[PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh - think tank blasts possible new transit taxes

[Joshua Dunfield]

Fred Schneider wrote:
>   It is simply business as usual.   Simply  
> politicians providing jobs of bus drivers.

Oh come on.  If the transit workers are so powerful, why has transit been
underfunded for so many years?

> When the state finally came through with money, instead of figuring  
> out a reasonable way to provide service, SEPTA (or INEPTA if you  
> would rather) simply announced a 10% increase in service.

They did?  Where's the announcement?  Show me, I like good news.
(Yes, more service in the city where I live sounds like good news.
Odd, that.)

>  In other  
> words, lets hire 10 percent more drivers so we can look good and get  
> elected.

"Prevent crippling service cuts so we can look good and get elected",
maybe.  Not sure what's wrong with that.

>   It doesn't matter if the buses running along US 202 in  
> King of Prussia are empty.   We simply provided more jobs.

Didn't provide a whole lot; those buses don't run that often.

> Both PAT and SEPTA are running systems today that existed in 1965.    
> PAT absorbed 28 independent bus companies and most of those routes  
> still exist just as they did 40 years ago.  They simply have PAT  
> route numbers today.

Not quite *just* as they did; many have been adjusted for shopping
developments.  But I'm not sure why you think that's such a bad thing.
I like to be able to choose an apartment or a house according to
proximity to transit and be confident that the local transit planners
aren't going to "revamp" my buses out of existence whenever they get
bored.

How about some specifics?  We all know Pittsburgh pretty well.  Tell
us which routes are obsolete.  You don't have to tell their riders,
of course...

Note that I'm open to the possibility that even significant
adjustments in the core PAT route structure could make sense.
I've long wondered about restructuring East End service around the East
Busway.  For almost as long, though, I've noticed that it's not a simple
question (one of several problems is that there aren't enough ramps).

>   SEPTA is the same.   The Frontier Divisiion is  
> the old Schuylkill Valley Transit Company.   The City Division is  
> PTC.  The Red Arrow Division is the former Philadelphia Suburban and  
> Southern Pennsylvania Bus Company.   It doesn't matter if there is a  
> redundancy.

So which "redundant" services would you cut?

>   The object is to provide jobs.  Politicians don't care if the buses  
> are empty as long as Harrisburg or Washington is paying to keep them  
> on the street.   Problem is, you and I are paying to keep them on the  
> street every April 15th.  Understand that?    You and I are paying to  
> run empty buses.

I've ridden nearly empty buses for years, first in Corvallis, Oregon
which had an anemic transit-as-social-safety-net system, then in Pittsburgh
(along with a lot of crammed-full buses).  I'm sorry if you don't like
paying for someone to get a ride back from a job in a car-dependent suburb
with near-zero transit ridership, or for me to get a ride home from my
office at 1 a.m. (or 3 a.m., during that brief period when PAT ran the
61C 24 hours a day), but I don't mind at all.  And you realize that in a lot
of cases (not mine) you'd be paying for more paratransit vans if those
low-ridership routes weren't running.

>   You and I pay for the Lititz bus that runs through  
> my neighborhood every hour with two or three people on it.   If  
> Harrisburg hadn't come up with the money, it too was going to be  
> removed.

I don't begrudge paying for that.  And I bet those two or three people
(who are several dozen people each day, unless you have people who ride
all day? if so, maybe they should join this list) are glad it wasn't
removed.

-j.