[PRCo] Re: Maintenance standard

[Boris Cefer]

Astonished? It was a shock!

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 3:04 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Maintenance standard


> But they bought the P3 class in a totally different era ... 1948 I  
> believe ... there was some reason, albeit weak, to believe that the  
> public might continue to use public transportation in our larger  
> cities.   They probably thought they could get 20 years out of their  
> investment.   LATL only got ten years.    The county got another five.
> 
> Boris, you need to remember your thoughts when you first rode with me  
> from Philadelphia to Lancaster.   Remember how astonished you were at  
> how many automobiles you saw on the roads?
> 
> You need to understand that the general public ... the people who  
> vote for the politicians who ran LAMTA and PAT and BiState and Muni  
> and all the other public agencies ... are also the people own  
> automobiles.   Historically, when they saw the back of a trolley,  
> they believed it was the trolley that was holding up their  
> progress.   It didn't matter if there was a line of automobiles a  
> mile long in front of the trolley holding up the trolley.   They only  
> saw the trolley and they told their elected officials that they  
> wanted that damned trolley off the streets so they could drive their  
> cars without it in their way.
> 
> Sadly, the mayors of many cities and their underlings were only doing  
> what the public wanted when they replaced the trolleys with buses.    
> Of course, afterwards, the public now complained that the buses were  
> also in their way and the mayor should also get rid of the buses  
> too.   (That argument is going on right here in Lancaster right  
> now ... the fine people up in the town of Manheim want a bus stop  
> removed because it interferes with the rights of motorists.)
> 
> In the United States, about one percent of all trips to work are made  
> by public transportation and 99 percent are made by private  
> automobile.   Trips to the store, movies, churches, and non work  
> trips are probably 99.8 percent by private car.    That's today.
> 
> Now where were in 1948?
> 
> Let's go back to World War II.   We had gasoline rationing.   The  
> average American ... let me rephrase that ... the typical American  
> had a class A sticker on his car which entitled him to 3.5 gallons of  
> gasoline per week.   Assuming he could get 14 miles per gallon, that  
> permitted him to drive 50 miles per week or 2,500 miles per year.    
> (Our average today exceeds 15,000 miles per year.)   Rationing during  
> the war was not so much to prevent the use of gasoline as it was to  
> prevent using tires which were almost impossible to get.   Remember  
> than most tries then used natural rubber and most natural rubber  
> supplies were under Japanese control.
> 
> So, gasoline rationing forced most people back on trolleys, trains  
> and buses.   Patronage rose in the early 1940s rose to the highest  
> levels since the early 1920s.   Unfortunately, this gave many transit  
> managers a false sense of security.   Many of them irrationally  
> believed that, when the war ended and prosperity reigned, their  
> business would continue.   But it didn't   Rationing ended in the  
> fall of 1945.   As soon as manufacturers could retool, 1946  
> automobiles were shipped to dealers.   There had been four years of  
> no new automobiles so it took a while for supply to catch up to  
> demand.   Not everybody could get off the trolley or bus right  
> away.   Demand and supply equalized about the summer of 1948.   When  
> the 1949 automobiles hit the dealers, for the first time since 1942  
> they had to work to sell the cars.   And from 1946 through 1950  
> transit riding dropped every year ... maybe 10 percent per year.
> 
> There was a huge backlog of new streetcars after the war.   Many  
> cities ordered cars in 1945 and 1946.
> 
> Those Los Angeles P3 cars that were delivered in 1948 were ordered  
> in  October 1946.   Most cities experienced peak riding in 1946  
> because the war was over, many the troops were home, and they didn't  
> have automobiles.   Everything looked rosy.   The massive order of  
> 600 Chicago all-electrics was ordered in 1945 and January 1946.  The  
> first of the Philly all-electrics went on the order books in 1944.    
> The Boston all-electrics were ordered in 1944.   Detroit signed the  
> order for the first 79 all-electrics in 1945.  Minneapolis ordered 90  
> in 1945 and the other 50 in 1947.   Philly ordered the 2100s in  
> 1946.    The really strange orders were Muni's 25 cars and the Boston  
> PW cars that came after all the fury had died down and most people  
> could tell that it was all over.
> 
> You'll notice that most of the postwar orders came right after the  
> war when riding was still high.   Once transit managers saw that the  
> downward trend was irreversible, even the big cities quit buying.    
> They quit doing any more maintenance than necessary too.