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

[John Swindler]

And how many passengers ride public transit in Pennsylvania?  (warning, this 
is somewhat of a trick question).  It's a deliberately misleading statistic 
in the report intended to support a point.

Pennsylvania has an older population living in cities and towns dating to 
19th century.  Yet even the senior citizen ridership is declining:  from 
around 60 million per year about 20 years ago  to just under 40 million.  
And the latter figure includes about 3 million "riders" from Philly that are 
questionable.

PAT has declined from around 120 million during early 1970s to somewhere 
around 70 million total riders today.  SEPTA has lost about 200 million 
annual riders past couple decades.  Public transit just isn't as important 
anymore.  The automobile is just too convenient and provides too much 
independence.  But the highway systems (roadways and parking) can not 
support unlimited auto travel.  At the extreme, that is why transit does so 
well in New York City.  It should also do well in Pittsburgh with the rivers 
and hills limiting roadway space.  That it does not .....  well, let's not 
go there.

That said, there will always be a core system in most cities.  In 
Pittsburgh, it will be along most of the old trolley lines.  If I were 
looking for housing with transit service, that is where I would look.  
Without realizing it, that is what I did in Harrisburg - found places within 
walking distance of the rt. 6 and the Camp Hill trolley lines.  Same would 
apply to Pittsburgh.  The Fifth Ave. lines will never go away.  Nor will the 
light rail services.

Too often, people buy a house, or rent an apartment, then start looking for 
transit.  It helped to know where the transit service existed when I went 
house hunting, but then I'm not normal.  At least that is what the realtor 
said.  It also helped that my employer was located in center city 
Harrisburg, and was not about to relocate.

As for the service cuts that occurred, much of it was long overdue.  As for 
the rest, as a friend from DC mention, it's called the Washington Monument 
tactic by the National Park Service.  Whenever Congress wants reforms, the 
agency threatens to close the Washington Monument to the public rather then 
give up management perks.

John


>From: Joshua Dunfield <joshuad at cs.cmu.edu>
>Reply-To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>Subject: [PRCo] Re: Pittsburgh - think tank blasts possible new transit 
>taxes Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:32:51 -0400
>
>John Swindler wrote:
> > The Transportation Reform commission recommended no new spending on
> > transportation until a number of reforms implemented.  Instead, you (any
> > resident of PA) are getting $300 million in additional taxpayer spending 
>on
> > transit operations without any reforms.  The recent legislation might as
> > well be called the Bus drivers full employment act of 2007.
>
>Could you explain how not making even more service cuts means full
>employment for bus drivers?  And even if it did mean that, how is that
>worth mentioning?  The main issue is the service itself.
>
>BTW, the TFRC also said:
>
>     Comparative analysis shows that Pennsylvania transit agencies receive
>     less public funding on a per passenger basis than the average of peer
>     agencies across the country.
>
>Less.  Not more.  What do bus drivers elsewhere in the country have,
>120% employment?
>
>-j.
>

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