[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh one-man cars

[Schneider Fred]

OK boss.   Nice to have you back with us.

When are we going to do that history of holding companies?

On Sep 12, 2008, at 5:03 PM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

> Market Street Railway was not PRCo's parent company.  It was  
> another holding
> of United Railways Investment Company of Jersey City, NJ.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of
> Schneider Fred
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 12:25 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> 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.
>>
>>
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