[PRCo] Re: living in PA

[Fred Schneider]

Amen.   Amen.   Amen.      You have summed it up but the people still  
want their memories, don't they.  The Shouda, woulda, couldas.

In 2006 my wife had a stroke.  Barb Ciccone came here to visit her in  
the nursing home.   Barb is one of the trolley museum regulars.     
Barb had no clue how bad traffic in Lancaster had gotten.   She made  
the mistake of showing up in the evening rush hour.  We have over  
500,000 people in this county now but that is essentially 500,000  
people in nothing but suburbs ... its 526 people her square mile but  
in the northern portion of the county it is close to 1200 people per  
square mile with loads of cul-de-sacs and few through roads.   
Everyone wants his suburban home back in the woods and then crowds  
those few roads that go anywhere.   In the 1970s I studied the  
Lancaster PA population density and found it almost exact matched  
that of Los Angeles County, California.

Allegheny County has 1791 people per square mile and, where the  
heaviest population lives, they have streets that go somewhere.

I think (italics) what happened to Lancaster vis a vis Allegheny in  
the 1950s to 1990 was not so much percolation tests but availability  
of low cost labor.   Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania had a  
reputation for its steel workers and miners (my daddy was a good  
union miner and so am I and if I have to bankrupt the mine to get my  
point across, I'll do that).  You could see that attitude when  
Volkswagen built at New Stanton.   The plant lasted for several years  
and then closed because VW didn't know how to deal with the UAW.    
You could also see it with US&S going on strike in Swissvale in 1982  
for higher wages at the same time US Steel was laying off 20,000  
workers in Pittsburgh.    I'm not anti-union, just anti- 
foolishness.   If you wanted to invest $20 million in a new factory,  
would you do it where the streetcar motorman were among the three  
highest paid in the nation?   Or would you go where you could get  
less expensive help?

Lancaster, on the other hand, had a reputation for non-union shops  
and lower than national wage scales.   We used to have an employment  
interviewer in the state employment office in Lancaster that the  
manager had to threaten to muzzle periodically because he wanted to  
tell employers he would not try to fill their job orders unless they  
came up with what he, a former union leader, considered meaningful  
wages.   He never won his point.   But Lancaster's population went  
from 230,000 in 1950 to 278,000 in 1960 to 320,000 in 1970 to 370,000  
in 1980 all because of companies moving in to take advantage of lower  
wage sales and then people moving in to fill the jobs.   People were  
coming there to take those "substandard" jobs.   No, they were not  
all immigrants either.  We went from a few hundred Puerto Ricans in  
1960 to 2,400 in 1970 and they are us anyway.   We became one of the  
major printing centers with probably more printing employees per  
capita than any where in the nation.  The new Pittsburgh History  
Center book on famous Pittsburgher's was just bound here this  
spring.  We became one of the three major RV and mobile home centers  
in the USA (next to Gardena CA and Elkhart IN).  Kellogs built a huge  
cereal plant.  One of those television sale outfits put their  
distribution centers here.  Then the bottom fell out in the 1990s and  
2000s when it became fashionable to sue Armstrong because they put  
asbestos in linoleum.  And the federal government paid Hamilton Watch  
to move to Puerto Rico.  And all our garment, textile and boot and  
shoe jobs went first Mexico and then to China.  Our unemployment rate  
moved up from 1.4 percent in the summer of 1964 to 4 something this  
year but it is still lowest or second lowest in the state and well  
below the national average.  One of the problems now is that the  
additional businesses put such a squeeze on the labor force that it  
forced wages up to the national average.   That sent jobs  
elsewhere.   So it isn't as good as it was but it is still better  
than the Pittsburgh, Donora, New Castle, Sharon, Uniontown,  
Washington, etc.

But the problem we had was that all those people who moved in to  
Lancaster from 1950 to 2008 moved into suburban housing.  The drive  
that used to take 15 minutes now takes 45 minutes.

And in Pittsburgh, because the population went down, traffic is  
actually better than it was in the 1950s.

I'm going to sign off by affirming what Dennis said, "There is no  
better entrance in the country to a city than coming through the Fort  
Pitt Tunnel at night."    The manager of the old state employment  
office in Carnegie was heavily involved into a student foreign  
exchange program.   Most of those kids got off a plane at PIT in the  
evening.   Before he took them home, he would take them on an after  
dark drive through the tunnel just to see the look on their faces as  
he burst out of the tunnel and they saw the Golden Triangle all  
aglow.  There is no better view of Pittsburgh.  It deserves to sold  
on a DVD.

What is the best thing about Pittsburgh?   The people.   A  
Lancastrian peeks out from behind closed curtains to see if his  
neighbor is in trouble and if so, he quickly hides before he gets  
involved.  But if a Pittsburgher sees his neighbor sweating trying to  
put the kids swing set together, he grabs his tools and two beers,  
and goes next door to help.  Pittsburghers are friendly beyond  
comprehension.   They are middlewestern in their attitude.   Great  
folks.

And what is the best thing about being where I am?   I can have an  
authentic Indian dinner one night, Mexican the next, Vietnamese the  
next, Thai the next, Chinese the next, etc., etc., etc.  I love all  
the new immigrants that have come here in the last 15 years.



On Jun 13, 2008, at 9:21 AM, Dennis F. Cramer wrote:

> (note subject change)
> I am quite aware of the number of visitors who come to Pittsburgh  
> and are pleasantly surprised.  There is no better entrance in the  
> country to a city than coming through the Fort Pitt Tunnel at  
> night.  But Pittsburgh has paid a price for that view.  The smoke  
> is gone and sometimes the haze & humidity leave.  Very few people  
> live "dahntawn" and so most evenings they roll up the sidewalks  
> before dark.
>
> People have moved to Butler and Washington Counties to avoid the  
> taxes of Allegheny County.  You do not want to look at Greene,  
> Fayette, Westmoreland, Indiana or Armstrong Counties due to lack of  
> tax base.  Many of the corporate jobs have also moved to subsidized  
> industrial parks surrounding the city, but you cannot get from one  
> suburb to the other by transit without going into town first.  Like  
> most cities, transit is set up like the spokes of a wheel, all  
> heading to the city.  Consider the route numbers of PRCo, they went  
> from 1 counterclockwise around the county feeding into downtown.   
> Many of the Port Authority bus routes serve the same purpose as  
> well as the parkways and routes 65, 28 and 51. The Allegheny County  
> colored (Blue, Red, Yellow, etc.) routes circle the city on routes  
> laid out over 50 years ago on many roads that have not seen much  
> improvement in those same years.  Pittsburgh has never had an  
> interstate beltway system.
>
> The infrastructure in most of the of the city and the old mill  
> towns in the valleys is shot.  Water main breaks abound and forget  
> about getting your street plowed in winter if you live on a side  
> street.  Visitors do not notice these things, nor do they notice  
> the aging and declining population.
>
> I, like many from western PA, are proud of where we live and enjoy  
> showing off the area.  I do not notice that as much in other  
> cities.  Most of Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna is hurting  
> due to a lack of meaningful employment.  Working in Wal Mart is  
> considered to be a good job in rural PA.  The logging industry is  
> on the upswing as we are into the third cutting of our forests and  
> the coal industry is slowly making a rebound.  Thankfully there is  
> a lot of coal left and we will get some work as long as the NIMBYs  
> do not get the way.  Our state is one of the leaders in wind  
> technology, but again, the NIMBYs are complaining to Harrisburg.
>
> We are losing Lancaster County to housing because that fantastic  
> farmland is the only large area in the state that will pass PERC  
> tests on a regular basis.  A percolation test determines how well  
> your septic system will leach water into the ground.  Most of the  
> state does not have sewer systems, so your property must pass a  
> PERC test before you can build.  The farmland in the Lancaster  
> Valley is the best soil in the state and of course, we are using it  
> to build homes instead of insuring long term farm management.   
> Agriculture is the number one job in PA right now, but it is losing  
> ground very quickly according to several professors from Penn State  
> whom I heard speak last month at the Pennsylvania Envirothon.  If  
> we lose all of that farmland, we have lost our number one employer.
>
> We miss the trolleys running through Allegheny County, but I  
> remember the greater number of people who complained about the  
> tracks throwing their automobile around and destroying their  
> suspension.
>
> A great quote from a few years ago while PennDot was rebuilding the  
> Fort Pitt bridge came from a route foreman of the Port Authority.   
> He was at a meeting in the City County Building as a high level  
> city executive looked out the window and commented how much easier  
> it would be to eliminate the gridlock if we just got rid of all the  
> buses!  People here do not understand mass transit like in the east  
> coast cities.  We were stupid enough to get rid of the vast  
> majority of the rail service we had too long ago.  It is tough to  
> teach old dogs new tricks.
>
>
>
>
>
> Dennis F. Cramer
>       Trombone
>
>
>