[PRCo] Re: Protesting Washington & Charleroi Conversions

Tue Aug 18 20:46:07 EDT 2009

Right ... if you want to pay the bill for ever and ever and ever and  
ever and ever.

And if everyone wants to continue going to Dawntawn to work.

I want to see the 2010 census numbers for Pittsburgh and Allegheny  
County.  This recession is going to do a number on that area.   And  
on some of the other rust belt cities ... Cleveland, Loraine, New  
Castle, Sandusky, Youngstown, Warren, Rochester, Syracuse and so forth.

We still want to live and work dispersed in the suburbs and use our  
huge cars, Herb.

The baby boomers remain in denial.   He don't believe the oil could  
ever run out.   It will never happen.   Remember what I said in the  
previous e-mail.   Our grandchildren will have to sort that all out  
because we don't believe it needs be solved.

On Aug 18, 2009, at 8:33 PM, Herb Brannon wrote:

> But just think what a really great transit corridor that would be  
> today. If
> upgraded to double track light rail standards it would be a viable
> alternative to using a private auto and I-79.
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 7:40 PM, Schneider Fred  
> <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
>
>> Barry and the rest of you:
>>
>> The fallacy in this story (the link that Barry provided) is that the
>> PUC would have allowed the conversion no matter how many people
>> protested the Washington and Charleroi conversions if it could be
>> proven it was in the corporation's  best economic interest to make
>> the change.   The man in the news article suggests that it might be
>> possible to prevent the conversion of the interurbans in 1953 and I'm
>> saying that it was truly impossible.   All Pittsburgh Railways had to
>> do was hold up the record of continuously declining riders since 1945
>> and the PUC was going to override any and all opposition.
>>
>> Unlike regulatory bodies in some states, the Pennsylvania PUC and the
>> PSC before 1930, served to protect the interests of the utilities in
>> the commonwealth from extremists who believed they should give
>> services away for nothing.
>>
>> There were cases in the past where protesters came to PUC abandonment
>> hearings demanding that rail service be retained.   Two examples I am
>> thinking of were West Penn's McKeesport city service, where the
>> complainants said that it would be an undue burden on the community
>> when it snowed because the warm and comfortable trolleys were much
>> safer in such weather.  [As a sidebar, you might need to be told that
>> heaters were a option in automobiles in the 1930s.]   Of course the
>> PUC was not going to force West Penn to run its vehicles 362 days out
>> of the year so those people could have streetcars the other 3 days.
>> The other example involved parents complaining that West Penn cars
>> would be safer between Larimer and Irwin than school buses.   If my
>> recall is valid, the judge then asked how many of those attending the
>> hearing came on the trolley and of course none of them did.
>>
>> The difference between Pittsburgh Railways and any other private
>> transit corporations and today's public agencies is that those
>> private companies had to obtain enough money from the fare box to (1)
>> pay all operating costs, (2) pay all capital costs, (3) pay all debt
>> service, and (3) pay all taxes and franchise costs that the federal,
>> state and local governments threw at them.
>>
>> The public agencies of today only need to recover, according to the
>> Federal Transportation Administration (FTA), 30% of their operating
>> costs from the farebox and they (the local agencies) keep changing
>> the definition of what operating costs are.   Day to day maintenance
>> items keep getting pushed out of operating costs into capital so we
>> can turn around and then ask the feds for money for a midlife
>> overhaul of your bus or trolley or subway car when it collapses like
>> a one horse shay ... so simple repairs suddenly got kicked out of the
>> 30% bracket into the 70% bracket.   In other words, 30% shrinks to
>> 20%.      Your fare of about $2.00 covers a miniscule portion of the
>> total.   The typical transit ride probably costs somewhere between $8
>> and $12 today.   I don't think we can really tell how much because
>> none of the federal bonds that were issued in the 1960s for buses or
>> MARTA's subway cars or Washington's subway or PAT's first LRVs are
>> ever going be paid off, there will simply be new bonds issued to
>> cover the cost plus accumulated interest over the years.
>>
>> We cannot state for certain what the true fare today really is
>> because don't depreciate anything.   We live in a dream world.   The
>> federal government gives us a subway.   We do not write of a portion
>> of it every year.   We wait until it totally collapses and then we
>> point fingers.   Suddenly we need to add another $115 million to the
>> infrastructure cost which should have been proportionally added a
>> little each year.
>>
>> In a real world we would buy a bus and depreciate it until we scrap
>> it and then we would write off any remaining depreciation from the
>> books.   In this dream world, we get a grant from the federal
>> government.   The feds issue bonds ... series EE or whatever.   When
>> they run out, the feds issue new bonds.   The bus they financed may
>> have been scrapped 20 years ago but the debt service is still paying
>> it off.   (I guess it is sort of like the woman that makes the
>> headlines tonight who is pregnant with 12 babies.   Or like the
>> consumer who uses Visa to pay off MasterCard to pay off Discover to
>> pay off American Express to pay off Visa to pay off MasterCard to pay
>> off Discover to pay off American Expr....)
>>
>> The cost of the ride in the private sector gradually became less
>> because of efficiencies and because periodically the companies went
>> bankrupt and wrote off some of the capital costs.   The public sector
>> doesn't write off anything ... it just keeps rolling over old costs
>> into new ones and increasing the basis for tomorrow's fares.
>>
>> However, as unfortunate as this sounds, the oil is running out so we
>> need mass transit.  The idiots are in command.   I haven't a clue
>> what our grandchildren will do about it.
>>
>> I should add that I have the e-mail list for all the kids in my high
>> school class (we're 70 years old now).   The big topic on this list
>> now is health care.   I'm amused by the number of them who like
>> Medicare but will tell you they don't like socialized medicine.   I
>> guess it's socialized if you have it ... but not if I have it?   I
>> guess transit is the same way.   It social goodness if it helps me.
>> It's terrible if it helps you?      :<)
>>
>> I would love to read Ed Lybarger's rebuttal to this....   And Derrick
>> too.
>>
>> And Barry ... how do you print these news items?   They appear to be
>> blocked so you cannot do anything but read them.
>>
>> Fred Schneider
>>
>>
>> On Aug 18, 2009, at 3:20 PM, Barry, Matthew R wrote:
>>
>>> http://news.google.com/newspapers?
>>> id=tiUNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=6WoDAAAAIBAJ&dq=millvale&pg=4884%2C3082759
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> On America's North Coast
>
>
>