[PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts

[John Swindler]

As usual, there is a lot of posturing going on.

I've never heard of any attempt to authorize a 1% local tax for transit in Pa.  

As it is, it is a sweet deal for the local politicians.  The local commissioners/mayors, etc get to appoint the transit authority board members, who determine how and where transit service will be provided, and then blame the state for not fully covering the resulting deficit.  

PAT has gone from 120 million annual riders back in mid-1970s to around 60-70 million today.  The loss has been on the bus side, not the light rail side.  

As for the SEPTA transfer fee, that was just an increase in the existing transfer fee.  I thought the racist charge was when SEPTA tried to do away with transfers.  SEPTA went to discounted transpasses which are swiped across a reader on top of fareboxes.  Transfers, tokens and dollar bills have seemed to almost disappeared in Philadelphia - I've been surprised at how universal the transpasses have become.   Pittsburgh still has transit vehicles sitting at a transit stop while boarding passengers struggle to feed dollar bills into the GFI fare boxes. 

Tolling I-80 was a non-starter from the get-go.  In this case, the federal highway people carried out the federal law, as written.  But what went unnoticed is the bonds issued by turnpike to provide funds for state highways and transit past several years.  Your grandchildren will be paying for those bonds for years to come.  I remember 4-5 years ago one of the consultants - I think it was Gannett Fleming - claiming that Act 44 would include a toll on the railroad tracks crossing Pa parallel to I-90.  He was under the impression that railroads were like highways - owned by PennDOT.  

Cheers
John



> From: shadow at dementia.org
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts
> Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 19:30:20 -0500
> 
> 
>  
> 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
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>