> Why doesn't PHP remove the horrid $ symbol for variables and the -> symbol for calling methods? I think those alone would do a lot more for its perception and adoption than adding the pipe operator.

Because it simply can't do that in a retro-compatible way. -> isn't so bad, C/C++ uses that as well. as for $ I guess it came from Perl. The point is already used for string concatenation, where other languages would overload the + operator.