[PRCo] Re: Anybody Here Know Anything About This?

[Schneider Fred]

Before I were to say anything, I would want to ride route 66 to get a  
feel for it.   SEPTA is not noted for understanding how people are on  
their vehicles.  By the way, 66 does have 7 minute off peak headways  
but only to Gregg Street.   The service to the end of the line is  
every 12 minutes.

The city trolleys (10, 11, 13, 15, 34, 36) all run ever 10 minutes  
regardless of how many people are on the cars.   You are going to  
have trouble convincing me that 10 hauls as many people as 13!   But  
it doesn't matter when passengers are not what is important.   Most  
city bus routes are also 10 minutes.   I think it has something to do  
with placating the public and the drivers union and thus not having  
political turmoil.   John Swindler used the term policy headways.  I  
would be tempted to say political headways.   You get my message.   
The Red Arrow Division rail route headways are all 20 minutes  
regardless of loads.

Furthermore, routes 59 and 66 are operated by SEPTA but they are city- 
owned routes and always have been.   The city may be twisting SEPTA's  
arm behind closed doors regarding headways.   Route 59 was created as  
a Birney shuttle about 1921 when Philadelphia Rapid Transit showed no  
interest in expanding into unprofitable new auto suburbs.   So the  
city built the line and PRT operated it for them.  The operating  
contract was passed down through the years to PTC and then to SEPTA.

Route 66 was the old Frankford, Tacony and Holmesburg Street  
Railway.   It went broke about 1926, was purchased by the city and  
leased to PRT for operation.   Of course in the FT&H days (and that  
was the second company, HT&F went broke in 1910), that was very rural  
country.   It was the last farmland inside the city of Philadelphia.   
By the time PTC converted it to trackless about 1955, it was a  
relatively heavy feeder to the Frankford elevated line.   Shortly  
after it was converted to trackless, express wires were installed for  
rush hour use.   But I don't know how heavy it is today.   I was  
aware when my wife's aunt and uncle died 30 years ago, and they lived  
up there, that the neighborhood was changing.

Your last statement about Dayton:  I am assuming it is still a bus.    
The public accepts rail cars over buses but I have never seen any  
psychological studies showing that they give a damn whether they are  
knocked down in the aisle of a swerving trackless or a lurching  
diesel bus.   The point I was trying to make and I did it poorly was  
simple:  the trolleys in Dayton are the heaviest routes.  They will  
still be heavy routes as diesels ... for a few more years.   The  
other diesel routes are all the weaker routes.
>


On Feb 25, 2009, at 7:48 PM, Joshua Dunfield wrote:

> 2009/2/25 Schneider Fred <fwschneider at comcast.net>:
>> Seattle?   Vancouver?   That may be both volume issues and an
>> environmentally conscious city government.   Philadelphia running TCs
>> there strikes me as lunacy but when you don't know how many people
>> are on the vehicle, what does it matter.
>
> Current weekday headways on the 66 are 3 minutes peak, 7 minutes
> mid-day.  Hard to believe that SEPTA, which hasn't exactly been in
> love with trolleybuses, would run it that often without decent
> ridership.  But I haven't ridden that line; the last trolleybus I rode
> in Philly was the 79 (probably in 2002), which has since been
> dieselized.
>
>> And Dayton?   How can it be economically sound in a city of 155,000
>> people that lost 100,000 residents in the last 40 years?   Well, if
>> you believe GDRTA's numbers, the diesel buses are are taking in 12
>> cents per mile in fares and costing 95 cents a mile.   The trolleys
>> are taking in 82 cents a mile and costing 1.01 a mile to run.    But
>> there is no route in the system running more often than every 15 to
>> 20 minutes and most are 20 to 30 and worse.   By thought is that the
>> routes the trolleys are on would still take in 82 cents a mile but
>> would only cost 95 cents if you didn't have the trackless overhead.
>
> Unless you can build a diesel bus that sounds and performs like a
> trolleybus, how can you assume they'd still take in 82 cents a mile?

>
> -j.
>
>