[PRCo] Re: PAT's cuts

[Phillip Clark Campbell]

Mr.Schneider;

Interesting observations.  Humanly,  'someone else' is always responsible,
never the individual / group in question.  This applies across all aspects of
life doesn't it, not just transit.  'Passing the buck'  seems to be the
American way----why accept responsibility when someone else
may be blamed.

Mr.Dunfield raises an excellent point----we now tend to think of each transit
vehicle as a money producer but their primary product is  'service'  which means
some equipment shall never be  'full.'  More  'profitable'  routes subsidize 
those
less profitable.  His observation about cutting the  'current / new'  low 
ridership
route is spot on;  eventually all transit service shall be eliminated.  I have 
voiced
the identical concerns publicly at transit meetings but never get answers.  
Cutting
the low route puts new routes in the same category doesn't it;  keep cutting the
'low ridership' route each crisis and nothing shall be left.  Large areas are 
then
left without  'service.'

Communications and mobility today would seem to rule out ethnic groups
remaining in place wouldn't it.  A half-century ago the same may have been
afraid of venturing out of their 'hood' because of prejudice and this nearly
a century after emancipation.  After same they seem ignored as far as
education and opportunity which then limits their abilities to 'advance' to use
a term.

Can we directly compare costs of Pat today with Prc of the past?  Working for
a profit may make Prc far more efficient at delivering service.  Thus costs 
today
might be higher than in the past.

Our govt was established on a system of checks and balances because of
possible corruption of power.  If such is true of the highest positions in the
country the same is true of the lowest.  'Socialism'  seems to promote  
'mooching;'
why work when someone else shall provide for my basics?  Many of us here
have worked every day of our lives since ages 10 or 12 while delivering papers,
selling magazine subscriptions, working part-time after school once legal age,
paying for our education, and being employed full time as adults until 
retirement.
Yet 'we' pay higher costs to subsidize not only those who can't but those who
'won't'----those who refuse to work because someone else shall provide.  This
Earned Income Credit  (or something similar)  on the income tax  'gives'  people
money for having children that they ignore while using the money to feed their
vices.  We are in unparalleled economic strife;  'cuts'  need to be made at all
levels.  The best form of management is  'example;'  Presidents / Governors
tell us to accept less but want to raise taxes.  Then 'you' do the same;  take a
pay cut Mr. Pres. and Mr.Gov;  cut your expenses by 10%.  Use Walmart toilet
paper instead of Pierre Cardin.  Do not raise my taxes,  for transit nor
anything else.


Phil
Without  a   'coast'   but  not  a   'cause.'





________________________________
From: Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: Pittsburgh-Railways at Dementia.Org; Sue  Haney <shaney7366 at aol.com>
Sent: Thu, December 2, 2010 5:05:02 PM
Subject: [PRCo] PAT's cuts

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.