[PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article

[Schneider Fred]

First prize is a week's vacation in Camden.   Second price is a week  
in East St. Louis.   Yes?  No?

On Aug 20, 2008, at 5:37 PM, Richard Allman wrote:

> there's a new Indian place that some of our Indian residents in our  
> hopital
> and some of the Indian-American medical student say is best in  
> Phila. in the
> old Ben Franklin Hotel @ 9th and Chestnut-next time! Harrisburg  
> bottomed
> out? That would be welcome news. Maybe better leadership? It makes a
> difference. Look @ the 2 river towns on the Schuykill: Norristown and
> Conshahocken. I would have picked Norristown as more likely for
> gentrification and comeback, but (despite the for last week) the clear
> winner has been Conshahocken.  Corrupt, incompetent government  
> seems to have
> been the clear culprit in Norristown. And I know Harrisburg went  
> through a
> rough period of incompetence and corruption. But Norristwon is now  
> clearly
> the worst county seat in the region(unless you count Camden!)
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:37 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article
>
>
>> 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"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>