[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh one-man cars

[Schneider Fred]

Why certainly I did Ken.   I also look at the whole world as my  
nation.   I'm not as provincial as some people.
The 51st state you say?   Statistics Canada gives a current national  
population of 33,372,125.... the whole boom'n country.

The 2006 estimate for California is 36,457,549.

There are some fabulously pretty places in Canada.   I've never been  
in the Yukon, the two provinces that now make up the Northwest  
Territories, Labrador or Newfoundland.  But I have driven from coast- 
to-coast in Canada ... well, almost.   I ducked back into northern  
Minnesota to do my laundry once and take a shortcut between Fort  
William and Winnepeg.  I've not been farther west on Vancouver Island  
than Victoria so I truthfully only looked at the sound and not the  
Pacific Ocean.   But I did gaze on the Atlantic Ocean from Halifax.

Though I never rode the old streetcars in Vancouver, Edmonton,  
Calgary, Regina, Moose Jaw or Winnipeg, I have ridden all the new  
systems in Western Canada.   And I have watched the evening parade of  
interurban trains leaving McGill Street in Montreal on the Montreal  
and Southern Counties as a young teenager.   I'm been bounced around  
in a former Staten Island wooden coach on the Quebec Railway.   I've  
also seen Ottawa and Montreal when the streets were literally awash  
in trolleys.

But streetcars aside, there is nothing prettier than the Canadian  
Rockies outside Banff or a field of yellow flowers used for canola  
oil out in the Canadian prairies.   The heritage museum in Calgary is  
well worth the visit ... a must see.   And the best view of Niagara's  
majesty is from the Canadian side, not our side.   And you can find  
some great Ukranian restaurants out in the prairies.   And Vancouver  
is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet ... can you  
imagine Talapia swimming in a tank in a supermarket to satisfy the  
Orientals' need for truly fresh fish on the dinner table.  The other  
side of the Chinese aisle in that store was the Indian food  
counter.   That is a city where you can find restaurant upon  
restaurant upon restaurant where you will be the only occidental in a  
Chinese or Indian restaurant ... an almost absolute guarantee that  
you will be getting a really authentic dinner.

You should know better, Ken, than to prime my pump!

Other comments interwoven below.

On Sep 12, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:

> Of course, you meant Canada when you wrote " It was one of the earlier
> public transit agencies in the nation" concerning Toronto. Our  
> Canadian
> friends tend to pimp slap us when we think of their nation as our  
> "51st
> state". ;-)
>
> Seriously, wasn't the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit built as the  
> "Cleveland
> Interurban Railroad" after WW I to serve new subdivisions? If so,  
> it would
> be an exception to the rule.

I believe the Van Sweringen brothers developed Shaker Heights, the  
Cleveland Interurban Railroad, and the railroad station downtown.    
The first CIRy cars were second-hand Cleveland Railway Peter Witts so  
it had to be after 1912.  The link to Wikipedia supports that the the  
promoters names were correct but takes it back as far as 1905.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaker_Heights,_Ohio


>
> I'm not sure about when  the SHRT was built, but I seem to recall  
> it was
> built rather late. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I am wrong.
>
> Scott Greig noted the CRT's 1926 extension to Niles Center  
> (Skokie), via the
> NSL,  didn't work out and was replaced by buses in 1948. Of course,  
> George
> Krambles brought it back as the "Skokie Swift" in 1964 and it has been
> successful since.

Successful since probably because of different economics than we had  
in 1948.   First of all government is now paying the freight and it  
is willing to loose 80% of the operating and maintenance and capital  
costs ... loose means collect from taxes instead of the fare box.    
Government doesn't look at the financial costs of one entity in an  
entire system; it looks at who the voters are that will kick me out  
of office if I disrupt their lives by removing the service.   Next,  
the highways have become incredibly overtaxed since 1948.   If  
Illinois and Wisconsin are anything like Pennsylvania, the number of  
registered vehicles would have doubled between 1945 and 1950, and  
doubled again between 1950 and 2000.  In that area the numbers might  
even be worse than Pennsylvania because the population gains are  
more.   Between 1945 and 1950 we finished putting the men in  
automobiles and started on the women.   Since then we got all the  
girls in cars and then decided that every teenager need their own cars.

But Chicago is a different environment than the rest of the world.    
You need to understand some basic numbers.  One out of every five  
transit riders in the United States used the New York subways.    
Three out of ten are on the New York subways and New York buses.     
One out of five transit riders in the U. S. are using commuter rail,  
light rail, or subways outside of New York.  So now we are up around  
50% of the nation's transit patrons.   Forty percent of the remainder  
are on scheduled bus lines and just about half of those are in the  
ten largest cities beyond New York, and I include Chicago in that  
group.   That means that pages and pages and pages and pages and  
pages of systems in the U. S. account for 20% of the bus riders.    
You cannot count Chicago Transit Authority in with the all those  
other companies.   What is the final 10% ... mostly ferries.   A huge  
chunk is the Washington State Ferries, New York's ferries and  
Boston's ferries.   Those few crazy personal rapid transit schemes  
are in it.   And about 2% are demand responsive systems ... often  
paid out of old age or welfare monies.  And then there are some that  
don't even appear like the Amtrak operations that haul commuters ...  
for example there might be 2,500 people a day that Amtrak moves in  
the Harrisburg corridor for whom we really have no clean numbers.    
Same applies to Amtrak riders between Philly and New York who are  
willing to spend 10 times more than SEPTA + NJT fares to get a one  
seat ride.

>
> Then there was the Rochester Subway, built primarily to get the big
> interurbans cars off the streets. Of course, these interurbans were  
> all
> abandoned a year or so after the line opened.

To quote the Fonz,  Correcetmundo.   And as I recall, the right-of- 
way in 1956 was coveted by highway planners.
>
> Even so, there are diehard Milwaukee fans who insist a six block  
> subway from
> the end of the P.R.O.W. east to the Beer City terminal would have  
> guaranteed
> retention of Milwaukee's Rapid Transit Line. Never mind that today's
> interurban bus lines (Greyhound and Badger) find their way to I-94  
> traveling
> virtually the same distance over city streets.
>
> The six block Milwaukee subway, if completed probably would have  
> become a
> conduit for the steam heating pipes from Valley Power Plant to the  
> large
> steam heat customers downtown......

You're to young to be as cynical as I am, Ken.
>
> K.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 9:24 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh one-man cars
>
>
>> Doesn't it....
>>
>> And that logic worked for a while.    Building in vacant fields and
>> expecting traffic to materialize worked fine in 1900-1915.   But
>> after World War One we wanted our automobiles.   If you had a shiny
>> new Model T,  you had a girl friend.    (Sex sells, doesn't it.)
>>
>> Think of all those lines that Henry Huntington built in the Southland
>> under the Pacific Electric banner to support his housing
>> developments.   I think Donald Duke once told me that there was one
>> line, perhaps Newport Beach or Huntington Beach that did not serve
>> Huntington real estate.    All the rest did.
>>
>> And then the automobile came and the transit promoters were no longer
>> stupid enough to follow the axiom, "build and they will come."
>>
>> Remember how Toronto Railway, in the 1920s, refused to build into new
>> areas because they felt there would be no profit in doing it.   That
>> resulted in the formation of the Toronto Civic Railway, which
>> eventually bought out Toronto Railway, and became TTC.  (I do not
>> remember which order.)    It was one of the earlier public transit
>> agencies in the nation.
>>
>> And how about the parent company of Pittsburgh Railways?   San
>> Francisco's Market Street Railway, owned by United Railroads  (United
>> was the PRC founder), refused to build into certain parts of that
>> city's Western Addition feeling there was no money to be had.  So
>> what happened?   The city formed the Municipal Railway in 1912 (I
>> think that was the date) to provide service to those areas.  Lines B
>> and C ran out Geary to the ocean while K, L, M, N and J were south of
>> Golden Gate Park.   Muni acquired Market Street Railway in 1944 and I
>> think it is rather ironic that the lines running today are Muni
>> lines; the Market Street lines were all abandoned after the war.
>> One exception.  The new line on South Third Street restores service
>> that Market Street Railway abandoned before World War II.
>>
>> I don't know enough about the Cleveland or Boston history to know if
>> those early public agencies resulted from attempts to build into
>> virgin territory or early solutions to business failures.
>>
>> New York was the largest early public agency when Brooklyn and Queens
>> Transit / BMT and the Interborough Rapid Transit fell into city
>> ownership in 1940.   That was more city political greed and
>> manipulation under Mayor LaGuardia than any above board reasons.
>> The city had previously built the Independent division of the subway
>> starting about 1930-1933 competing with the IRT and BMT.   (Certainly
>> you know I'm going to say that the city building a subway under the
>> IRT's subsidiary Manhattan Railway Corporation's 6th Avenue elevated
>> is not fair competition and has political overtones.   Sounds to me
>> like, "You'll do it our way or else.")
>>
>>
>> On Sep 12, 2008, at 10:51 AM, Ken and Tracie wrote:
>>
>>> Sort of reminds me of those CSL lines like Argo, which ran into the
>>> prairies
>>> outside Chicago on open track, laid on "streets" mapped by the city/
>>> county,
>>> but not yet built.
>>>
>>> K.
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Schneider Fred" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
>>> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
>>> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 7:19 AM
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh one-man cars
>>>
>>>
>>>> Ed Lybarger mentioned that a year or so ago.   Brookline via South
>>>> Bank ran from Brookline Blvd and Queensboro Avenue to downtown via
>>>> the P&CS beginning September 12, 1910.   It was discontinued  
>>>> November
>>>> 1910 due to "traffic insufficient."   Nobody lived there that  
>>>> early.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>