[PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article

[Schneider Fred]

Rich,

I need to take you to Passage of India restaurant and introduce you  
to Lena and Vishnu Shenoy, the owners.

http://www.passagetoindiapa.com/

There is also several great Italian places downtown.

Harrisburg was probably at its worst in the 1970s and 1980s.   It's  
star is ascending.  The worst blow, just like Pittsburgh, was when  
Bethlehem Steel faltered in Steelton in the 1980s.  There is a  
replacement steel company but it does not employ nearly the number of  
people that Bethlehem had.

Please also notice that when I am throwing out employment data, I'm  
tossing around metropolitan statistical area data and not cities.    
By definition an MSA is either a city of 50,000 people or more or a  
city with a prescribed population density (that last clause was  
inserted in 1990 or 2000 when we would have lost places like  
Harrisburg that were shrinking under 50,000 and we reduced the core  
city to a 10,000 to 50,000 range).   The county surrounding the core  
city is automatically included.   Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is  
automatically included because Lancaster City is over 50,000.    
Philadelphia County is automatically included with Philadelphia City,  
in that case because they are co-terminus.  Beyond that, a requisite  
number of people from surrounding counties must commute into the core  
county for work to add them to the MSA.  We have since tweaked the  
commuting patterns from 15%  to 25% in recent years.   We look first  
for the largest county with 25% and add it.   Then we look for the  
next county that has 25% or more of its population commuting to work  
in the first two counties.   Then we hunt for a county that has 25%  
or more of its people working in the first three counties, and so on  
until we run out of counties that qualify.

Some states publish county and city data.   Pennsylvania does.   But  
those data or not readily available on line so I don't look for it to  
make comparisons with other capitals.   So I can only look at Albany  
or Cheyenne or Philadelphia or Richmond as MSAs and not as cities.    
By the same token, I can not easily look at Williamsburg, Virginia as  
a city.   I have to look at it as part of Norfolk - Newport News -  
Hampton.

Is that fair?   That depends on who you talk to.   I remember one  
character from the Chamber of Commerce in Port Jervis PA who argued  
with me that he could not understand why his city was included in the  
Middletown NY MSA / New York City CMSA.   The lunacy or logic of it  
simply escaped his brain.   But the fool attended the conferences in  
Washington when OMB reclassified Pike County PA into that area.   He  
understood.   He just believed his county was more important by  
itself.   He simply wasn't willing to admit that 65% of the workers  
in his area actually crossed the Delaware River and went into New  
Jersey and New York states to work and there was no way you were  
going to convince him.   If you want a lot of heavy reading, the link  
below goes to the Federal Register.   You can read all about it.  But  
I don't expect anyone to do it.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/metroareas122700.pdf

But at least now you know why Allegheny, Butler, Washington, Beaver,  
Fayette and Westmoreland counties are all part of the Pittsburgh MSA  
or labor market.

On Aug 20, 2008, at 10:03 AM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Richard Allman wrote:
>
>> what about our great state capital city? Unless I'm missing  
>> something, it's
>> still a dump. A few years ago the Inquirer ran an article entitled  
>> something
>> like "Harrisburg:Is this any place to have a state capital?" and  
>> subtitled
>> "not  even a nice place to visit" (as oppposed to places that are  
>> nowhere to
>
> Harrisburg seems not bad to me; It certainly has more ethnic food, for
> instance, than other larger cities I've been to. There are  
> recreational
> opportunities. The big thing for me would have been that because of  
> its
> size, a dearth of the sort of touring musical acts coming that I'd  
> like to
> see. But that's an issue in Pittsburgh too.
>
> In some respects "it depends where in the city you are"
>
>