[PRCo] Re: Louisville

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Ken makes some very good points here.  

I particularly like his comments about abandonments for political
reasons ... I think you will find there were far more route miles of
trolleys wiped out for political reasons than National City Lines ever
touched.  Think about Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston, Pittsburgh, San
Francisco's Market Street Railway, Montreal and Chicago Surface Lines as
some very large examples!  And there were numerous small examples too:
Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Conestoga Transportation Company was a perfect
example, in which the Lancaster Automobile Club (AAA) and the City and
the State were constantly brow beating the company to get rid of any
marginally profitable rail line because it was in the way of widening a
highway, or the safety islands were a hazard (they put bigger dents into
automobiles than people), or the trolley is running the wrong way on a
street we just made one-way.  Of course politics doesn't make as good a
story as an imaginary conspiracy, does it Ken?

In most cases, abandonment came simply because revenues could no longer
support the huge fixed costs inherent in a rail system, i.e. tracks,
overhead, real estate for shops and substations, and mechanical
apparatus therein.  

Today I'm convinced we're looking at the other end of the dog.  How many
LRT systems exist solely for political reasons that no self-respecting
businessman could ever sanction? Have any of them actually taken the
time, year by year, to compare bus costs with trolley and include in it
the changing value of real estate taxes because of improved or lost
market value, a subject we keep touting ever since Toronto showed that
development follows subways.  

Kenneth Josephson wrote:
> 
> "Fred W. Schneider III" wrote:
> 
> > Railfans like to blame changes in management.  Do you think it might
> > have been a rapid change in the number of fares they were collecting
> > each day?
> 
> Interesting point.
> 
> The company that took over the Louisville system was interested in trying to
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