To All In PA (Stroudsburg: bill, installing, electric)

[Bailey340]

Originally Posted by Pilot1

Gasoline taxes are very regressive as they hurt the people most that can afford it least. The working poor, and middle income earners with families. People HAVE to drive to get to work, shop, etc. Then the state uses the money for something else for whatever politicians to buy votes, and the infrastructure suffers.

That is absolutely true, but if you look around a large number of the poor are driving pickups (many of them new), so it must not be hurting them too much. Drive through any rural area in PA, and every other run down house or trailer part has at least one new pickup.

My only point is the high gas taxes hasn't hurt people enough to change their driving habits.

[fisheye]

Originally Posted by cremebrulee

you would think and believe they would in fact work together as a team....wouldn't you? But unfortunately there is always one, who refuses to do that.

Do you remember years back, a slight snow storm caused an overnight hell for drivers on I-78 west in the Foglesville area. There wasn't much snow, but it hadn't been plowed, and trucks couldn't move...so traffic backed up and they ended up spending the night there? It was b/c Allentown maintenance, laid off so many people and there just wasn't enough help and those poor people stuck on the road the entire night, and you couldn't even call that a snow storm?

I remember people stuck on I-78 and many snowmobilers went out to save them. Blizzard Riley stranded motorist on I-80 and well as many secondary roads around Monroe County. Route 611 was a mess because PennDOT directed traffic off the Interstate and up 611. From Swiftwater to Mt. Pocono they had the commercial and trough traffic blocking both north and south lanes and all heading north! It was a mess!

Locally we have a major problem with this detoured traffic because they should have widened Route 314 from Pocono Summit to Swiftwater. That way they would not have to detour through Mt. Pocono; commercial trucks have a hard time navigating the sharp right hand turn (not all are 'experts'). An expanded Route 314 would shave off millage and reduce the headaches of an emergency route - of course our State would have to keep the road open and plowed.

[fisheye]

Originally Posted by Bailey340

That is absolutely true, but if you look around a large number of the poor are driving pickups (many of them new), so it must not be hurting them too much. Drive through any rural area in PA, and every other run down house or trailer part has at least one new pickup.

My only point is the high gas taxes hasn't hurt people enough to change their driving habits.

Who ever said that they all 'own' those trucks! Look at all the adds: No money, no credit; come on down!

[cremebrulee]

Originally Posted by Bailey340

That is absolutely true, but if you look around a large number of the poor are driving pickups (many of them new), so it must not be hurting them too much. Drive through any rural area in PA, and every other run down house or trailer part has at least one new pickup.

My only point is the high gas taxes hasn't hurt people enough to change their driving habits.

believe me, if at the time, public transportation would have been available, I'd have used it...there isn't enough of that in this area, or in in the Poconos...

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by fisheye

Who ever said that they all 'own' those trucks! Look at all the adds: No money, no credit; come on down!

I love when I see some fool driving around in an Escalade SUV with tinted windows in the middle of the workday smoking a cig. Maybe I'm wrong and there are just a lot of lazy rich people out there, donning some sweet rims and blasting music when others are working....who knows. But, I assume there is just a lot of easy credit empowering stupidity.

[BPP1999]

Originally Posted by cremebrulee

believe me, if at the time, public transportation would have been available, I'd have used it...there isn't enough of that in this area, or in in the Poconos...

Not trying to argue with you, but there are two main reason for that...

1 - Public transportation generally requires density, which is lacking in that area.

2 - Public transportation generally requires taxpayer subsidies to make it effective. Most people in that area hate paying taxes to fund anything, let alone public transportation.

[cremebrulee]

Originally Posted by BPP1999

Not trying to argue with you, but there are two main reason for that...

1 - Public transportation generally requires density, which is lacking in that area.

2 - Public transportation generally requires taxpayer subsidies to make it effective. Most people in that area hate paying taxes to fund anything, let alone public transportation.

no, no, you have your own opinion, and that's ok, your not arguing at all


....but we at the time, had a lot of people moving in from New York City and New Jersey and there were rumors of a commuter train but it never happened. As far as Density, you would have had it, believe me....there are also other areas in PA, where trains once went thru, that are no longer used, which would be at this time very helpful to get more cars off the roads. Not everyone likes public transportation, however, there are a lot of people who do and would use it.

as far as your second paragraph, is concerned, I believe people are sick and tired of our politicians wasting our hard earned dollars...so you can't blame them.

[fisheye]

Originally Posted by cremebrulee

as far as your second paragraph, is concerned, I believe people are sick and tired of our politicians wasting our hard earned dollars...so you can't blame them.

Here is some good reading on the subject: https://www.uschamber.com/sites/defa...2011_10_17.pdf. While the report is 15 years old; it reflects today's opinions on the subject. Then they projected a payback period of 17.5 years - it is probably longer now? Of course that is where waste comes to play; the more waste we eliminate the quicker we get the payback.

One other subject that has not been touched on in this thread is utility rebuilding. I know, after just going for three and a quarter days without power; that we should do a better job. Right now there is a small war building on who should pay to remove the dead wood on the sides of our roads that can fall on our power lines. For a long time our townships would go out and remove what they could - without getting themselves electrocuted. The townships are saying: enough is enough. The telephone companies want to switch to cellphones and away from land lines; so they don't want to pay. The cable TV providers rent the poles and feel they should not have to pay. The light lines do have to fix potentially lethal problems. Now our townships are saying that the landowners are the responsible party. Once the tree comes down in the road or poses a danger to the road; the townships might clean up the tree and bill the landowners? Of course many landowners will disagree with the cost of cleanup. I do not know how this will all play out in the end; but it will be interesting to say the least!

By the way, according to Google; the cost of burying power lines can be between $20 to $40 per foot compared to above ground around $10 per foot. I am interested if maintenance equalizes that cost? Maybe it adds to the cost difference? It would be great to think that we could possibly have a system that never went down due to storms!

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by fisheye

By the way, according to Google; the cost of burying power lines can be between $20 to $40 per foot compared to above ground around $10 per foot. I am interested if maintenance equalizes that cost? Maybe it adds to the cost difference? It would be great to think that we could possibly have a system that never went down due to storms!

"The plural of anecdote is not data," but:

I recall having a conversation with the owner of a now-defunct restaurant on Camac Street in the heart of Philly's Gayborhood.

He was discussing some sort of issue he and neighboring building owners were having with the power supply to their buildings. He remarked that the cable that fed them was something on the order of 125 years old and wrapped in hemp.

I'm pretty sure that were this line above ground, it would have failed or been replaced well before it eventually became an issue. And I don't think the power's gone out anywhere in the vicinity of this street, or of the Peco substation (Waverly) that feeds it. Ditto the substations to its east and west, Lombard and Spruce.

Our infrastructure contracting process emphasizes short-term over lifecycle cost. Were it the other way around, I think we'd see far more buried power lines, which would not only improve system reliability but also the attractivness of our urban (and to a lesser degree suburban) streetscapes. Burying the utility lines would end the practice of pruning trees into grotesque shapes or planting small ones to keep them from interfering with the transmission lines.

[fisheye]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

"The plural of anecdote is not data," but:

I recall having a conversation with the owner of a now-defunct restaurant on Camac Street in the heart of Philly's Gayborhood.

He was discussing some sort of issue he and neighboring building owners were having with the power supply to their buildings. He remarked that the cable that fed them was something on the order of 125 years old and wrapped in hemp.

I'm pretty sure that were this line above ground, it would have failed or been replaced well before it eventually became an issue. And I don't think the power's gone out anywhere in the vicinity of this street, or of the Peco substation (Waverly) that feeds it. Ditto the substations to its east and west, Lombard and Spruce.

Our infrastructure contracting process emphasizes short-term over lifecycle cost. Were it the other way around, I think we'd see far more buried power lines, which would not only improve system reliability but also the attractivness of our urban (and to a lesser degree suburban) streetscapes. Burying the utility lines would end the practice of pruning trees into grotesque shapes or planting small ones to keep them from interfering with the transmission lines.

The large pharmaceutical, company close to my house, actually had PennDOT shut down one of their busy secondary roads so that they could install underground cable. If I remember correctly; that road was shut down for most of the year and it was only about one mile of underground cable they needed. However; there were three places that it crossed a stream. The company demanded an uninterruptable power supply even during the worst storms.

Once they get close to water you can see the dollars ring up quick. But, like you point out; materials have changed over the years and technology has also changed.

I know that it is impossible in many of our heavily populated areas; but I wish that we could plan to rebuild some of our interstates and have them incorporate everything from service roads, to underground utilities, to rail lines or tubes. Some states, like Ohio, look like they purchased very wide right-of-ways when they originally purchase the land to build some of their roads. For most of the Northeast you would bump heads with a ton of lawyers if we planed on expanding of incorporating different means of transportation and utilities.