[PRCo] Re: Carnegie - Then and Now

[Fred W. Schneider III]

I rode the 27 line all the way to the end only once in June 1959 ... the
week before abandonment.  By then service was minimal at best -- perhaps
every 20 to 30 minutes -- and I didn't hang around a dismal area waiting
for a car to appear.  I remember that Main Street went as far as the
trolley loop.  I rode back up town to the PRR crossing and got off and
photographed the next southbound car.  Then I began the hike up to
Crafton.  Service was poor enough that I got three other cars, one north
and two south before I reached my destination.
I'm not sure that the bypass around Carnegie was in by then ... suspect
not because the street traffic through the middle of the borough was
quite heavy.    

When I went back again in the 1980s to audit the state employment office
in Carnegie, I learned what a dismal area really was.  Most of the
stores had closed in response to the mall concept.  Many U. S. cities
tried to copy the incredibly successful European style downtown
pedestrian malls but copying infrastructure without reprogramming the
brain cells never works.
Nobody was going to Carnegie in the 1980s.  The police were making their
revenue by ticketing unsuspecting motorists who thought they could
return to the car to feed the parking meter and still park longer than
the statutory parking time limit.  I was warned, so I went out and moved
my car every two hours, and then wiped the chalk off the tires.   


mrb190 wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> Maybe someone familiar with the West End Lines and Carnegie can help me with
> this question?
> 
> Where did Main Street actually terminate back in 1959 - 1960's?
> 
> I know that a "mall," ala East Liberty, had been put up in the middle of Main
> Street past the intersection of Washington street sometime in the '70's, I
-- Trailing quotes stripped by Listar --