[PRCo] Another guy complaining...

Sun May 11 15:18:40 EDT 2014

1)   Lougee was inconsistent.   They included 26 and 34 in with 25 Island Avenue.   Then they split 66 from 64 and 69 from 68.   Not my fault.    Consultants were no better then than some of them are today.

2)   I said most were east end.   Eight of the heaviest ten were east end … routes 10/11/15 (again they put 11 in with them) and 77/54 were not.  

3)  Yes, some of those East End lines had a second zone but I don't know if they did for their entire life or only at certain times.   I thought about that and ignored it because I didn't know enough to stick my food deep into my mouth.  My memory was telling me that McKeesport had zones when they had that short lived permit card in the 1950s.

4) And you did not give me four points.   But one you should have mentioned and didn't.   Was there a period when route 22 was free?   Or was it just always pay enter when everything else was pay leave downtown.   It looked like the strongest money maker in the system …. UNLESS THEY WERE LARGELY TRANSFER RIDERS.  Again, there are too many factors we do not know.

Obviously, a few of the marginal routes based on passengers per route mile could easily have come out significantly better if we looked at them in terms of revenue per car hour.     

For example … Dormont (the old route 42) ranked 21st out of 65 lines in raw numbers of passengers carried and 13th in terms of passengers per mile but it was also going to come out pretty good in terms of revenue per car hour because most of that line was on private right-of-way.   Routes 2 and 3 were mid range in raw passenger counts and Millvale was average and Etna was below norm when we adjust it to mileage but if we adjust it to hours, they might have come out better because parts of E. Ohio Street were rather fast.   Same thing might apply to some of those West End lines.

But I do marvel, Dwight, at how some lasted as long as they did … like 12 Evergreen, which ranked 52 out of 65 in raw passengers and worst of all adjusted to miles.  Why did they keep that going into late 1953 for a few hundred people a day?   Or was the rail so new that they ran it just to keep the rail in the rate base?  

Of course the whole industry made a lot of insane decisions in the late 1940s thinking riding came back in the war and they could keep in … they didn't understand they only had riders because the car owners were forced to garage their machines because of gas rationing.   Think how many cities bought PCCs after the war thinking they needed them … only to sell them off for scrap within a decade (Minneapolis, Detroit, Louisville -- didn't event take delivery, Cleveland, Chicago, Birmingham, Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis, Washington).   Did I miss any?   All of those I listed didn't last 20 years.   

On May 11, 2014, at 2:44 PM, Dwight Long wrote:

> 
> Fred
> 
> Some points: 
> 
> 1)  By the methodology you used for other routes, Rt 69 was a cutback of 68 so the ridership should have been included in that line's figures.
> 
> 2)  Since when was 10/15 an East End route!!!!????
> 
> 3)  The really long East End routes did have zone fares--don't know how you equate that, though, unless you have revenue rather than ridership figures per route.
> 
> Dwight
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: Fred Schneider 
>  To: Western PA Trolley discussion 
>  Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2014 12:55 PM
>  Subject: [PRCo] Another guy complaining...
> 
> 
>  Another guy complaining because other routes have more service than the route he uses.   The link leads only to the editorial page; you will have to scan down until you find the headline reading "Greenfield Car Line Service Criticized."
> 
>  http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mvUaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=40wEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4977%2C2388619
> 
>   And now guys … the facts.    Again we are bitching because another line has more people riding and requires heavier service.   The guy complaining was riding the lightest hauling line coming up 4th Avenue so wouldn't we expect the company to dispatch the least number of cars?    And wouldn't we expect the newspaper to print something that would stir up the dirt?  Sure as God made green apples … because stirring the dirt sells papers.   
> 
>  The heaviest car line on Fourth Avenue?   … Route 68 had a weekday average load of 28,200.   Of course that was influenced by summer weekdays at Kennywood.
> 
>  Second heaviest would be 55 East Pittsburgh via 2nd Avenue and it's short turn, 57 Glenwood.  The typical weekday load was about 25,000.
> 
>  Third was route 56 McKeesport with a normal weekday volume of about 22,000 riders.
> 
>  O. M. G. … those three routes on 2nd Avenue added up to more than PATCO was hauling between Philadelphia and Lindenwold in its prime and they were running long trains in the rush hours!   
> 
>  Fourth would be route 64 East Pittsburgh via Wilkinsburg and its short turn 66 Wilkinsburg via Forbes.   The two of them hauled almost 13,000 fares on weekdays.
> 
>  Then we have route 67 to Rankin and Braddock with 18,300 followed by the Carrick car he mentions with 18,100 fares.
> 
>  Next to the lowest was 69 Squirrel Hill carried about 6800.
> 
>  Finally, his line carried fewer than 6,500.  One would expect about 24 cars to come down 4th Avenue on other routes for every car on this character's line.
> 
>  Why?   Because he lived on a line 5 miles long with the only population at the top of the hill near the outer end of the line.   The inner four miles was wedged in between the B&O and the mills or in a ravine heading up the hill to Greenfield .. not much there to stimulate riding from his 'hood.   
> 
>  And he thinks a bus company would want to serve that 'hood?   Maybe every 20 minutes then or every hour today.
> 
>  Now guys … if you want to print and save the story, it is attached as a old style word file.     And if you want the route data, also attached is an Excel file showing all that information from the 1948 Lougee study.    I have added several addition columns to the basic Lougee data.
> 
>  One ranks the routes by the raw number of passengers.
> 
>  But just because we haul people doesn't mean we make money.   So I also added a column for passengers per route mile, which is an important number when we are not charging zone fares.   And then an additional column ranking the routes according to passengers per mile.   
> 
>  That shows that the heaviest routes are, as we always understood, mostly those long East End lines like 88, 82, 87, 68, 77/54, 55, 56, 75, 94 and 10/15 in that order.   But those that hauled the most per mile were 22, 85, 88, 50, 82, 59, 44, 53, 94 (95) and 8 in that order.   You really didn't expect to see that Homestead - Homeville shuttle, now did ya?  Sixth heaviest on a car-mile basis.  
> 
>  Of course the worst routes were … well, you look at it.
> 
>  A third array of data I wish I had but have no way of calculating would be passengers carried per car hour.   Naturally it probably would not be too impressive on routes like 55 and 88 where you are just slogging along.
> 
>  Nuff B. S.    
> 
> 
> 
> 
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