[PRCo] STREETCAR RIDERS

[Fred Schneider]

The Louge Report Data is interesting to me for another reason.   It  
shows just how voluminous city transit riders were.

Last year a friend of mine called me to task for putting too much  
emphasis on small city trolley system.   He pointed out that most  
riders were in the largest cities.   Being prone to ask test such  
statements, I did just that.   I went back to the 1907 U. S. Census  
of Electric Railways, which was the last time data for revenue  
passengers was given by company.   I placed the data into a spread  
sheet for every company in the U. S. by large city, small city, and  
interurban.

What did I decide was a large city?   Well, back in Nineteen-Aught  
and Seven I figured that One Hundred Thousand People constituted a  
pretty big city.   There were not too many of them outside the  
east.   Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver made  
the cut.   There were no big cities in Texas then nor in Kansas.    
What was the result?   Big cities accounted for 77.7% of all fares  
lifted.   Small cities, small towns .. those under 100,000 ...  
accounted for about 15 percent of the fares.   The interurbans were  
the rest, about seven percent.

Locally?  My local system in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the sixth  
largest in terms of fleet and miles of track in Pennsylvania.    
Conestoga Traction Company had 165 cars running over 163.75 miles of  
track.   In their best year they lifted about 11 million fares.    
Note that the 88 FRANKSTOWN cars in Pittsburgh pulled in more than 12  
million riders in 1948.   The two Highland Park lines together moved  
more than the Lancaster system.

I can only suspect that Fineview might have moved more than all the  
streetcars in Warren, PA.   Maybe????

Did Thornburg haul more than the Fairchance and Smithfield?