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

[Dwight Long]

Derrick

Apparently Rt. 52 was not only not a peer, but also not a payer. Had it 
been, no doubt PRC would have put a loop at its upriver end and run Rt. 50 
cars through.

As to the tram route numbers vs PAT ones, just review the name of this 
list.When in Rome---------

Dwight


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Derrick Brashear" <shadow at gmail.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 4:48 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fw: [Mileage] PAT Penn Sta. Spur


> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Dwight Long <dwightlong at verizon.net> 
> wrote:
>>
>> 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).
>
> Because Arlington used to be what Josephine is now, and then they built
> New Arlington.
>
>> 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."
>
> It is now just Arlington; I found no reference so far as to when that 
> changed.
>
>> 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.
>
> By the time it was given 52 the all-number system was (for the time)
> dead anyway.
> The Carson transfer car wasn't a peer.
>
>> 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.
>
> Sure. And that was the tram system, not the bus thing, where 51-55
> were nominally
> Carson, although the 53F 53H and 53K basically didn't in modern times
> due to more express
> express routes being available.
>
>> 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.
>
> Well, only for rail, and I suspect it's more for branding. Tho that
> branding is pretty
> silly given that you can only go south unlike e.g. Chicago where the 
> colored
> el lines can take you all over the city.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Derrick
>
>