[PRCo] Re: [PRCo]

[Richard Allman]

welcome Home! Sounds like a great trip-anxious to hear all the specifics and 
see your photos at some point. Suz was saying we all need to get 
together-finding the time...! This weekend she's @ her father's. Last 
Saturday as  I try to master digital photography, went to capture a shot @ 
Clifton-Aldan area and Clfiton Heights police stopped me and made me produce 
my identification and ran my license. He said I wasn't breaking any laws, 
but looked suspicious. I told him the law applies to nuclear installations, 
military installations(none in Clifton Heights) and private businesses 
protecting corporated secrets. In the end we parted w/ a handshake. Week 
before, Bob D. and I went to N. Jersey and met up w/ Jack May to chase 
Hudson Bergen-agree w/ your asessment-MOST IMPROVED LIGHT RAIL- including 
the west side line which now hauls very respectable boardings, and Newark 
Light Rail, then dinner in Ironbound. Very nice day.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 9:45 PM
Subject: [PRCo]


> 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.
>
>
>
>