What happened to the trolley system? (Pittsburgh, Castle Shannon: house, buses, pollution)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Copanut

So most people prefer to drive their own car, what's wrong with that?

Well, it is a lot more complicated than that.

We spent decades investing in free highways, which also tore up urban neighborhoods along the way. We subsidized gasoline prices, particularly in light of the environmental externalities. We put into place land-use regulations that strongly favored autocentric developments, often to the point of actually prohibiting the alternatives. And so on.

So after having spent decades consciously biasing all these public policies in favor autocentric development, it isn't surprising that a lot more people drive. But that isn't some pure reflection of preferences.

Moreover, we know the ill effects: congestion is way up, and commutes have gotten much longer on average, and now commuting costs are rapidly rising as our gasoline subsidies fail in the face of rising global demand. Overuse of cars is leading to environmental problems, both locally and globally, and has unnecessarily increased injuries and death, particularly among children. Overinvestment in urban highways has made poor use of urban land, and created a transportation infrastructure system we cannot afford to properly maintain, let alone expand. All these problems have also served to perpetuate concentrated poverty, which increases a variety of social problems and wastes precious human capital. And so on.

None of this is to suggest that if these public policies hadn't been consciously biased in favor of autocentric development, there would be no use of cars and no autocentric development. But we would have achieved a better balance of transportation modes and developments, and been much better off now as a result. And in fact now circumstances are going to force us in that direction anyway, but it will be a painful process, which could have been avoided.

[ossewa]

This is cool.

YouTube - A Citizen's History of the Grand Rapids Streetcar

[slamont61]

Pittsburgh in it's infinte wisdom is going backwards in the Public Transportation area. Transit cuts all over the place througout the system, route cuts as well as schedule, makes it less attractive to utilize. Soon it's going to be more convenient to drive in alone instead of hopping on a bus/light rail into town. It's not supposed to be that way. So long as the Port Authority and Government is in charge, there will be zero improvement.

Buses and Rail cars will NEVER replace the automobile commute entirely but if service was good enough it surely could make a dent in the rush hour.

It is amazing that the old Trolley system was allowed to go into dis-repair giving buses the foot in the door so to speak. When you look at so many areas where the Trolley had it's own right-of-way, service was obviously going to be conveneint. All they had to deal with was congestion downtown where all tracks had to meet up.

Heck when I was a kid (in the 60's) there was even rail service, passenger rail to some areas for down town commuters. I can remember my Grandfather being picked up at the train in Crafton after a day's work.

Trains, Trolleys and Inclines had the area covered at one time. Too bad it couldn't be kept profitable and just expand into the newly developing areas.

Public Transportation is going backwards there and that just isn't going to work. If the Port Authority can't make service attractive and useful to all the possible customers, then it's time to get someone else in there that can. Otherwise start building more parking lots around the downtown cause there going to need them. Lots of them.

[Geeo]

Public transit was almost never profitable after cars arrived. Pittsburgh Railways was even in bankruptcy right after World War I.

[BrianTH]

PAT has some pretty good plans to attract more riders, in the form of the TDP.

But the state is slashing PAT's funding. That is what people should be concerned about, the state taking our money and cutting the funding for transit the region very much needs to keep growing and prospering.

[I_Like_Spam]

As the Pittsburgh area grew into new suburban areas and a central city that had 700,000 people shrunk by more than 50%, busses were a quicker way to get transit out to the folks in their new homes.

events like the closing of the Point Bridge which carried streetcars across the Mon helped to hasten it, as they weren't going to put street car tracks on the new Fort Pitt Bridge.

Busses are more flexible and don't have the kind of permanent infrastructure that streetcars require.

[MathmanMathman]

There seems to be a lot of evidence that GM is the culprit for the total demise of the streetcar.



Sounds like GM did Ford's dirty work for them.

I also found out that an important piece of legislation helped bring about the demise of trolleys. The federal government passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 which stripped utilities of trolley lines and the trolley lines had to fend for themselves in the market. That gave GM the opportunity to buy them up by forming, with companies like Chevron and Phillips, National City Lines. National City Lines eventually shut down the trolleys and replaced them with buses.

But I don't know the exact story about Pittsburgh. I remember streetcars in the 1960s in Pittsburgh but I'm guessing they were not being well maintained and basically ran until they couldn't run anymore. Lack of spare parts as the trolley makers were no more? I was so afraid of those streetcars as they lumbered along the streets, occasionally producing showers of sparks from the overhead powerline.

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Busses are more flexible and don't have the kind of permanent infrastructure that streetcars require.

But not nearly as popular for riders. Buses are not an equivalent substitute.

[Impala26]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

As the Pittsburgh area grew into new suburban areas and a central city that had 700,000 people shrunk by more than 50%, busses were a quicker way to get transit out to the folks in their new homes.

events like the closing of the Point Bridge which carried streetcars across the Mon helped to hasten it, as they weren't going to put street car tracks on the new Fort Pitt Bridge.

Busses are more flexible and don't have the kind of permanent infrastructure that streetcars require.

Ah, the age-old debates between streetcars and buses. Yes, it is true that buses have the flexibility of infrastructure, but that same flexibility also reinforces the notion that streetcars have more permanence to an area rather than buses. People can easily understand where a streetcar runs based on the tracks and overhead cables, buses in the suburbs just have a sign and give no sense as to where they even end up.

Buses can negotiate street hazards on a whim, where a streetcar cannot. However, because of their set paths, streetcars can more easily negotiate narrow streets and corners (the only control operators have is the throttle).

Streetcars have the noise/pollution advantage.

These debates have been going on for some time. That being said, there is no clear-cut winner. Buses and streetcars have their own unique niche applications. Buses are good choice to begin with because they're cheaper capital investments, but there are appeals to streetcars in certain established neighborhoods that cannot be ignored.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

But not nearly as popular for riders. Buses are not an equivalent substitute.

Not to me they weren't.

I remember the last streetcar trip I took, back in the late 80s on the 35 line parellel to 51. For some reason I decided to take the streetcar instead of the bus from town to Glenbury St., and those cars really shook and did not provide a very smooth ride compared to a bus.

The principle advantage for streetcars was that many ran on their own right of ways, but the busways can give you that in a more comfortable ride.