[PRCo] Pittsburgh's best trolley lines

[Fred Schneider]

A common measure of how profitable a transit line is (or today how little money it looses), is the number of people it hauls per mile.   The more people it moves per mile, the better it is.   
Sometimes the best performing routes are not necessarily the those that haul the most people because their lengths make them expensive to operate.

So which might have been Pittsburgh's most profitable lines.

Out of of curiosity, I resorted the Louge Report data from 1948.   I had already calculated it by dividing annual passengers by route mile.  

Now here it is ranked ... routes in order with the greatest number of passengers per route mile at the top of the list.   Now I wonder if Pittsburgh Railways would not have been well advised to buy a few double end PCCs for route 59....  What they did do with 59 after that date was split it and make part of it PCC as route 65.   

I suspect that 22 Crosstown was not the best money maker because it had a lot of transfer passengers.  But the others....  Surprises some of you doesn't it?  

22	CROSSTOWN
85	BEDFORD
88	FRANKSTOWN
50	CARSON STREET
82	LINCOLN
59	HOMESTEAD - HOMEVILLE
44	KNOXVILLE - PRR STATION
53	CARRICK
75	EAST LIBERTY - WILKINSBURG
94	ASPINWALL VIA BUTLER ST.
8	PERRYSVILLE AVENUE
13	EMSWORTH VIA CALIFORNIA AVE.
42	DORMONT
73	HIGHLAND PARK
19	WESTERN AVENUE
71	NEGLEY - HIGHLAND PARK
76	HAMILTON
77/54	NORTH SIDE - CARRICK VIA BLOOMFIELD
99	GLASSPORT - EVANS AVE. (McKEESPORT)
87	ARDMORE