[PRCo] Re: Pennsylvania Turnpike

[Schneider Fred]

Amazing the few years difference in Ed's and my ages and what we  
remember of the turnpike in our youth.

I was born about six months, three weeks before the first section of  
the toll road opened from Irwin to Middlesex Township, Cumberland  
County.

Fourteen months after the Turnpike opened, a national speed limit of  
35 mph was imposed to conserve tires.   Remember, our rubber came  
from southeast Asia which was under Japanese control.   Shortly  
thereafter gasoline rationing was imposed, allegedly to conserve fuel  
but probably more importantly to restrict the use of rubber which we  
didn't have.   My father, who did have occasion to drive the Turnpike  
during the war, claimed that if you saw an automobile approaching in  
those years, chances were it was a police officer.   The road was  
deserted.  He remembered that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission  
was have serious doubts that it would be able to repay the revenue  
bonds because no one was driving on the road during the war years.

I said my dad used it during the war.   He worked for a company in  
Irwin that made electric hardware for merchant marine ships.    
Several times he had to go to Baltimore to talk to ship yard  
people.   I remember him complaining that they would only see him a  
lunch time so that his company had to pay for their lunch!    His  
preferred route to Baltimore was not to go into Pittsburgh and park  
his car.   Rather he would drive to Ohiopyle and leave it at the  
desert B&O station there and take the train from there to Baltimore,  
or so he said. I can't fathom why he didn't take the train out of  
Connellsville.

I may have been on it [the Turnpike] once or twice during the war.    
Don't know.   If I did it would have been a case of meeting dad after  
work at Irwin on a Saturday.   Gas rationing, remember?

I do remember it immediately after the war on trips to Ohiopyle ...  
that would involve using it from Irwin to Somerset or Irwin to  
Donegal.   I remember one route took you through Laurel Hill tunnel,  
the other did not.   Traffic was no light in the immediate post war  
years that you could easily walk across the highway to the other  
side.  (Remember that it was customary in those years to go out for a  
drive on the Super Highway with a picnic basket and have your  
lunch.)   And remember that, until sometime in the 1950s, the median  
was still a mowed lawn.   Can you imagine trying to find a suicidal  
employee willing to get on a tractor today and cut that grass in  
traffic?

We moved to Lancaster in 1949.   Then we had excuses to cross back to  
Pittsbugh and southeastern Ohio to visit grandparents.   We crossed  
the state on the turnpike probably two or three times a year between  
1949 and 1959.   I remember the transition from grass median to  
barriers.   I saw the gradual build up of traffic.  I remember the  
construction of the east and west and Northeast extension.   I also  
recall the plan to build the Turnpike through Erie County, which  
evolved into I-90 after Ike signed the Interstate and Defense Highway  
Act in 1956.

Ed mentions the waiting lines to get into the tunnels.   I heard  
about them but I never saw them.   Why?   Because the bypass around  
Laurel Hill, Rays Hill and Sideling Hill and the additional bores at  
Allegheny, Tuscarora, Kittitinny, and Blue mountains were done  
between 1962 and 1966.   I was in college and married and broke  
between 1961 and 1967.   I wasn't going anywhere.   And I was in the  
army and outside the United States (Germany) between 1959 and 1961.    
Yes, I crossed the state a few time in that interval but it was  
always on weekdays and never holidays so I didn't see those legendary  
blockages that end remembers.   I remembered the posted tunnel bypass  
detours on the back country roads ... but I never was there on peak  
travel days.

I think the one problem I can remember in the 1960s was that we  
insisted, during construction programs, in reducing the Turnpike  
width to one lane in each direction and forcing everyone down to 40  
mph.   Remember I was in my 20s then and young men don't like driving  
slowly.   And I had just come from Germany where they understood that  
you could narrow the lanes down and still get two lanes in by using  
the shoulder as a lane.   I'm thinking, why are they so bright and we  
are so dumb?   We did get around to that same way of doing things.

A couple of years ago a friend and I were driving through Austria  
discussing how highway design worked.   I remembered that lane edge  
painting started in Europe and migrated to the USA ... I saw it first  
in Germany, then it moved over here.   Jersey barriers started in New  
Jersey and moved all over the world.   After thought of example after  
example, Bruce concluded that the engineers were charge and they  
moved whatever was sensible around the world.   If the politicians  
were in charge, they could never accept something that came from  
another country.

You think that is why the articulated, low-floor streetcars have made  
it here?

On Feb 19, 2009, at 10:48 AM, Ken and Tracie wrote:

> My parents weren't thrilled by them either, due to the traffic  
> congestion.
> But we kids loved the tunnels, Our dog, Boots HATED them!
> Saying, "Tunnel, Bootsie, tunnel." was psychological torture for  
> her when
> she was riding with us, even if we were miles away from those  
> bores.She
> would crouch down in the back seat or the on the floor in front of  
> the back
> seat when she heard those dreaded words. Our father didn't waste  
> any time
> putting a stop to our teasing the poor creature.
>
> K.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Edward H. Lybarger" <trams2 at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 7:34 AM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pennsylvania Turnpike
>
>
>> The Turnpike has its own cult, and there is a lot of stuff on it out
>> there.
>>
>> Laurel Hill Tunnel looks a lot better in this photo than it ever  
>> did when
>> I
>> had to drive through it!  It was a dingy place and usually there  
>> was a
>> wait
>> to get in.
>>
>> Ed
>
>
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>
>