Tube City Almanac

December 15, 2008

A Brief Disquisition on Public Transportation in Allegheny County, Formulated Upon Riding Said Transit Network for Several Days

Category: Commentary/Editorial || By

Any fools --- including the executive director of the Regional Chamber Alliance and certain newspaper editorialists --- who think that Port Authority buses are a luxury for upper-class liberals (or at the very least, a waste of money) ought to be forced to ride the 61C round-trip between Pittsburgh and Lysle Boulevard for a week.

I never see any luxuries on those buses, and I don't see many upper-class people. I see a lot of working-poor people who are riding buses because they have to, not because they want to.

If we want people to make a productive contribution to society by entering the workforce, then we need to make sure they have transportation. If we keep encouraging sprawl and making it easier for people to live far away from the places where they work, then we either have to pay them enough to own their own cars, or provide subsidized public transit.

(And let's not start again on how "the private sector can provide mass transit." We've covered that already.)

As for Port Authority bus drivers who are supposedly paid "too much money," personally, I wouldn't do that job for twice the money.

Is Sidney Crosby paid "too much money"? Is Ben Roethlisberger paid "too much money"? If not, then explain how they're providing a more vital public service than the men and women who wrestle buses through traffic, ice storms and construction zones every day?

I'm particularly irritated with the "leadership" of the Regional Chamber Alliance --- no longer called the "Mon-Yough Chamber of Commerce," because heaven forbid, they don't want anyone to think they're in the (ick, yuck) Mon Valley --- which is ostensibly supposed to support business development.

It seems as if the RCA's main hobby horses are the development of the Mon-Fayette Expressway, elimination of the Allegheny County drink tax, and the privatization of public services such as education and transit.

The last time I checked, the RCA and other Pennsylvania chambers of commerce were also against any increases in the minimum wage. Apparently, they see no contradiction between paying people too little to afford a car, and then removing or reducing access to public transportation.

The Regional Chamber also sees no contradiction between complaining about taxes that fund the Port Authority while it advocates spending hundreds of millions of public dollars to complete the Mo-Fo Excessway.*

Doesn't funding public education and transit help "develop business" by "developing" the actual workers that build and are employed by those businesses? Maybe I was absent when that topic was covered in Econ 101. (I must have missed my bus that day.)

Hundreds of Mon Valley residents schlep into Pittsburgh every day on buses to guard, clean and maintain fancy office buildings and stores, sometimes in the middle of the night, in all kinds of weather.

Since the free market is so good at providing for the public good, maybe the private developers who own those fancy buildings will provide free cars and education for their employees! (And maybe they'll also provide free unicorn rides to Candy Land!)

On second thought, maybe it's smarter and easier to just fund these necessities --- not luxuries --- through taxes. (Including the drink tax --- which is easy to avoid, because it applies only to people who choose to go to bars and restaurants.)

So until one of the free market geniuses adequately explains away these contradictions to my satisfaction --- or until they start spending a couple of hours on the bus every day --- I don't care what they have to say about public transportation.

Put that in your bus's tailpipe and smoke it.

. . .

(P.S.: Sorry if this sounds grumpier (and bolshier?) than usual, but the car's been in the shop, and a couple of days of motion sickness would put anyone in a bad mood.

(I decided to do my part to stimulate the economy by having the suspension on the Sleek, Gray Mercury heavily upgraded and by getting the front end repainted. Jobs that were supposed to take five days have now stretched into eight days spread over two separate weeks. This sucker better be able to pop wheelies when it's done.)



* --- used with the kind permission of The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat






Your Comments are Welcome!

The link to the editorial didn’t seem to work for me. Are we to presume that there will be further erudition on this subject?
ebtnut - December 17, 2008



Sorry about that, chief. I was loopy on bus fumes.
Webmaster - December 17, 2008



My only beef with Port Authority has nothing to do with drivers (I’m related to one), nor with riders (which I once was), nor with current management (which, albeit imperfectly, has sought to cut costs), but with the routing system. I’m told it would be better to have Oakland as the hub, rather than downtown, but really a series of hubs might be useful, one around the International Airport, one in McKeesport, one in Oakland, one at South Hills Village and one at some location in the North Hills. Also, someone miscommunicated what was needed for Century III Mall, whether in mall management or at wherever Port Authority actually has its headquarters these days (as I said, imperfect cost cutting). But what do I know?
Does it matter? - December 17, 2008



After talking to a lot of drivers and mechanics over the past few years, I think Port Authority has its headquarters in its hindquarters.
Webmaster - December 17, 2008



Ah, bus fumes. Noted. IMHO, the greater part of the public, and by extension the decision-makers have looked down their noses at public transit, and people that ride it, since the great suburban boom following WWII. The seem to feel that those riders are almost beneath contempt—if you can’t afford to buy and car and live on your own little 6,000 square foot lot, you aren’t worth worrying about. The same about goes for Amtrak. Rail service could be much improved with the existing infrastructure if some rational thought was given. For less than the price of a couple of F-22’s each year, we could expand and improve rail travel considerably.

You are right about all the minimum wage and service workers out there. Shut down the PAT for a couple of months and see how folks like not having the night cleaning crews, the security guards, the convenience store clerks, the trash collectors, etc. not be able to show up. You could probably build a new light rail line from downtown to Our Fair City for what the Mon-Fay expressway is goig to cost.
ebtnut - December 17, 2008



I agree with ebtnut about the relative cost of a lightrail line. Trouble is, there’s no agency that’s been charged with building the spine line the way the Turnpike Commission has been charged with building the MFX, so there’s no design for it and no one out there looking for funds for it. ACED is half-assedly following through on the alternatives analysis for the spine line, but even if we could be sure that $$ would be available for every succeeding stage of the project’s development it’s still at least 10 years behind the MFX. :P

But if it’s any consolation, the MFX will never find the money it needs for construction. Howard Carpenter’s peerless efforts notwithstanding, the suckers of this world just don’t have enough money, and it’s only the suckers that will take any interest in this money pit. The PTC’s volume projections are just not credible, and the credit markets are just way too weak, and the feds are about to get a whole new roster of reasons to stay the hell away from funding new tolled highways, and anyways if the PTC did get new federal money they’d be obliged to re-start the money-sucking onerous NEPA process that Brimmeier’s wishing he never started, and you can bet this time around there’d be new hurdles the project wouldn’t clear. Plus the PTC has still not made any headway with the railroads whose ROWs they need to encroach on for a good third of the road’s length. It just ain’t gonna happen.

But thanks, Jason, for calling the RCA out on this one. It’s time someone pointed out that nothing they’re working on is in the interests of the folks who live and/or work in the Valley. Amen.
andrea - December 17, 2008



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