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

[Fred Schneider]

Three million SEPTA old age riders that are questionable ... because  
we don't know how to count?    John, that was no different that the  
state employment offices I audited in Philadelphia (in the 1980s)  
which had work incentive registrants in the active file in order to  
support their staffing levels ... in file along with the guy's death  
notice.   When I asked why it had not been inactivated when you knew  
he was dead, the manager told me, "Welfare hasn't inactivated the  
person yet."   Why should SEPTA be any different?   If you can  
convince Washington that there are more people on our buses than  
there are, maybe the politicians will give us more money to pay our  
drivers and office staff and managers (that we don't need but whom we  
might be fleecing to help our reelection campaigns).

A certain person I know was auditing one rural bus line in Monroe  
County, Pennsylvania this week and was amazed to see it hauling more  
people than the average load on all the Port Authority bus lines in  
Pittsburgh.   I think he told me Friday night that he counted 25  
people on the bus and 23 of them kissed the fare box.

As far as senior citizen riding is concerned, you do get to a certain  
age when you are "incarcerated" in a retirement home and then their  
internal transit system will take you to the doctor or the mall or  
wherever it is you need to go as part of your monthly rental fee for  
your room or apartment.

But Philadelphia does have a problem.   So does Baltimore.  So do  
many other Eastern cities.   They are rapidly becoming NON  
DESTINATIONS.   When the Port Authority's Lindenwold line opened,  
ridership peaked at over 40,000 a day.   It's now down in the 30s  
because people just don't go into Philadelphia like they used to.    
Jobs have moved to the 'burbs.   But you see some strange phenomena  
in "Right to Work" states and in western cities where expansion is  
going crazy.   In Denver, for example, a new light rail line opened  
last year to the southeast in the middle of the I-25 corridor.   That  
one line is hauling 60,000 fares a day with trains running on a 12  
minute headway!!!!!   Astonishing.  The whole system in Denver must  
be moving close to 100,000 daily fares.   Who'da thunk it?

On Sep 10, 2007, at 9:14 AM, John Swindler wrote:

> 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.