You think its bad for PAT now, it's about to get A LOT WORSE! (Oakland: to move, transport)
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Trolleys are way more efficient in terms of operations. What killed a lot of the lines is that when they were doing street, highway, or bridge work, they wouldn't preserve the affected rail routes.
Courtesy of Wikipedia, here is a fascinating little 1959 report:
The redevelopment in the City of Duquesne to eliminate a blighted area and the reconstruction of certain highways are referred to in that Report necessitated the conversion of the Duquesne-McKeesport street railway route, extending from Downtown Pittsburgh through the City of Duquesne and into the business district of the city of McKeesport, to bus operation. By reason of certain street improvements planned by the City of Pittsburgh, this route together with a shorter street railway route between East Liberty and Munhall utilizing some of the same streets in the City of Pittsburgh as the Duquesne-McKeesport street railway route were converted from street railway to bus operation. Bus operation on these routes commenced on September 21, 1958. In connection with the discontinuance of street car operation on these two routes, 34 street cars were retired from service.
and
Quote:
A plan of Allegheny County to rebuild a bridge crossing the Allegheny River, presently occupied by street railway tracks, required the Company to either spend a considerable sum to build street railway tracks on the new bridge or convert the street railway route to bus operation. Under the auspices of Allegheny County, the two boroughs and one township, on whose streets the street railway tracks would no longer by useful in case of abandonment, agreed to permit the Company to abandon the tracks in place, which made it feasible for the Company to convert the street railway route affected to bus operation. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has approved the conversion of the street railway facilities, but does not require actual conversion until December 31, 1960.
They also talk about replacing the Point Bridge, which had tracks, with the Fort Pitt Bridge, which did not, cutting off the entire West End system from Downtown. The predecessor of Penn DOT paid off the trolley company and relieved it off the duty to remove the trolley tracks in exchange for switching to buses in the West End.
If you dig down further into the financial section, you will also see that even as bus route miles were substituting for trolley route miles, passengers and passenger vehicle miles on buses were decreasing, and passenger revenues per trolley mile remained far higher than passenger revenues per bus mile, even though average fares per passenger were lower on trolleys than buses.
So all this did indeed set the stage for the financial collapse of the relatively inefficient and less popular bus-heavy system that emerged in this period, leading to the creation of PAT--but the truth is the trolley system, with diminishing cross-subsidies, was not financially viable either.
Trolleys are way more efficient in terms of operations. What killed a lot of the lines is that when they were doing street, highway, or bridge work, they wouldn't preserve the affected rail routes.
Another fact you are forgetting about the trolley lines are that in the post WWII era, numerous subdivisions were built beyond the reach of the existing trolley system.
To the north, the Pittsburgh Railways didn't extend beyong Emsworth or West View and didn't even serve close suburbs like Shaler and O'hara. To the west, Robinson, Kennedy, Moon were enjoying great growth, all beyond the range of the street car system.
To have the trolley system expand as the area was expanding would have been a huge infrastructure expense. Yes, the day to day operations of trolleys might be less than busses. But busses provided more flexibility and much less requirement for laying new track and wires.
A 50-route transit service? Doesn't Kennywood have more rides than that?
I think there will be a silver lining to all this. It is a growing pain and hopefully will be the end of such a wasteful company like PAT. $80plus for a driver. I know a driver that made over $90K in a year with overtime. The whole thing is a joke. $45K is top of the mark for a driver, not close to $100K. Also, there should be 1/2 the stops to speed up commute times and get people walking a little, which would save on fuel and brakes. Someone needs to get into transit that understands how to be more fiscally responsible. Obviously PAT's top dogs haven't a clue about how to run a company. Way too much waste.
Another fact you are forgetting about the trolley lines are that in the post WWII era, numerous subdivisions were built beyond the reach of the existing trolley system.
To the north, the Pittsburgh Railways didn't extend beyong Emsworth or West View and didn't even serve close suburbs like Shaler and O'hara. To the west, Robinson, Kennedy, Moon were enjoying great growth, all beyond the range of the street car system.
To have the trolley system expand as the area was expanding would have been a huge infrastructure expense. Yes, the day to day operations of trolleys might be less than busses. But busses provided more flexibility and much less requirement for laying new track and wires.
The mid 1950s to late 1960s was a period of incredible federal investment in the transportation system (and presumably what people at the time foresaw the future to need). It was also a period of 'urban renewal' that deserves a thread all to itself.
Here's a 10 year cost listing of what the Feds spent on the Eisenhower Interstate for a 10 year period, and what those costs would have been in adjusted dollars over a similar 10 year time scale:
Can you imagine the howls of indignation for a project of similar scale today? (Ten year long wars notwithstanding of course).
I'm not sure where to even begin calculating the expenditures the Federal government undertook for completion of the railway system, considering bonds issued, land granted, etc. for ostensibly private development.
Some things apparently happened to the long tradition of publicly subsidized projects for private gain to be were we are now.
Does it? Not for it's own sake, certainly - unless you gain something from sterile anger. So what will we do with that anger?
Vote against Corbett and the Gen Ass Republicans? Allegheny Co already does that, by and large.
Write to your representatives? They probably already agree - and are outvoted.
So, what then? Sign a petition? Hire some buses and stomp around with placards in front of the Capitol? Plot a coup? A political assassination? The Whiskey Rebellion?
The Whiskey Rebellion gets my vote, because, you know, it clearly demonstrates how how the Founding Fathers unanimously and Seriously abhorred certain things - like drink taxes - and how we've been on a steady path toward socialism ever since.
The Whiskey Rebellion gets my vote, because, you know, it clearly demonstrates how how the Founding Fathers unanimously and Seriously abhorred certain things - like drink taxes - and how we've been on a steady path toward socialism ever since.
except it was george washington that brought an army to put it down....
Another fact you are forgetting about the trolley lines are that in the post WWII era, numerous subdivisions were built beyond the reach of the existing trolley system. . . . To have the trolley system expand as the area was expanding would have been a huge infrastructure expense. Yes, the day to day operations of trolleys might be less than busses. But busses provided more flexibility and much less requirement for laying new track and wires.
Right, there was a web of policies at many levels of government subsidizing autocentric sprawl and undermining (sometimes prohibiting, or even destroying) the alternatives.
But, of course, we didn't really provide those post-WWII greenfield suburbs with decent transit service--not with trolleys OR buses.
On thing about trollies are they are cool. If we still had them and created a buzz with cool paintings on the sides and if they were kept clean, it could promote more tourism to Pittsburgh and have that cool factor going for it.
Ah well, they are gone and we have old dirty buses. Seems we will need fewer buses by this fall, unless all this is positioning for negotiations by PAT. In other words it is just some threat to try and get more funding from somewhere. Probably that funding will be in the form of another new tax to our residents.
except it was george washington that brought an army to put it down....
Yeah, he and Alexander Hamilton were mainly who I had in mind, kind of in a sarcastic way, about how U.S. government from the start didn't necessarily shy away from at least some forms of taxation to pay for expenses, and also obviously intended to go after tax evaders (maybe it would have been more advantageous for the Rebels to offshore the ownership of their stills - Cayman? - and then claim local exemption from the tax by depositing proceeds in a Swiss bank account. The TEA Party should take note, ha ha.
I'd love to see major reinvestment in passenger rail transit; it would be in the tradition of the freight rail system, Interstate, and Apollo missions. It would be ridiculously expensive if all the workers were guaranteed pensions for life, especially when there are so many other obligations, like a huge defense budget (maybe the rail system could fall under the military umbrella, like the inspiration for the Interstate?), pouring money into the privately lucrative health care system for our apparently dreadfully ill population, and other quasi military and welfare programs so the poor can remain poor without worrying they might have to try and find work.
Plus, Eisenhower oversaw a lowered top marginal tax rate from 92% to 91%; it's 35% today and people are better at hiding their money, so there's less to work with.
I don't see how our country can meet it's future transportation needs if we continue on our current path. One of the major problems, is the way transit agencies operate. If we continue to operate them the way we have for the last 50 years, there is no way we will ever meet our transit needs.
We need to look no further than right here at PAT to see the failure of mass transit. PAT is simply not capable of meeting our future transit needs, and soon, won't be able to meet the current needs.
We need to find a way to move more people, for less money than we are currently. We need to reform the mass transit agencies. Addressing legacy and current labor costs, minimum efficiencies standards, implementing new technology, data sharing, and sustainable funding strategies are all needed.
As long as we look at this as simply a funding issue, we will always have funding issues. Until we fix the cause of the problems with mass transit, we will never be able meet our future transit needs.
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