Transit has a place in the study of living conditions in an industrial city like Pittsburgh. Many of the workers are dependent on street cars to take them to and from home, about their occupations, and to places of recreation. Cheap and efficient transit can enable families living under crowded and unhealthy conditions to move to larger, healthier, and less expensive quarters, and still to reach their work. Low fares and good service bring the operators in a suburban mill town in touch with the full resources of the labor supply in the central city, and also effect a large and direct pay roll economy for carpenters, plumbers, painters, and other city trades whose employes move from point to point during working hours. Again, in no place are people packed together more closely than in the cars, under more conditions favorable to the spread of disease and especially of tuberculosis. And among accidents, few are more numerous, more costly to corporation and community, and more unnecessary, than those caused by street cars.
The street railway system of Pittsburgh is a surface electric system, under the management of the Pittsburgh Railways Company. This company is the consolidation of many other companies, different groups of which had previously combined. The Pittsburgh Railways Company, again, is under the management of the Philadelphia Company, which largely dominates the gas and electricity supply. The Philadelphia Company is said to be controlled by nonresident investors. The present owners and local managers may well be without personal responsibility for the acts or omissions of their predecessors, and yet be crippled by exorbitant obligations to them. Their legal responsibility as to the performance of public service is, however, clear cut.
All the available through thoroughfares leading to the heart of the city from the South Side, North Side, and East End are occupied by the Pittsburgh Railways Company under franchises granted to its subsidiary companies, and as a practical proposition it is impossible to construct additional surface lines or extend surface transit facilities to new areas providing for the growth of the city, except in subordination to these strategic lines. This restriction of course does not apply to rapid transit lines,—subway or elevated.
The principal franchises to these streets held by the original companies appear to be indeterminate in duration, as in Massachusetts, the city having reserved the right to revoke a franchise at any time that a company failed to comply with all the conditions of the agreement. The terms of the original franchises (the Second avenue line being the exception to many of these points) provide for an annual compensation to the city, either a car tax and a percentage of the net profits or a fixed rental in place of one or both of the former. The streets must always be kept in good repair, and in certain cases, at least, clean (either from curb to curb, or along the car tracks). The city sometimes retained the power to alter the conditions, and notably reserved the right to purchase any road after twenty years, at a price to be fixed by five disinterested appraisers. Important provisions of these original franchises are not being observed by the existing company. These facts must be borne in mind in discussing both the equipment of the present system to meet the social needs of Pittsburgh, and ways open to the public to effect improvement.
Though the steam roads have played an important part in the past, the growth of Pittsburgh is now chiefly along electric car lines. The radiation of surface lines from the business center out over the district seems quite complete, especially considering the topography of the city and the suburbs. Large areas of vacant land available for single houses, can be reached for five cents from the business district.
While the radiation of surface lines may be satisfactory, the equipment and operation are exceedingly unsatisfactory, as every practical man in the railway company will admit. The present system has its base located on the point between the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Most of the lines begin as loops through these business streets, operating without transfers between the different lines and without through cars.
FOR PROFILE LINES AND CAR ROUTES, SEE MAP FACING PAGE [784].
A five-cent fare carries one varying distances from this business center, before a second fare is charged. The longest ride for one fare is about eight miles; while a continuous ride of fourteen miles on another route, costs fifteen cents. Passengers cannot change cars in the business center without paying two fares, and a ride across the city and suburbs may cost as much as twenty-five cents. Free transfers, are given between many lines before they enter the downtown district; but no transfers are issued after 11:30 P. M., and none on holidays such as the Fourth of July, when travel is heaviest.
The cars till recently have had no cross seats, longitudinal seats having been used, according to the company, "to allow an extra large capacity," viz., standing capacity. Trailers are run at the rush hours. A line of express cars runs east from the business center to East Liberty, through Liberty avenue, making few stops, though the speed on sample runs was found to be sometimes slower than that of cars on the parallel Penn avenue. The speed of the cars is fast enough for surface operation, except when the power is poor, on steep grades or in the congested district. The service is very unsatisfactory both as to the few cars run and as to the amount of standing, which is inexcusably large. The rails are of the girder type, one obsolete in first-class systems; and are in very bad shape everywhere. The property is very much run down, except for a few new pay-as-you enter cars. The only real rapid transit in Pittsburgh is furnished by the Pennsylvania and other steam railroads, the common time scheduled from the Union Station to East Liberty being ten minutes by train, against thirty minutes by surface express cars.