[PRCo] Re: living in PA

[Jerry MATT Matsick]

Fred - when I was up at York in April 2007,  a friend and I drove from Lancaster to Harrisburg, I could
not believe the growth, where are these people coming from:?   Philly / Balto areas?   Where do they
work?      Lancaster seems to be booming and yet York just 45 minutes to the west seems to be
stagnant?    What ever happend to the "Trolley" talk that went on a year or so ago in Lancaster?
--
>From the RIVER CITY by the Sea! 
Jerry "Matt" Matsick 
J A C K S O N V I L L E, Florida ! 

-------------- Original message from Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>: -------------- 


> 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 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>