[PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts

[Derrick Brashear]

On Dec 2, 2010, at 7:25 PM, Herb Brannon <hrbran at cavtel.net> wrote:

> Why hasn't PATransit tried to get 1% tacked onto the local sales tax like
> every other transit agency (Pennsylvania TAs excepted) in the US ?
> I read two interesting things concerning SEPTA. One was that in 2007 SEPTA
> tried to begin charging 60-cents for a transfer. After they (SEPTA
> management) were called "racists" for trying to get the transfer fee
> instituted the matter was dropped. Also, a recent article stated that the
> reason for the transit funding troubles at SEPTA are being caused by the
> failure of the Commonwealth to begin charging tolls on Interstate 80. Both
> those tidbits came from "PAWaterCooler.com".

See today's P-G regarding Allegheny County's drink tax to fund transit. Sorta.

I never objected to the drink tax, FWIW. The glass in front of me included a share of it. I continue to not care.

Also, check out PA Act 44, which is the proximate ancestor of the "failure of I-80 tolling equals transportation crisis" issue.
> 
> Interesting is the fact that on December 26, 2010, Greater Cleveland
> Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) will add service to several routes which
> had service cut last year. Also, GCRTA is adding four new routes to bring
> service back to portions of several routes which were abolished last year.

A more detailed reply to Fred's mail is on my laptop. let's for now leave it at, the new government in PA would like drunks, children and the blind to drive. I hope they get their wish, in their own front yards.


> 
> On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 17:05, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>wrote:
> 
>> http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/r/25995668/detail.html
>> I think this needs to be put into perspective.   The locals always blame
>> the state and federal people for their own problems.   Remember that the
>> trolley fares in Pittsburgh were 35 cents in 1961.   That would suggest that
>> now, a half century later, they should be around $3.50 assuming that riding,
>> fuel, wages, unionization, insurance and all other costs were constant.
>> Right.   We know they were not.   Economies of scale disappeared.   For one
>> thing, as soon as government sticks their hands in it, we have far more
>> labor than we had previously to do the same job.   (Remember that I'm a
>> retired government employee.  I've seen how they work.)
>> 
>> The federal government suggest that transit authorities should keep their
>> farebox recovery rate to 30% of their operating costs.   Since PAT is
>> considering raising the cash fare to $2.30, that suggest that their
>> operating costs are $7.67 per passenger.   Then add in the fixed costs ...
>> that might make PAT's total costs per passenger around $10.00 per passenger
>> .... more or less.   Maybe a lot more because in the old days they paid off
>> the cost of a car barn and used it for years and years and years.   Today,
>> with federal money, we need everything new and we don't pay off the bonds.
>> We simply issue new bonds to pay off the old bonds.   So the capital costs
>> of transit continue to escalate.   Those costs are hidden.   Remember, the
>> feds say keep operating farebox recovery at 30% of operating costs.   No one
>> mentions capital costs.   In fact, in order to hide operating costs, we
>> shift what used to be normal maintenance into capital by deferring repairs
>> until the vehicles virtu!
>> ally fall apart and then we perform mid life overhauls or we buy new
>> equipment long before we should have because the federal and state
>> governments will pick up most of the bill.
>> 
>> The point I'm making here is that under transit authority ownership, we
>> quit raising fares every year because it was not politically feasible.
>> Pittsburgh Railways need to.   If the fares had continued to go up since
>> 1961 ... that 35 cents would probably have been going up a nickel or a dime
>> or a quarter a year in the 1970s (remember those double-diget inflation
>> years) and today you would have $10 transit fares.   But we didn't do it
>> because it would have hurt certain people we wanted to have vote for us.
>> No politician wants that.   So we hired more people and froze the income and
>> blamed the problem on the state and federal government because they put the
>> gun in our hands.
>> 
>> The other thing we need to look at is the map showing which routes PAT
>> plans to axe in March if Tom Corbit doesn't find Republican dollars  (I
>> guess they're different from Democratic dollars   :<)   )  to bail out PAT.
>>  I am not surprised that they want to get rid of a lot of rural routes.
>> Many of those services that the independent bus companies ran before 1964
>> just need to go.   They are left over from a different era.   But there are
>> some other observations....some major urban routes are getting chopped:
>> 
>> 1.   Service through Millvale would end.   It's an old town that whose
>> people would now have to walk down to the site of the carbarn to catch a
>> Tarentum - Pittsburgh bus.
>> 
>> 2.  Atwood Street service in Oakland will end.   The Arlington trolley line
>> is also to be cut.  There is a strange phenomena here.   I remember it in
>> Philadelphia when I worked for the state.   Employees in the state
>> employment offices told us that the black people didn't even know how to get
>> out of their own "hoods" if you wanted to refer them to a job because they
>> never left them.   They were welded to them.   Not saying that in a
>> derogatory way .... simply exploring if that might be why those two routes
>> fail.  Yet 82 Lincoln and 85 Bedford had the same demographic
>> characteristics and were among the best performing in the system.  If
>> someone can give me an unbiased, educated, unprejudiced suggestion, I would
>> love to hear their reasoning.
>> 
>> 3.  Braddock and North Braddock are "really nice places to be from" these
>> days.   Notice that the former route 64 trolley and the route next to it on
>> the hill
>> top will disappear.   Why?  Well, partly Edgar Thompson is the only steel
>> mill left and it is a shell of its once proud existence.   And the
>> Westinghouse plant in East Pittsburgh, which required trolleys on Ardmore
>> Boulevard on 1 minute headways during the war, isn't there any longer.   The
>> jobs are gone.  It also might have something related to the phenomena I
>> mentioned in connection with item 2, above.
>> 
>> 4.  All of the former West Penn Railways routes in McKeesport would be
>> chopped along with the former Pittsburgh Railways lines from Wilmerding to
>> McKeesport to Glassport and the Noble J. Dick bus line from Large over to
>> Glassport.   Guess what guys.   The tube works isn't in McKeesport any more.
>> There is no US Steel open hearth in Duquesne.   There is no dawntawn in
>> McKeesport.   That big mall on the hill at East McKeesport failed.   Itza
>> nothing.
>> I was actually surprised when I cross the river at Charleroi on
>> Thanksgiving and saw a towboat in the Mon ... first time in years that I'd
>> seen one.
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Herb Brannon
> In Cuyahoga Valley National Park
> 
> 
>