[PRCo] Re: Pen's get new luxury hotel

[Schneider Fred]

I'm not going to disclose the name of the friend who wrote this other  
than to say the man was in railway equipment engineering all his  
life.   It came in an e-mail this morning in response to my sending  
him the announcement of one more "wet dream" about a streetcar  
line.   I think this last one might have been the people in Waco,  
Texas saying, 'Hey man, we gots to have a trolley.'
"One thing about this emerging development:  I am getting a clearer  
understanding of how streetcar systems over-expanded in the early  
1900s.  We are seeing the exact same phenomenon now...streetcars have  
suddenly become the definition of what a modern city should have, and  
unknowledgable city fathers are all pushing them without any clear  
business plan for whether it makes sense for their city.  The only  
difference is that now it's governmental money (us) instead of  
gullible private investors."

I can predict that Ken Josephson will agree with him.  Jerry might  
not.  And I'm going to say I want the limited tax dollars put where  
they are making sense, that is in cities that are expanding and  
proving that rail is making sense and most of those, sadly for most  
of us, are well to the west of the Mississippi River.   I'm having a  
problem with putting it in places like Buffalo, St. Louis, Detroit or  
Pittsburgh, where there are massive population declines, and then  
proving that it works by having artificially low fares.

Now if you can figure how to get someone to invest 100,000 high end  
new jobs in Allegheny County....    (No that would be too many, in  
the end it would result in a million more people.)



On Dec 17, 2008, at 12:27 PM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:

> On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Jerry MATT Matsick wrote:
>
>> Perhaps the stir of new Center Avenue area Hotel will convince the  
>> city
>> to put a new street car line in?
>
> When a local libertarian proposed a streetcar line on South 21st St  
> I knew
> they had some broader appeal. Still, as a realist, "not gonna happen"
>
> I passed the site less than 24 hours ago. Right now the old  
> hopsital is
> just a big hole.
>
>