[PRCo] development and transportation infrastructure.

[Derrick J Brashear]

For you people who hate numbers, skip to the bottom. Also, I'll pick on
Fred, Mr. Change the Subject, for not doing so.

On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Fred Schneider wrote:

> And to a greater extent I blame the sprawl for the end of service.  Note that

That's only necessarily true if you assume the funding model that existed
at the time could be the only valid model. 

> auto registrations went up from 0.5 million to 1.5 million in Pennsylvania
> between 1920 and 1930 and the major interurbans disappeared after 1930.  And
> they had no money to begin with ... between 1900 and 1950 the trolleys in
> Pennsylvania lost $46 million, which comes out well over a billion dollars in
> today's terms. 

So in 50 years they lost 5/3 of this year's PA Highway and Bridge budget
(state portion), or 4/3 of this year's mass transit budget (again, state
portion). Note that the highway and bridge maintenance budget (again,
state portion) would completely fund this debt with some to spare. If you
want to normalize 50 years of losses into today's dollars, understand that
you've stated the losses are chicken scratch once you start talking about
government funding, to expound on the point I made above.

Source: Page 18 of
http://www.oit.state.pa.us/budget/lib/budget/2002-2003/bib/bib.pdf

Incidentally, page 4 indicates the total budget is $45.5b, and the
"general fund" portion is about $21b.

> They could not afford to fight.  And even in 1875 they
> couldn't afford a fight.  The only people who made money in the transit
> business were the contractors, promoters, and vehicle manufacturers, and many
> of them figured a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of vigtory by accepting
> stock instead of cash for their work.

So it's like trying to make money from the internet.

> When was Cranberry Township named that?  

http://www.twp.cranberry.pa.us/information/history/htext3.html claims
1804. It's possible Cranberry is wrong about when they got their name, but
I doubt they're off by more than a year or two.

> And what villages on the Harmony 
> route were in the township?

They answer that too:
http://www.twp.cranberry.pa.us/information/history/htext9.html

Quoting them:
The passenger stations, north to south, were as follows:

   1. West. At the end of Wolfe Run Road.
   2. Plains Church. By the stonewall abutments on Plains Church Road,
just east of the Plains United Presbyterian Church.
   3. Franklin Road. At the corner of Franklin Road and Hope Road.
   4. Criders. Present-day Dutilh Road near Burger King.
   5. Dutilh. Rear of the Boron Station on Route 19. 

Clearly the history is a bit out of date. Boron is gone. I don't have the
Harmony Route maps on hand, so I don't know if they mean the BP station by
the turnpike interchange or something (I assume) further south, where I
have a vague idea of a Boron-shaped building. (Distinctive, sort of like
going around and saying "That was a Winky's".