[PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts

[John Swindler]

Obviously, Fred, you haven't been riding some of those mid-day SEPTA routes.  I've had counts of over 100 passengers on inbound route 36 cars at 3 in the afternoon.

Cheers
John




> Subject: [PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts
> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 21:43:56 -0500
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> 
> I think we all understand that full in the peak never was money making.   Rush hours were always money losers.   You make money by putting your bus on the street and filling it 24 hours a day.   In the old days, those routes that made money were 8, 88, 82 ... the ones that ran 24 hours and had decent loads all day long.   If you market is, for example, the steel mill that changes shifts three times a day and nothing more, that's a money losing route because you need cars to move 3,000 people to the mill at the same fare as you charge to move someone else in the off peak.  
> 
> It was always standard practice to run packed equipment in the rush hour.  Read those 1935 newspapers.   The riders in the heart of depression were complaining that they were being forced to stand on streetcars.    Pittsburgh Railways didn't make it a practice to give away seats to everyone.   The basic rule in transit was very simple ... the car isn't full until you cannot look through from one side to the other and see daylight.   Those rush hour seats are the most expensive the company provides because every car and every operator is only needed for a few hours a day but the cars sit unused for the rest of the day (and week) and the operators often get a full day's pay.  
> 
> There was a time when we went into downtown Pittsburgh for a multitude of theaters and restaurants in the evening.   Same thing with East Liberty, Wilkinsburg, Dormont, Mount Lebanon, McKeesport, McKees Rocks, North Side and so forth.   Therefore the company could count on keeping a certain share of their cars busy all day long.  I remember as kid, finding a theater I wanted to visit in Shadyside and riding an 8 car from my grandmother's house downtown and then something else out 5th Avenue.   That kind of traffic kept some of the vehicles active 16 to 20 hours a day.
> 
> How many bus loads of kids does PAT haul to Kennywood in the summer now?  Remember PRC used to run route 60 to the park every Sunday.   I'll bet that doesn't happen today.     
> 
> Today?   I suspect that most of the business is rush hour.   By six o'clock its over.   If we want to go to a show or dinner, we get in our cars and go to the mall.  That is probably the principal reason why the cost of transit has risen from $3 or $4 up to $10 or $12 ... very simply, the cars and buses are empty except at peak periods and even then they are often there only for the handicapped / disabled and retired.    
> 
> The exception in this country is New York City where the cost of housing an automobile is as much as housing yourself in Pittsburgh.   Therefore you simply don't buy a car if you live in Manhattan.   (I remember when my sister-in-law combined two apartments on the upper east side of Manhattan.   The bill back then for labor for knocking out walls and adding another three room apartment was something like a half million dollars and that was over 30 years ago.   To have an automobile would have meant something like $100,000 a year for a garage.   She and her husband resisted the car for the longest time ... going to Hertz when they needed one for a weekend was a lot cheaper.)     
> 
> 
> On Dec 2, 2010, at 8:41 PM, Derrick Brashear wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> >> http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/r/25995668/detail.html
> >> I think this needs to be put into perspective.   The locals always blame the state and federal people for their own problems.   Remember that the trolley fares in Pittsburgh were 35 cents in 1961.   That would suggest that now, a half century later, they should be around $3.50 assuming that riding, fuel, wages, unionization, insurance and all other costs were constant.   Right.   We know they were not.   Economies of scale disappeared.   For one thing, as soon as government sticks their hands in it, we have far more labor than we had previously to do the same job.   (Remember that I'm a retired government employee.  I've seen how they work.)
> >> 
> >> The federal government suggest that transit authorities should keep their farebox recovery rate to 30% of their operating costs.   Since PAT is considering raising the cash fare to $2.30, that suggest that their operating costs are $7.67 per passenger.
> > 
> > The Transit Development Plan includes numbers if you're curious.
> > 
> >> Then add in the fixed costs ... that might make PAT's total costs per passenger around $10.00 per passenger .... more or less.   Maybe a lot more because in the old days they paid off the cost of a car barn and used it for years and years and years.   Today, with federal money, we need everything new and we don't pay off the bonds.   We simply issue new bonds to pay off the old bonds.   So the capital costs of transit continue to escalate.   Those costs are hidden.   Remember, the feds say keep operating farebox recovery at 30% of operating costs.   No one mentions capital costs.   In fact, in order to hide operating costs, we shift what used to be normal maintenance into capital by deferring repairs until the vehicles virtually fall apart and then we perform mid life overhauls or we buy new equipment long before we should have because the federal and state governments will pick up most of the bill.
> > 
> > You play the game you have.
> > 
> >> The point I'm making here is that under transit authority ownership, we quit raising fares every year because it was not politically feasible.   Pittsburgh Railways need to.   If the fares had continued to go up since 1961 ... that 35 cents would probably have been going up a nickel or a dime or a quarter a year in the 1970s (remember those double-diget inflation years) and today you would have $10 transit fares.   But we didn't do it because it would have hurt certain people we wanted to have vote for us.   No politician wants that.   So we hired more people and froze the income and blamed the problem on the state and federal government because they put the gun in our hands.
> > 
> > How long does it take to drop coins? 8 quarters is slow. Time adds up.
> > When electronic fare instruments happen, perhaps the rules change.
> > 
> >> The other thing we need to look at is the map showing which routes PAT plans to axe in March if Tom Corbit doesn't find Republican dollars  (I guess they're different from Democratic dollars   :<)   )  to bail out PAT.   I am not surprised that they want to get rid of a lot of rural routes.    Many of those services that the independent bus companies ran before 1964 just need to go.   They are left over from a different era.   But there are some other observations....some major urban routes are getting chopped:
> > 
> > He won't. Blind people will just have to learn to drive. Sorry.
> > 
> >> 1.   Service through Millvale would end.   It's an old town that whose people would now have to walk down to the site of the carbarn to catch a Tarentum - Pittsburgh bus.
> > 
> > Which also means that bus will now have to exit 28 in both directions
> > for the stop, if I'm not mistaken. And if you're at the north end of
> > Millvale? Giggles. Hope you have a half hour to walk, or you can find
> > parking, and can drive. (*)
> > 
> >> 2.  Atwood Street service in Oakland will end.   The Arlington trolley line is also to be cut.  There is a strange phenomena here.   I remember it in Philadelphia when I worked for the state.   Employees in the state employment offices told us that the black people didn't even know how to get out of their own "hoods" if you wanted to refer them to a job because they never left them.   They were welded to them.   Not saying that in a derogatory way .... simply exploring if that might be why those two routes fail.  Yet 82 Lincoln and 85 Bedford had the same demographic characteristics and were among the best performing in the system.  If someone can give me an unbiased, educated, unprejudiced suggestion, I would love to hear their reasoning.
> > 
> > Arlington service always got the shaft. Once per hour, sure, but in
> > general if you want to get somewhere you take the bus. We have friends
> > on Arlington on the hillside and off Warrington who basically just
> > take the bus service, and that (new) bus service is an improvement.
> > 
> >> 3.  Braddock and North Braddock are "really nice places to be from" these days.   Notice that the former route 64 trolley and the route next to it on the hill
> >> top will disappear.   Why?  Well, partly Edgar Thompson is the only steel mill left and it is a shell of its once proud existence.   And the Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh, which required trolleys on Ardmore Boulevard on 1 minute headways during the war, isn't there any longer.   The jobs are gone.  It also might have something related to the phenomena I mentioned in connection with item 2, above.
> > 
> > I bet the routes will be wholely gone. Sadly, once they hit Regent
> > Square, full. And I bet no infill there.
> > 
> >> 4.  All of the former West Penn Railways routes in McKeesport would be chopped along with the former Pittsburgh Railways lines from Wilmerding to McKeesport to Glassport and the Noble J. Dick bus line from Large over to Glassport.   Guess what guys.   The tube works isn't in McKeesport any more.
> > 
> > Between the housing project and the old folks, I was never alone on the 60A.
> > 
> >> There is no US Steel open hearth in Duquesne.   There is no dawntawn in McKeesport.   That big mall on the hill at East McKeesport failed.   Itza nothing.
> >> I was actually surprised when I cross the river at Charleroi on Thanksgiving and saw a towboat in the Mon ... first time in years that I'd seen one.
> > 
> > I see towboats in the Mon regularly. Live about 5 blocks from it, bike
> > past and over it regularly. And my wife's now-peak-only bus (50) is
> > full daily, and would be cut. I guess "full" isn't sufficient
> > riderhsip to retain a bus in the Republican economy. So are countless
> > buses of friends, which of course, well, I hope the service cuts
> > include (capital!) purchases of articulated buses for the 48, 51, 58,
> > 61C, 71A, 71C, 71D, 500, ... you get the idea.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Derrick
> > 
> > * - if your plan for transit involves driving, I take this as an
> > implicit statement that you personally volunteer to drive them. No, no
> > one wants to drive. No, no one wants to park. No, no one is paying
> > them an extra hour to walk both ways further to a bus. I look forward
> > to seeing the new governor and state legislators shuttling people. I
> > hate hypocrisy.
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
>