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

Fri Aug 28 23:24:40 EDT 2009

Pre-season games are to 'tune-up' the first string players, and hopefully not suffer any injuries, but most of these games involves evaluating rookies and free agents.  The first string for both teams called it a night after about the first quarter last weekend.  They might play half the game Saturday night, then the first string will just make a cameo appearance for the final pre-season game.  The real games start in two weeks.

PAT went from around 115 million annual riders mid-1970s to around 66 million last year.  Rail ridership has hovered around 25,000 per day during that time frame.  The system loss has not occurred on Overbrook nor Beechview.

John

> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Allegheny County's new Transit Development Plan
> Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:59:24 -0400
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> 
> Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Love it Derrick.
> 
> Having worked all my life as an number cruncher / analyst .... I 
> guess I feel I never wasted too much time looking at numbers if I 
> eventually was able to pull out the right answer. Sometimes the 
> results are misleading but we try.
> 
> By the way ... passenger counts ... the one thing I could have said 
> and I did not is that we are now pretty much cognizant that mass 
> transit riders do prefer rail over bus ... we can now show that 
> riding went down when we converted lines from rail to bus and came 
> back up again in the same corridors when we went back to rail. In 
> the case of Charlotte, NC, building a light rail line cause such 
> impressive riding that the entire system ridership doubled in one 
> year. But I think it is also very safe to say that, regardless of 
> how much the public may like these new systems, riding levels will 
> never be at the point where they can support a privately owned 
> system. And government has to answer to the tax payers and the 
> voters. The TWU and the NAACP and other civil rights coalitions 
> represent large blocka of voters so when you take over PAT or SEPTA, 
> it is easier to run empty buses over the same old routes for 40 years 
> as long as you can shift the burden of payment to the state and 
> federal governments. And the local boys tried for years to shift 
> that expense until FTA screamed that they wanted fares to at least 
> cover one-third of operating costs and then the locals simply tried 
> to redefine operating costs. Right John?
> 
> The renumbering of routes in Allegheny County reflects, in my not so 
> silent or humble opinion, a reflection that PAT has finally come to 
> grips with the fact that they can no longer shift to the state and 
> federal government the burden of financing of a bloated transit 
> system that needs to be reduced to a smaller number of lines. About 
> time, guys.
> 
> Beyond reducing it's size, I don't expect to see any substantive 
> change until we recognize that oil resources are finite.
> 
> And who is Fred Mergner and if he is a railfan, why don't we have him 
> in the museum and in this group of loony fellows?
> 
> Urban interstates? Whole different issue than rural interstates. 
> I truly love the scheme of mileage based exit numbers for rural 
> interstates but it does fall apart in places when you are on things 
> like the Roosevelt Highway in Manhattan or the Cross Bronx Expressway 
> or the exits coming off either end of the San Francisco - Oakland Bay 
> Bridge. Jones Falls in Baltimore is another. And Bob Rathke could 
> cite the expressways in Chicago.
> 
> But for rural interstates, my personal conviction is that mileage 
> based exit numbers is the best scheme the cat dragged home. It's 
> great to get on at 232 and know I can make it to 495 in about four 
> hours with a heavy foot.
> 
> And to Matt Barry: The fact that I responded to this in the first 
> place is my way of saying thanks for the post. I enjoyed it.
> 
> And what happened in the last half of the pre-season demonstration 
> game with the Steelers the other night? It went from 10-3 or 
> something like that over the Ravens in the first half to a total 
> upset by the final goal. I thought it wasn't going to change so I 
> was spending most of the time watching something more interesting on 
> PBS.
> 
> 
> On Aug 28, 2009, at 5:07 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:
> 
> > 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
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 

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