[PRCo] Re: Allegheny County's new Transit Development Plan

[Derrick Brashear]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 5:01 PM, Schneider Fred<fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> Very interesting ... in some respects one would think there is a
> railfan hinding in the staff ...

Wonder if Fred Mergner is still there.


> 8 Perrysville, 39 Brookline, 78
> Oakmont (gone since the earth was cooling), 40 Mt. Washington, 44
> Knoxville.
> I guess I have two thoughts.   The positive one is its good to quite
> confusing the riders with 11A, 11B, 11C, 11D, 11E ... °.

I wonder why we decided to confuse people on urban interstates with
mileage-based exit numbers which work out
to 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D (quick, which one is Grant St?)

> The negative is do we really have to mess with what has been in place
> since 1964 ... it's been there for 45 years now.   This is as bad as
> PAT screwing with what Pittsburgh Railways had in place for almost as
> long.   By now the public has no recollection of 8 PERRYSVILLE but
> they do understand 11D PERRYSVILLE AVENUE.

In many cases, the routes are not the same anymore, so, your old 11D
may not be your new bus for the same ride.

> The other thing very obvious to me is that the routes of yore are not
> the routes of today.   If you pull out a contemporary transit guide
> and compare it to a 1955 Pittsburgh Railways map, where we run to
> today isn't where we ran to back then.   The demand today isn't the
> same as it was then.   Almost a half a century has elapsed and the
> PAT service area has lost close to a million people.

Some are. Many aren't.

> I would really like to see comparisons in peak hour riding past the
> maximum load point in 1945, 1960 and 2009 for Perrysville,
> Frankstown, Ellsworth, Lincoln, Butler Street, Millvale, routes 18,
> 19 and 20 which is all one route today, and the 2nd Avenue lines.

Some 2007 numbers were in the TDP documents leading up to this point,
in the alternatives analysis. I wasted entirely too much time reading
it.

Derrick