[PRCo] Re: So you can't get to Pittsburgh?

[Fred Schneider]

Harold Geissenheimer wrote:

> Who says its a failure?.
> It can only carry those who need or want to ride.
> Was 50 Carson a failure
> because the mill closed.?  The Buffalo LRT had great expectations
> but the city fell down around it.
>
>
> Harold Geissenheimer

Am I not hearing the same argument we heard a half century ago for bus
substitutions, i.e. that they were more flexible and could be adapted to
demographic changes?   I think it was George Hilton that suggested that
perhaps busses were better because they cost less and didn't last as
long as rail cars, and therefore could be amortized during the effective
life of the route on which they run.

I'm remind of the Baltimore heavy rail line, which, when planning
started [back when the earth was still cooling and Howard White and I
were Headlights editors]   would have served a older neighborhood of
business people ... heavily Jewish ... many of whom worked in the center
city.  By the time the MTA wended the project through the interminable
environmental impact studies, preliminary engineering, final
engineering, grant applications, and finally construction, the people
whom it was supposed to serve had moved.  We hear very little today
about the Reistertown line.

And Harold, I'm not picking fault here.  Simply continuing your
observation that some situations are beyond our control.   We live in an
imperfect world.  In many cases, LRT success or failure may simply be
the luck of the draw.

And a sidebar:  If you only ride the Buffalo LRT you have no idea how
much the "city fell down around it."  You need to drive Main Street
above the line to really understand.  The innermost mile of the subway
is through a neighborhood today looks like Negley Avenue through the
East Liberty bomb zone back in the middle 1960s.  Empty lots and
shuttered buildings.  And I'm sure it wasn't that way before economic
slump in 1982.   And this will continue to happen.  Industry, as a
service to its investors, looks for the most efficient way to produce a
product.  NPR tonight featured the closure of the Carrier
air-conditioning factory in Syracuse, New York, and the transfer of the
functions to the Far East.  I also remember a comment on how many
manufacturing jobs were lost in 20 years (lost really means the net
excess in jobs lost compared to jobs gained) ... I think the number was
either 10,000 or 20,000.

fws