[PRCo] Re: Rail?!.?!.?!.......

[Fred Schneider]

I read it too.  It pointed out something you did not, Roger, that being three or so years with an unbalanced budget.  (Feds can print more money but Pittsburgh can't.)

Philly has taxed commuters for years.  The City of Philadelphia wage tax takes precedent over that in surrounding counties.  And its administration is enough to drive one mad.  If, for example, your Philadelphia employer has assigned you to work in Boston for the entire year as a transit consultant ... you are exempt from the Philly wage tax while you are in Boston.  But when you take two weeks vacation, you will be taxed by Philadelphia.  It probably has the effect of moving jobs out of the city and into the suburbs, if only because the president of the company dislikes the tax as much as you do.  .  If you look at the P&W (Red Arrow Division route 100) today, riding is predominantly outbound in the morning and inbound in the afternoon.   I wish I can remember the whole picture in detail ... about 2000 there was finally a slow down in the job hemmorage
from Philadelphia ... monthly estimates were showing a gain while benchmarked data showed almost no year to year change.  (I supervised the man who did the Philadelphia estimates.)

Another point needs to be made and that is that I don't really know if Pittsburgh's job loss is any different than that in Philadelphia. So I could simply be blowing fog around.   The reason is because we have job data for the City of Philadelphia but we don't have it for Pittsburgh.  Reason is that actual benchmark counts come from data on unemployment insurance tax returns, and UI tax account numbers are county based.  We are 99% sure that a job reported by an employer with a Philadelphia County tax return is in Philadelphia, but a county 02 employer cound be in Pittsburgh or Homestead or Braddock or East Pittsburgh ... you get the picture.  The best that can be done for Pittsburgh is share the city out of the county based on ratios from the last dicennial census.

Of course there is one other issue ... we need the taxes to pay for the new stadium (stadii?) that Pittsburgh voters said they didn't want.

rogertrolley.1 at juno.com wrote:

> One of the major reasons for the San Jose ridership drop was the fact they cut the line in half,forcing people to change cars at a transfer station at Tasman, which adds 10 or 15 min. to the trip waiting for the next car to Mountain View!!!      In todays paper, the state of Pa. declared Pittsburgh a financially distressed area, opening the way for the appointment of an outside overseer who will draw up a recovery plan for the city. This was requested by Mayor Tom Murphy to avoid bankruptcy. Pittsburgh is forcasting a 42 million deficit for next year and the credit rating hit junk bond status.The city has laid of thousands of employees and shut swimming pools and police stations ! This status will allow the city to tax commuters that come into the city to work. Sometrhing the mayor has tried to due before !    cheers and happy NEW YEAR from rogertrolley