[PRCo] Re: Upcoming Bus/Rail Cuts and Higher Fares at PATransit

[Derrick Brashear]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Fred Schneider
<fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> Thanks Herb.
>
> It is sad but not unexpected news.
>
> I see we are back to blaming the state for not solving Pittsburgh's funding crisis.

The answer will be privatize, I am sure. Cab's system's private.
That's working out really well.

> Happens every year.   The state is always the guilty party because local politicians are unwilling or unable to tax their own constituents.  In the case of Pittsburgh and probably Cleveland too, where the local pols cannot raise taxes because there is no one left at home (or not industries left) to tax.   I cannot pull up Wikipedia today because of their protest 24 hour shutdown but it occurs to me that both Pittsburgh and Cleveland are in the same ballpark ... cities that lost between 60 and 65 percent of their population since 1950 ... a loss so great that it even pulled the surrounding county down too.   In the case of western Pennsylvania, Westmoreland and Butler counties are the only ones where the 2010 population is an all-time record.  It's pretty difficult to tax people who moved out or died.  And as Philadelphia has discovered and keeps discovering, if you tax the industry or put a !
>  wage tax on the employees, the industries simply move to the suburbs.  There are few solutions other than merging the city with all the surrounding counties.

And then you end up with the zoned tax mess that is metro
Indianapolis, because everyone is scared that someone else might
benefit if they pay.

> Lets go back to 1964 when PAT took over.   What was the fare then?   Probably around 25 cents?  Maybe 30 cents?   I don't have a record of it.   If we adjust 25 cents to the consumer price index, it should be 7.3 times higher today or $1.83.   Adjusting 30 cents goes to $2.19.  Now we have to make a further adjustment for losses in efficiency due to people moving out of the area and reduced passenger loads on vehicles ... perhaps we should increase it by 3 or 4 times more ... that would bring it up to $5.50 to $7.35.   We also have to make an adjustment for all those 20-some independent bus companies whose drivers were moved up to Pittsburgh Railways union scale.  Maybe the real number is closer to $10 per passenger.    But the one zone ride is only $2.25 and we expect the rest to come out of taxes .... but never out of local taxes if we can avoid it.   It should always come out of federal or state taxes, especially when Pittsburgh's population has dropped by about 65% since!

The drink tax was supposed to cover the county's portion. It worked
too well and they had to lower the tax. Didn't give the extra money to
Port Authority. Stupid.

>  1950 and and how do you do that when the population is declining / aging and the corporations are leaving.   If you raise the taxes you simply drive out more people.   If you raise the fares to a reasonable level, you put more people in automobiles and increase air pollutants and use more gasoline which we don't have.   I have no answers, only more questions.

I could solve it. It would require some up-front investment, because
you'd need to beef up 2am service and police to make it work. Fund it
on the back of DUI drivers.
Eventually, the 2am ridership of course would pay for itself.

> My reaction is that many routes which used to offer service to the mills would not run after 10 p.m. because there are no mills left that have shift workers or those workers are using their own cars.

Those routes are probably already gone.

> John Swindler's dad, even after they moved to Castle Shannon, still commuted to Homestead Works by PAT.   Wouldn't be possible today but then there is no Homestead Works today.   And no J&L on East Carson Street either.

And east carson east of 18th has crappy service now. and that's the
bus that serves Arlington Heights and most of the hilltop.

> And all that mill traffic in Lawrenceville and along Butler Street is gone ... the Armstrong Cork plant at 24th Street where my dad worked is an apartment house now.  The companies where my father worked in Irwin and Ambridge and Cheswick between 1935 and 1949 (Gulf Oil, National Electric, Penn Electric) have all gone out of business.
>
> And the politicians in Harrisburg are always going to be reluctant to tax people in Lancaster or York or Harrisburg because they might like to be reelected and serve long enough to wallow in a pension.   It's not about what is best for the public; it's about best for them.
>
> Which routes will still have late evening service?   Those which still have the densest population. Surprisingly they are routes serving some of the pockets of minority populations.   Perrysville is now heavily black.   I think Lincoln is too.  So is Braddock.   Negley and Hamilton might be.

51 will run late. 48 will not.

> So much for Fred's interpretation of the news.
>
> Now, will someone tell me how one of those two Ingram routes got renamed Fairywood?

There's a neighborhood over there...



-- 
Derrick