[PRCo]

[Fred Schneider]

If you have not seen Bruce Wells' website in my absence, look at  
this.   Note that PAT 4004 was running in the last six weeks.


http://web.mac.com/cuzinbrucie/iWeb/G5/AroundtheMuseum.html

For those wondering why I was strangely quiet ... I was wandering  
around Alaska and a few states between here and there.

Saw the Portland city trolley extension ... 10 minutes service on a  
Sunday morning.

Looked at Sacramento again.   The Folsom extension is entirely single  
track so cars only can run every 30 minutes on the far east end of  
the line beyond Sunrise.   That line has now been paired with the  
Union Station (or Amtrak station) loop, while Watt I-80 is now paired  
with the south line.   I'm convinced that Sacramento is a success.    
Amazing to see three car trains through three-hour long rush hours in  
the morning and fours or so in the afternoon.

The new southwest line in San Jose impresses me about as much as the  
rest of San Jose ... negative impressions.   Great neighborhood...  
upper middle class ... but like the rest of the Santa Clara Valley  
system I saw few riders.

The T line in San Francisco was running 10 minute headways and seemed  
well patronized.   There was evidence of new building construction  
along the line.

The new South East Line in Denver is hauling 60,000 fares (30,000  
individual riders) a day.   Cars were running twice an hour around  
the downtown loop, twice an hour to Union Station, and about twice an  
hour from either end onto the branch along I-270.    I was stopped by  
local police in Denver for taking pictures and released after they  
figured I was harmless.

The Cross County Line in St. Louis was amazingly busy ... the  
terminal at the south end had something more than 500 parking spaces  
and at 3 PM on a summer weekday about 80 percent were filled.    
Weekday afternoon service frequencies are every 10 minutes.   I was  
seeing about 25% load factors on cars coming into the terminal  
station at mid afternoon.

Oh yes ... I also saw and rode Calgary again.   Nothing changes  
except the population.   The city has gone from about 600,000 when  
the first LRT line opened to over 1.0 million this year.    And  
they're not enough people to come even close to filling the jobs.    
Down in Lethbridge I had a quick snack at a McDonalds where the  
manager was struggling on Sunday with two other people ... he could  
not get help and he was paying $11 an hour (yes, eleven).    Of  
course it's also relative.   In Victoria, once the home of the "newly  
married and nearly dead," you now need to spend $300,000 to get an  
average starter home.    A lot of western Canada is being populated  
by people escaping the high costs and over population in Toronto.    
Then they find themselves among a million people in Calgary or two  
million in Vancouver and move out hunting some place more open and it  
becomes over crowded.

I also walked away with an impression about why California is running  
commuter trains from San Jose to Stockton.   Yikes man, it took me  
over an hour and a half to drive it and three full hours to go from  
San Jose through Stockton to Sacramento (3 PM to 6 PM).   I was just  
trying to avoid the immediate East Bay and I-680!   And coming into  
San Francisco in the morning, I-80 from San Francisco was running at  
capacity from 8 AM in Sacramento to 10 AM in S. F. And I found  
myself, for the first time ever,  in traffic standing still on the  
San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge backed up all the way to Yerba  
Buena Island!    What the hell would it be like without BART?    Even  
with some of the highest gas prices in the U. S., those 10 million  
additional people in California in the last couple of decades seem to  
have over taxed the road system beyond belief.   I see that the  
construction of the replacement eastern section of the Bay Bridge  
(for earthquake reasons) is well underway but (and Jim, correct me if  
I'm wrong), this does not add any more lanes across the entire bay.

Even saw the little gas powered trolley in near  Bismark ND.

Also enjoyed Bryce Canyon, a lot of southern Utah, Glacier National  
Park, the Custer Battlefield, the site of the landmark Brown vs  
(Topeka, KS) Board of Education desegregation decision, US 50 all  
across Nevada, RDCs on the Alaska Railroad.   Lots to see in this  
country.

Until Derrick resubscribes me ... please respond to the site and to  
me (fwschneider at comcast.net) directly.