[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Railways maps

[James B. Holland]

Fred Schneider wrote:

> If you will forgive me for picking a few nits here ... rush hour only 
> is a very difficult thing to define and it does vary extensively by 
> city. Unless it has changed, the rush in Jim Holland's adopted city 
> begins very early in the morning and very early in the afternoon 
> because San Francisco is the Wall Street of the West. I do not pretend 
> to be an expert on how this might have changed with after hours 
> trading, but the old rule was that San Francisco stock brokers kept 
> the same hours as the New York stock brokers. The result was a rather 
> spread out rush hour.


Rush hour is hardly defined by the stock brokers  --  extremely small 
percentage of the total workers in the city!!!       Yes, brokers here 
keep hours of New York Stock Exchange.

If you live to the east of the city and have to come over the Bay 
Bridge, You Had Better Be On The Freeway before 5.30-AM otherwise it is 
solid to gridlock  --  even if you have a 9-5 job Of Which There Are Not 
A Few  --  ALL  the institutions outside of Wall Street and Govt.       
I am told this  --  I have Never Experienced The Same!       Takes me 
about 15-minutes to get to work in the PM and about 12-minutes to return 
home at 2-AM  --  I live in the Sunset just south of Golden Gate Park on 
the top of the hill from the Pacific Ocean!!!

Believe it or not, San Francisco has schools, Universities, Colleges, 
Trade Schools and the like which add to the crush of passengers  --  and 
the grade and high school students use Public Transit to and from School 
for the most part  --  not many school only buses.       Outer end of my 
line is at the JCC  (Jewish Community Center)  which operates a Very 
Large Day Care facility.       Two private schools in the first couple 
blocks of my route  --  one is University High School and the other is a 
grade school.       Within a couple more blocks is a school for New 
Comers  with another grade school a couple blocks away.       Who knows 
how many more are on the way.

Golden Gate U is downtown - law school here is highly acclaimed; City 
College has an extension there.       The Art Academy has literally 
dozens of properties in the heart of downtown and draws students world 
wide.       Hastings Law School is in the Civic Center just beyond 
Powell Cables and on our 5-Fulton  --  further out on the 5 is SUF  --  
University of San Francisco, Catholic affiliated.       Beautiful campus 
in the city.

The M-line has San Francisco State, Hyakawa fame, with the Only Shopping 
Mall within SF City Limits next door at Stonestown.       TrolleyCars on 
the M run with crush loads most of the day.

Main Campus of City College is on the K line.

Then there is UCSF with its multitude of campuses, hospitals, teaching 
and research centers.

Chinatown has minimum of 3-minute headways  ALL  Day  Long  from 11-AM 
til 7-PM  SEVEN  (7)  Days A Week.

Many of our lines run on 5-6--minute headways All Day Long and Much More 
Frequently in rush hours with rush hour expresses in addition.       All 
Trunk routes are a minimum of 5-minutes.       In Reality Here In San 
Francisco, one can't tell where AM rush ends and PM rush starts.       
The 1-California TrolleyCoach in my division runs the length of 
California in the city from the heart of the financial to 33rd/Geary  
--  5-minute headways  ALL  Day.       Two different Express buses also 
serve this line during both rush hours.       The 38-Geary is the 
heaviest line in the city just two blocks from California and operates 
artic diseaseals with Limiteds All Day from 6-AM til 7-PM stopping Only 
at Transfer points; Locals fill in rest of service.       Two Expresses 
for this line in both rush hours.       Can't begin to agive all the 
details of all the lines and their intensity.

Market Street has a piggyback subway with five Muni TrolleyCar lines on 
the upper level and  BART  on the lower level which travels to SF 
airport from SF and east to Oakland, Bezerkeley, where it fans out in 
all three directions  --  north, south, East.

Don't know by how much the population of SF increases during the workday 
but we carry Very Heavy Reverse Commutes to get people from and back to 
BART, AC Transit, CalTrain, SamuelTransit, etc., etc., etc.

Our lines are on 15-minute headways by 6-AM and it gets much more 
frequent through 9-AM inbound.

We also have staggered shifts with Not A Few heading home between 
3-3.30-PM  --  very quiet on the streeets from about 4.15-PM til 5-PM.

Thursday evening a truck caught fire on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge 
which shut down the bridge traffic heading east until the rush hour  --  
downtown streets were gridlock  --  what a mess last night.

Sutter and Post where I drive is Very Heavy Traffic through Midnight at 
least 6-days a week  --  every vehicle on the street seems determined to 
get in front of the next vehicle there All Night Long  --  Pur Pandemonium.

I Personally am  ALWAYS  Surprized at the number of Homes, apartments, 
condos, etc. have lights on when I travel home at 2-AM  --  most of the 
city is constantly abuzz.       Minimum headway for Owls is 30-minutes 
with coverage to all parts of the city.       My line is 20-minute 
headway all night long until 2-AM when it quits  --  I am the last bus 
in on my line.

Workers in Silicon Valley had ACE train service instituted not many 
years back to bring them to San Jose from Modesto  --  90 some miles 
away.       Can't begin to enumerate all the commute necessary in the 
San Francisco Bay Area  --  strip city for 50-miles from San Francisco 
to San Jose  --  NO  Open  Spaces  There  --  dotted line between 
municipalities is obliterated with time.

> Pittsburgh, because of the mills has a very heavy early peak in the 
> afternoon after 3 PM. The colleges and universities in Oakland added 
> to that crush. The Shannon tripppers were running in the middle of the 
> afternoon. A now deceased friend of mine, John Bowman, once lamented 
> that he went out early in the morning in Pittsburgh and found the rush 
> hour was over and the cars were already going back to the barns. He 
> simply wasn't used to that because he came from a town where most 
> people went to work somewhere around 8 AM and came home around 5 PM.




Jim__Holland


I__Like__Ike.......And__PCCs!!

down with pantographs ---- UP___WITH___TROLLEYPOLES!!!!!!!