[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh Railways maps

[Fred Schneider]

San Francisco is one of those very unique transit cities in the  
United States ... I can really think of no other like it aside from  
New York.  Washington and Chicago approach it.   But when your city  
is surrounded by water on three sides and has no place to go, it  
tends to become very densely settled and not a place for  
automobiles.   I've driven in the city many times but never on  
instances when I had to park a car anywhere near Market or Mission or  
the Embarcadero or any of the tourist areas.   Those are BART or  
Espee (sorry, Caltrain) days.

I live in one where you can't tell when the morning rush ends and the  
evening rush begins either but for a different reason.  Here no one  
rides the buses.   The headway is the same function of the round trip  
running time all day long.


On Sep 16, 2005, at 5:51 AM, James B. Holland wrote:

> 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!!!!!!!
>
>
>