[PRCo] Re: Evening___Service

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, John Swindler wrote:

> In all the babble about fare increases and service reductions, no one - not
> in Pittsburgh nor in any other cities - has bothered to ask the question:
> so what was my local transit company doing during the economic good times
> (high tax revenues) of the late 1990s??

I have a 1987 67F Trafford folder here (and I remember the service). I can
prove my supposition that service has declined, easily and greatly.

Certainly, more new services have been added elsewhere, and I'm not saying
that's wrong, but as new housing developments happen, and you have to
serve them, the number of vehicle revenue miles will presumably go up.

Sure, with buses you can just extend or add a line, unlike streetcars, but
the flipside is with no fixed infrastructure it's easy to just cast off
the service like yesterday's news.

> In 1997, PAT reported to the federal government that it's buses operated
> 24,166,135 annual vehicle revenue miles.
>
> In 2001, PAT reported to the federal government that it's buses operated
> 29,579,081 annual vehicle revenue miles.
>
> During this time, bus ridership went from 63.5 million to 66.0 million

Well, at least the trend is "add runs, add riders", even if more miles
were added than riders.

> Also during this time, light rail declined from 1.71 to 1.64 million annual
> revenue miles, despite an increase from 7.4 to 7.5 million annual
> passengers.

So give me rail, which you just told me can be economized without gutting
ridership, and I'll shut up;-)

> And it's not just Pittsburgh - and it's not just transit.  There are a lot
> of luxury's that are now considered necessities.

What belongs to luxury?

> It's very easy to be generous with someone else's money.  Just ask your kids
> for a Christmas list.  What makes you think government is any different.

I'm writing a large check to the federal government today. I'm writing a
much smaller one to the state just after. I'm really more concerned about
spending on smashing small countries (regardless of how justified it
probably was) than on providing some tangible service I can actually
routinely see... and use.