[PRCo] Re: Transit evolution

[Herb Brannon]

Yes, time is the big thing holding public transit back. A lot of it is the approach that today's transit management (using the term management very loosely) takes on how the systems should operate. There was a time when speed, and hopefully safety, were the "gold standards". Today, managers think that the more 'front doors' the line stops at, the more passengers are going to flock to them. Not so, but you can't get them to change their old habits. The private vehicle is here to stay...............the public mode is something for managers and the government to play with, at the public expense. Cleveland still has a large number of 'discretionary' riders. This is good. I have found that one way to note which cities have discretionary riders (and more productive transit systems) is to note which cities operate 24-hour service. Those which only need to serve the poor, elderlly, and school children will not run 24-hour service and normally not much service after 7 or 8 pm. Those
 with 24-hour service must have a reason for running that service. 
   
  Also, Fred, the great State of Ohio needs the money. The State Highway Patrol certainly does its part in helping to fill the treasury !
   
  I have a theory on the demise of the electric interurban systems and it has NOTHING to do with Goodyear, Standard Oil or General Motors. But it is far too complex to write in an email. That theory is a good conversation piece in a face to face situation. 
Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote: 
  I'M USING THIS LIST TO REACH DERRICK AND HERB BRANNON. FRED BRUHN 
MIGHT APPRECIATE THIS TOO. THE REST MAY READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Yesterday I was driving up Interstate 77 from Marietta to Cambridge, 
Ohio. I have a connection to that area. My father was born in 
Marietta, along the Ohio river in southeastern Ohio.

As I drove I observed the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad right-of- 
way between Marietta and Caldwell off to the right. I thought about 
my father once having taken the PRR from Marietta to Cleveland and I 
remembered a picture, which he sadly destroyed before his death, of a 
PRR D16sb in Marietta on the passenger train. At the first rest 
stop I pulled out a reference book I was carrying with me: the 
reprint of the January 1930 Official Guide to the Railways. The 
Running Time for that train from Marietta to Caldwell, Cambridge, 
Newcomerstown, Akron and Cleveland was 7 hours 27 minutes. 
Strangely, it was identical southbound.

I remember my father also talking about the day he drove in a snow 
storm in the 1924 Chevrolet from Marietta to Cleveland. The car had 
no heater and dad recalled stopping every few miles to scrape the 
snow and ice off the outside of the windscreen and the frost off the 
inside. The journey took all day and late into the evening. That 
probably took place the year he worked in Cleveland, which was summer 
of 1927 to summer 1928.

My next memories are that Lake Shore Coach Company, the successor to 
Lake Shore Electric Railway had traded franchises with Central 
Greyhound. CG ended up with the Cleveland - Toledo route and LSC got 
the Cleveland to Marietta service. In the 1950s I remember Lake 
Shore Coach Company's PG 3701 buses in Marietta painted brown and 
orange ... the orange probably a leftover from the interurban car 
livery. I don't have any schedules but I suspect they might have 
averaged 25 to 30 miles per hour, which would have required 5 hours 
30 minutes to 6 hours 45 minutes for the Marietta - Cleveland run. 
Driving it in an automobile in those days would have taken at least 
five hours.

So why doesn't public transportation work today?

Because I can get in my Volkswagen and drive the 168 miles on 
Interstate 77 in 2 hours 30 minutes in spite of Ohio's overly 
aggressive State Troopers.






Herb Brannon