[PRCo] Re: Fw: [Mileage] PAT Penn Sta. Spur

[Dwight Long]

Joshua

The confusion on the routing of the "Arlington-Warrington" line results from 
my time in Pittsburgh during which everyone I knew called the street that 
runs up the side of Mt. Washington from just east of Smithfield to 
Warrington Avenue "NEW Arlington Avenue" (emphasis added).  Reference to 
maps.Google indicates it is (at least now) called simply Arlington Avenue. 
In my day only the portion of that street east of the aforementioned 
junction was referred to simply as "Arlington Avenue."

The system of route numbers that PAT tried to impose on the citizenry of the 
Pittsburgh area back in 1964 was confusing to and detested and ignored by 
most people.  Most folks continued to refer to their tram or bus route by 
its prior and well-accepted name.  Indeed, PAT apparently recognized the 
error of their ways, for the later tram-to-bus conversions kept the proper 
tram route number. The 1964 system died a merciful death at some point. 
However, the replacement numeric system has some glitches, of which 52 is 
one of them.  I don't object to their use of 52 for the "over the hill" 
route for the reason you postulated, but rather because that was an already 
existing route number for the Carson Street transfer car, which ran upriver 
on Carson from the loop.  A more proper route number assignment for the 
"over the hill" line would have been either 49/48 (which would not have been 
quite accurate either) or 49A, which would have fit in with PRC's scheme for 
assigning cutback route numbers when a logical numeric sequence was not 
available for same--for example 55A.

As to routes running on East Carson Street, the only ones that did were the 
49 (for a very short distance), the 50,  the 52 (see above) 53, and 54 (also 
77/54).  Rt. 51 was the Bon Air shuttle and it did not run on Carson Street 
at all.  Rt. 53 was Carrick, and it normally ran on East Carson between 
South 10th Street and South 18th Street.  54 was Oakland-Carrick and it ran 
on East Carson from the Brady Street Bridge to South 18th Street.  Rt. 
55-East Pittsburgh used Second Avenue to access the Triangle, not Carson.

Lastly, while brown may be a perfectly good color, the use of color to 
designate transit lines is not something of which I approve.  Such use dates 
back to the late 19th and early 20th century when there were countless 
illiterate folks and immigrants who spoke little or no English, and may not 
even have used the Roman alphabet.  As education progressed, the need to use 
colors for route identification lessened, and was gradually extinguished in 
favor of (hopefully) meaningful English route names, in larger cities such 
as Pittsburgh usually combined with route numbers.  This was a perfectly 
good system, which should have been maintained.  Going back to the color ID 
for transit routes is a condescension to the "dumbing down" of America, and 
I hate it.

Sorry if this is repetitive history!

Dwight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joshua Dunfield" <joshuad at cs.cmu.edu>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 6:40 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fw: [Mileage] PAT Penn Sta. Spur


> On 16 April 2012 05:39, Dwight Long <dwightlong at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> Where did the Arlington-Warrington line go? The name of it would suggest
>> same routing as the 48, i.e. through the tunnel, not up New Arlington
>> Avenue.
>
> Panhandle Bridge to Arlington to Warrington to SHJ.
>
>>> http://lists.dementix.org/files/pittsburgh-railways/52-Allentown%20LRV%20schedule0002.jpg
>
>> 52-Allentown is confusing because of the actual Rt. 52, which as I stated
>> earlier, was an extension of Rt. 50. That was a very poor choice of 
>> number.
>
> The numbering scheme that PAT used until just a couple of years ago
> was highly systematic.  It tried to impose not just a radial-direction
> ordering (inherited from PRCo and already an enormous improvement over
> the random mishmashes at most transit systems) but also to give
> meaning to the second digit: 1, 6 = ordinary bus; 3, 8 = express bus;
> 4, 9 = crosstown; 0, 5 = suburban shuttle.  2 and 7 somehow got used
> for both the T and a seemingly random set of otherwise-ordinary bus
> routes (e.g. 67A, 67F).  (I vaguely recall reading, perhaps on this
> list, that 2 and 7 were used for bus routes acquired from a different
> set of companies.)
>
> I have to admit that virtually no one I knew when I lived in
> Pittsburgh had noticed that the second digit meant anything.  Many
> people thought it was cool once it was explained to them, but most of
> them were also computer science graduate students, who tend to
> appreciate such things.
>
> You can still object to 52 on the basis that it shouldn't have been in
> the 51-55 "bucket" at all, and there you may have a point.  The other
> 51-55 numbered routes that I recall were on East Carson Street, which
> is noticeably "more counterclockwise".  (Moving those routes to 56-60
> wouldn't make sense because 56-60 was used for the Second Avenue
> buses, on the other side of the Mon.)  And most compellingly, the bus
> route that more or less approximated the 52 was in the 46-50 bucket
> (the 46K).
>
> OTOH, if you drop the Arlington-Warrington route into the 46-50
> bucket, that's the same bucket as the Overbrook Line, and therefore
> the same number (assuming you're committed to using 2 and 7 for any T
> route that reaches downtown).  PAT already had to make a special
> announcement in the subway for the 52: "This train does NOT go to
> Station Square!"  Giving it the same number and a different letter as
> an Overbrook train that did go to Station Square would have been quite
> confusing.
>
> (Now that I think of it, the 52 *was* awfully irregular in not having
> a letter as well as a number.)
>
>> As to Brown Line, unless it was named for Bob Brown, which I strongly 
>> doubt,
>> I don't want to know. That is PAT Newspeak.
>>
>> Dwight
>
> Brown is a perfectly respectable color, at least for a line you want
> to get rid of...
>
> -j.
>
>