…Another aspect of it Dave was…their means of transportation was at best horse and buggy or just pack horse to haul the surveyor equipment up through the valleys and potential grades for their route…Not many roads to assist them at that time. Not many towns to interfere but not much else to help them either…No communication between teams, etc…I sometimes wonder how those railroad surveyor’s found the lowest passable route up and over a mountain when the only thing they had to go on is what they measured time and time again…But no one to tell them there may be a better route 30 miles south, etc…to make a better pass and so on…
a pipe dream… the only people that take advantage of public transportation in any city are the people that acutly live in the city where haveing a car is more a hassle the it is realy worth… traffic problems comes from the suburbainites that commute into the city evey day and work then leave… and becouse they traval in thier own car…and can come and go on their own schedual… sitting in traffice for an extra hour into work and an extra hour in it leaveing work seems to be execptable to most people… becouse they have the fexabilty to do what they want in thier own car after they punch out of the office… they can go out after work and not have to worry about making it back in time for the last train and/or bus heading home… besides… this is talked about for the pittsburgh area…who is supost to pick up the tab for this…PAT…or AMTRAK… they are both on borrowed time and tax payers money as it is… and i remember right they are both cutting services across the board…so where are they going to get the extra capital to buy commuter equipment and second…PAT had commuter trains that ran into pittsburgh from all over…beaver falls to down town… mckeesport to down town… and points inbetween… they scraped them back in the early to mid 80s becouse of poor ridership and climing costs… what would make commuter trains more appealing now commpaied to only 20 years ago…like i said… its a pipe dream
csx engineer
…20 years of traffic probably has changed quite a bit…and maybe it’s time for some rethinking. Not pipe dreaming, but thinking. Someone must think it has some merit to revisit.
Good post. I’ve heard talk about this last summer when I believe they did a test run but like csxengineer said, I’ll believe it when I see it. Personally, I’d like to see it happen and I would seriously consider using it since I currently drive from Somerset to Pittsburgh daily. If the schedule & fares were reasonable, I’d rather drive to Johnstown and catch the train rather than drive into Pittsburgh.
Brian
…That’s quie a commute Brian. Especially in Winter. Miles would add up fast on the auto.
When they rebuilt the East Penn Freeway in the late 70’s, they tried putting on commuter service between Greensburg and Pittsburgh using Conrail’s U36Bs and some worn out P70s. Ridership was terrible, so they gave up after a few months. Apparently, nobody had too much trouble finding alternate routes.
Altoona to Pittsburgh is just plain silly, unless it is an equipment turn for the Pennsylvanian (or whatever the NY-Pitt train is called these days), then the cost is just crew + fuel more or less.
I would be highly surprised if this commuter run ever happened. Altoona is not a large town by any stretch of the imagination, and there can’t be more than a handful of people that commute from there to Pittsburgh. A Johnstown or Greensburg run might make more sense, and maybe tack on a weekend run from Altoona for those that want to travel to the city for the weekend, but other than that there would be no demand for this service.
Altoona has about 60,000 people. It’s the largerst non-suburban city between H’burg and P’burg. I agree - small potatoes.
Not a lot is happening in Scandinavia that is positive seen from a RR perspective. In my city, though, we do have a brand new driverless subway which is finally showing its worth after months of childhood diseases. Sweden and Norway seem to be downscaling activities, and state driven railroads are retaking failed privatization projects - who knows for how long. Demands for comfort, speed and safety are skyhigh, driving up cost and endangering long term viability of train travel. In Denmark, the signaling scheme is outdated and in need of complete replacement at a cost that politicians seem to find prohibitive.
Scandinavians have always wanted to have things both ways - first class service at a discount. Well, reality is catching up with us here, and it will be interesting to see how much is left say 10 years from now.
Anybody know if this is the same crowd which is suggesting commuter service from Pittsburgh’s north side? I’m not sure how far the train service would run but it parallels PA 28 in the general direction of Butler. It too is more pie in the sky than reality.
still a pipe dream… no matter how you cut it… you have to keep in mind that pittsburgh is also shrinking in population…and alot of bissnesses that use to be in the city itself have started to relocate to the suburbs becouse of high taxes in the city itself…as well as higher proporty taxes in alleghany county…the demand for commuter service is not thier… like i said befor…they had commuter trains in the past…and got ride of them…
oh yea… and i just had a thought about cost…not only is it going to cost capital to buy and run the trains themselfs…its also going to take capital to rebuild alot of the station stops as well as put new station stops in locations that might want one should this happen… alot of the old PAT train stations along the old P&LE where PAT use to run commuter trains…have been torn down…or in such bad shape that it is going to take millions to rehubilitate the stations themselfs…let alone the cost to buy and maintain the rail eqimpment itself…and like i said befor…pittsburgh and the port authority are in no shape to spend any money on commuter trains…
for any of you that dont know it…pittsburgh…the city itself is under ACT 47 bankrupsy portection… the city is broke!!! they are cutting anything they can to try and make a buget work… thanks to the citys half baked ideas to try and bring people to the city…( 2 new sports statiums… a new convention center) but none of it is drawing what the city planners thought it was going to draw…
so at this point in time…any talk of spending any money on commuter trains would never make it past the ACT 47 board…and as far as amtrak… they are one the brink of obivian…so i dough they would be considering
…Sounds like they better start thinking of some forward thinking…and not pipe dreaming…!!
thats the point i am trying to make… the last thing they need to be even remotly thinking about is commuter trains… to many other issues that are faceing the city and region that need atttion… have to have a reason to bring the people to the city befor you can even think about commuter services…and as it stands right now…pittsburgh as a city has to reinvent itself first…and then think about commuter trains down the road…should the capital and “real” need arise down the road…
csx engineer
…To Scarbo: In giving credit to several points in the world of advancements in a recent post I also included…in error, Scandinavia…My mistake. I was thinking of Switzerland with the 35 mile rail tunnel they have under construction…And I’ll say it again, there are places in this world that are making great advancements in rail transportation but here in our country we’re not one of them. Freight hauling pretty good but rapid people projects…Almost none.
I don’t believe Altoona has 60,000 people. i lived in Altoona for 2 years and you can drive from one end of it to the other in 10 minutes. Harrisburg has less than 60,000 people.
…Altoona, Pa. is listed as a population of : 49,523
…After thinking about the economic discription of present Pittsburgh discribed above…that is pretty sad. Yes, I know it was different when the smoke was rising from the many blast furnaces working around the clock but then it was gone…! But I thought the Golden Triangle City had made a big turnaround in the past 30 - 40 years to re do itself…Now from CSX Eng’s. post of it above it sounds like someone has dropped the ball…again…It’s so sad for Pennsylvania’s 2nd largest city. It bothers me as I’m a Pennsylvania native and desire to hear better of such places. Sad. Believe I just heard the President say at his news conference this morning that most economics were looking great in this country…Wonder what has happened there…??
Poor Pittsburgh [:(] , I hear about how broke the city is everytime I talk long distance to my family, (especially my mother who works for Allegheny county and will retire this year).
And to think when I was a junior in highschool Pittsburgh was voted “The most livable city in America”. But that was in 1985 when PAT still ran commuter trains from the B&O station downtown to McKeesport.
Did anyone hear who would actually be running and funding the proposed commuter train between Altoona and Pittsburgh? I’d say if it’s private money theres a small chance - probably smaller than the odds of winning the Power Ball - that it could happen. If it’s government money then I’d say it’s purely talk.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, I’d seriously consider it if it ever happend and there are others who make the commute from Somerset to Pittsburgh each day The big problem is that everyone leaves at different times and having people rearrange their schedules to fit when the train would leave is a big hurdle the operator would have to overcome.
Whoever would operate this would have to depend on regular communters - not just those who go from Altoona to Pittsburgh once every 6 months for a doctor appointment - for it to be successful. While I mentioned that I and a few other do make a daily trip to Pittsburgh, I have to agree with Mark about finding the typical laptop/briefcase riders. Perhaps stops in Latrobe and Greensburg would get more riders but it still, in my opinion, wouldn’t be cost effective to go to Altoona.
I could be wrong but I don’t see this happening. As mentioned before, the PAT train stopped running years ago. There were other plans by the Allegheny Valley RR to attempt a communter train from the New Kensington area (perhaps even further) to Pittsburgh that never made it past the talking stage. In other words, commuter rail service for Pittsburgh seems to be that pipe dream that was mentioned in other posts.
For whatever it’s worth, I believe the train they would use from Altoona is a Colorado Railcar DMU and I’m certain that’s what was used on the test runs they made last year.
Brian
If you add in the surrounding towns such as Hollidaysburg, Duncansville, and others whose names escape me at the moment, you get pretty close to 60,000.