[PRCo] Pittsburgh Transit Topics (April 8, 2014)

[Fred Schneider]

You got that right Derrick.   "The vagaries of the PA Municipal Code are crazy."    But other states are too.   Some of them, like Maryland and Virginia have selected cities that are not part of the counties that that surround them.  You find that out if you try to add up the county populations and they don't come up to the state totals.   But not all cities.   

I like that expression, "tastefully boarded up."   I guess that lasts until someone gets inside, starts a fire to keep warm some winter, and the fire spreads wiping out the entire block.    :<(   

My comments about S'Liberty the other day can also be extended to Wilkinsburg and environs.   The family doctor … of course I cannot remember his name … but I do remember he drove a gray four-hole Buick after the war and his office was on the second floor of one of those office buildings that obediently faced the railroad in Swissvale.    The good doctor didn't have appointments; you simply went into his waiting room and he took you in progression like any barber would.   After the war, there were a lot of visits … mom was pregnant and then the baby had to be looked after.   Mom didn't drive so dad had to take her in and then he had to find a way to amuse me for an hour or two.   And how do you amuse a five or six or seven year-old?   Well, you can sit along Ardmore Boulevard and watch the trolley signals change from green to red, to amber and back to green.   I am not kidding, damnit.   Or we could watch trains in Swissvale on the Pennsy.   Or we could stand on the station platform in Wilkinsburg and watch trains.

And on evenings when my mom had enough of cooking (and cooking never was her specialty … Rich Allman still speaks of the night she fed him chicken sushi ) … there was a nice family-owned restaurant on Wood Street in Wilkinsburg … tables, chairs … nothing fancy, just good food.   We didn't have McDonald's then.   


On Apr 9, 2014, at 2:53 PM, D Brashear wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
> 
>> Yes but those are only gross generalizations.   The problem is that many
>> of those places that transit once served are dying because we have chosen
>> to live in other places.   "Otherwise, not much changed" is a gross
>> simplification.
>> 
>> Wilkinsburg, for example, peaked at somewhere around 32,000 people after
>> World War II.  Today's number is half that.
> 
> 
> I had occasion to pass through part of Wilkinsburg Saturday. Having biked
> from the South Side I crossed the Rankin Bridge and was trying to get to
> Forbes and Braddock. After crossing the railroad at Woodstock Avenue, I cut
> up to Braddock Ave only to use Swissvale Avenue to Whitney and then pass
> under the railroad there.
> 
> Whitney east of the busway/railroad is at least tastefully boarded up and
> not burned out, but it's empty. West of the busway is better. The closer
> you get to Regent Square the better it is.
> 
> 
>   Plum Borough, for example, took a lot of what Penn Hills Borough lost.
> 
> 
> Technically Penn Hills is not a borough; It's a Home Rule Municipality, as
> is Monroeville. The vagaries of the PA Municipal Code are crazy.
> 
> 
> 
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