul interurban car rides as he bus did not carry local coal
miners.                                                          The 99
leased companies all claimed they were not bankrupt because P.Ry Co owed
them rent. Anne X. Alpern fought that one too, but this time, only this
time, she was right and the Court put them all in bankruptcy. I did some
research on them when I worked for Russ George and Clyfde Ligo in the
Research Department.       In 1952, all 99 companies disappeared along
with Pittsburgh Motor Coach Company and there was just one legal
company, P.Ry. Co.   One condition of the consolidation, imposed by Anne
X. Alpern was hat no service leave Allegheny County, hence the
interurban abandonments at that time. They would have been abandned i
1940 or 1941, but they belonged to legally solvent copanies and could
not be liquidated so long as they were owned by others. During the War,
ridrship more tha doubled to make them valuabel, and after the war
commuter business to the new outer suburbs kept them busy as far as
Canonsburg and Fin;eyville (Riverview).    until e 15 percent federal
tax was slapped on in 1948 but not applied to Blue Ridge Bus.  The
govrnment really hated rail service.
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