[PRCo] Re: Fw: Streetcars in D.C.

[Fred Schneider]

I THINK JOHN PRETTY WELL SUMMED IT UP AND MAYBE SHOUTING IS IN ORDER TO GET YOUR ATTENTION.   When I was working, my career was labor statistics.   I was unusual in that I loved what I did.   In my own field, I was sort of like Krambles or Tennywon or Geissenheimer or Vutz or Lovejoy or Bente or Hamley in their field.   I didn't just care about the area in which I worked, I was fascinated with the whole sphere of data.   Still am.  
As a result I began to ask people peripheral questions about subjects which we didn't really collect data.  One of those areas, and it is very relevant to this discussion, is do you love your work?   Do you love getting up on Monday morning and going to work?   I had this nasty habit of picking out people at random in the state employment office and asking questions like that.   Or friends I met.   Anyone.   What was the result?   Roughly one person in ten really cares about his job.   The other nine are there for the paycheck.

With that in mind, it should become very clear that, just as John said, politics are local.   Running transit is local.   You care about your job from 9 to 5 and then you go the hell home.   You care about the politics because local people reelect you.   How well trolleys are working in Portland isn't of any interest to you or to 90 percent of the transit managers.   Remember, for most of them increasing the number of riders or making the system more efficient is not part of the job description.   Raising more money from the tax payers is part of the job description and they are local.  

The three people who John named were exceptions to the rule.   They were examples of those one in ten who loved they did.   I knew all three of them.   I last saw Harold the day that the Newark subway extension opened ... we had lunch that day.   He cared about the industry as a whole.   I last saw George on a fantrip on the South Shore a few years before he died.   That man knew everything from management to DC railway car control ... I'll never forget him explaining over the phone to me how HL and PC control worked.   And Ed Tennyson ... I still get Christmas cards from him every year and an occasional note.   But they were exceptions.   

The rest are like the manager of the Long Island Railroad in the late 1960s who said he was going to make it the best commuter railroad in the country.   His solution?   Change the way you measure on time from running on time to anything within ten minutes late is now on-time.   Suddenly he is reporting 90 some percent of his trains are on time.  

Joshua, as the old timers who worked in the private sector retired or got pissed off and quit, the business simply collapsed.   The result are simply people who do not understand the business.   Example ... John B. Catoe of WMATA in Washington who ran for his life on April 2nd.   Catoe had numerous scandals ... mosty accidents and people killed on the track ... cars not properly reinforced after it was discovered that they were not structurally sound ... his solution was to tell everyone who good Metro was, not to fix anything.   

John Swindler knew a great story that came from a chap who has been the past president of Amtrak and Toronto Transportation Commission and I think even SEPTA. Name is David L. Gunn.   Gunn was asked how he prepared for board meetings at TTC and the answer was, "We listen to Three Stooges comedies."   In other words, nothing in the meeting is going to be relevant anyway, how can you prepare?

And then there is another great friend of mine in the industry named Russ Jackson.  He was riding on the P&W, aka SEPTA route 100 one day.   The new SEPTA general manager was standing beside him.   No this one wasn't Gunn.   Gunn had a lot more brains than to ask, "Are we inside the city of Philadelphia?"   The man was so geographically challenged that he didn't even know where the busiest routes in his system ran ... he was clueless that 69th St. Terminal was outside the city.   Now understand that his job is fund raising and meeting with politicians and you would think he would know which routes serve the territory of which political hacks, no wouldn't you?   Obviously the answer is no.   

Josh ... Yesterday I was involved in something unusual.   I explained it off this list to a few people including John.   It was testing light rail cars in Baltimore to see what speeds caused passenger discomfort on curves.   I was invited to be a participant.   I got the distinct impression that the consultants were baffled by what they were doing and I wrote it on one of my test sheets .... that is by not running the cars through all curves and constant speeds (and then making the next trip over the line at a different constant speed), they were causing linear acceleration (braking and acceration) to cause more discomfort than the lateral motion on the curves.   That, in my mind, invalidated what they were trying to find out.   In pretty much proved to me that the people conducting the tests ... the consultants ... also had never ridden rail cars before!!!!

Do we really want to carry this farther?   You want to see a good system?   Go look at Utah Transportation Authority in Salt Lake City or Portland or San Diego.   So far they seem to have held up pretty well.   Houston?   Not sure how good the newest manager is.    Phoenix is off to a good start ... we'll see in another ten years.   




On Apr 18, 2010, at 12:41 PM, John Swindler wrote:

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> All politics are local, and that can be paraphased to include the transit industry.  Generally very knowledgeable about what goes on within their service area, but elsewhere?  It's mixed.  There are not that many Harold Geissenheimer, George Krambles and Ed Tennyson's within the industry.  They are not the norm.  When they leave, more than just institutional knowledge of the local scene goes out the door.  Harold left PAT around 1976.  That applies to this discussion on catenary.  Who was left high up in PAT to counter the consultants recommendations???
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> There are some things that you have to see to appreciate.  Reading a trade journal goes only so far.  Normal people don't spend their vacation time traveling around the world visiting and riding other transit properties.  And the era of cheap airfares to Europe didn't really arrive until the 1980s.  
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> Cheers
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> John
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>> Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:20:05 -0400
>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fw: Streetcars in D.C.
>> From: joshua.dunfield at gmail.com
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> 
>> On 17 April 2010 11:39, Phillip Clark Campbell <pcc_sr at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I do not accept that Pat was unaware of other systems both
>>> nationally and internationally.  What is more disturbing is the adamant
>>> defense of this 'alleged isolation' onlist.  This defense is far more
>>> revealing of character while seriously undermining the credibility of
>>> posts.
>> 
>> I thought people were talking about overhead construction and PAT
>> management. When did it start being about "character" and
>> "credibility"? Did I miss something?
>> 
>> -j.
>> 
>> 
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