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Old 06-16-2011, 11:54 AM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,869,081 times
Reputation: 2910

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Quote:
Originally Posted by scrapp View Post
Local pols can be blamed for the contracts that generated the legacy costs that are sinking PAT. I gotta believe that is more their mess than the state's mess.
Except all those guys are long gone years ago. PAT's current Board and management have been steadily trimming PAT's legacy costs, and they had just come up with the TDP when the state instigated the current crisis.
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Old 06-16-2011, 11:59 AM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,869,081 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212 View Post
Ofcourse there is....But as long as their are people like BrianTH and others who want to give pols passes unless they're the obvious culprits to the naked eye... It makes it very easy for pols to hide and keep out of the fray.
Yeah, blaming people for the decisions they are responsible for is no way to hold people accountable. The best way to show Corbett what you think of his policies is to blame someone else!

That is why I blame Denver Mayor Bill Vidal. That's how mad I am, Corbett! I'm so mad I am blaming the Mayor of Denver for what you are doing! Whattaya think of that?!?
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:10 PM
 
5,802 posts, read 9,850,291 times
Reputation: 3051
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
But I'm not giving everyone with power a pass--I am targeting the people actually making the relevant decisions. You can blame the Queen of England for PAT's current crisis, which may get you UK-anarchist street cred, but otherwise that is just wasting your time and won't accomplish anything.
Fortuantly the Queen of England's dicisions have no direct effect on WPA...Onorato and Ravenstahls do they are our POLICTIAL LEADERS they're suppose to LEAD Brian not HIDE! The Transit system is Failing...yet your here giving them a pass to take it to the state.

That's where "Blame Everyone" part comes in, that you said is like blaming no-one


Quote:
No, that is how politics works. Corbett and his crew won't care if you blame everyone else for what they are doing, because that means you won't support anyone who opposes them. Generally, your attitude serves the interests of the most cynical politicians, because they know that no matter what they personally do to f' things up, you are going to blame everyone else as well.
Quote:
Come on, Corbett couldn't care less what ANY local Democrat has to say, particularly a City politician. He gets no meaningful votes from the City, so why should he care?
So because that status quo (in PA) politics, that doesn't commence change. You're giving Corbett way too much immunity, if there is enough outrage because of his actions he will not ecape the rath of the public, the reason he's in office in the first place is because the rural public didnt want another 4 years of a pro-city democrate like Eddy.

So we got Corbett a "take from the cities and give to rural or big drilling" governor.

I'm sure that Corbett wants another 4 years, as well as a chance to run for president down the line, its not going to help him if he's hated by his own state and collapses the state two economic engines to serve his and marcellus shales agendas.


Quote:
Why will Corbett believe his a** is on the line if you are off criticizing local politicians? He'll just laugh and realize you are now politically irrelevant as far as he is concerned.
I am blaming Corbett too, remember the "Blame Everyone" tag...but I see the whole scope of what's going on here, not blinded with tunnel vision focused on blaming one source.


Quote:
Seriously, THIS is how these guys think they can get away with this nonsense. They implement radical policies, and the people on the other side start pointing fingers at each other, and then they laugh at our inability to confront them
You said it yourself "this is politics" its a game to which the American people will never get a clue until its too late.
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:16 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,869,081 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by robrobrob View Post
So what exactly is the solution to this mess? It seems as if everyone is looking to the State to bail out PAT with a dedicated funding stream. So the state comes through with a dedicated funding stream but it if it doesn't throw enough money off, what is next?
Let's take a step back and review history.

The state has always provided funding to PAT. It used to do so out of general revenues. Then it came up with the idea to shift that funding to a special transportation fund with dedicated revenues, which in principle is a good idea. But then the state failed to provide some of the promised revenues for the transportation fund, which means the state's promised contribution to PAT got slashed. So now PAT is getting a lot less from the state than the state originally promised, and has to make large cuts. And Corbett and his crew want the state to make this revenue shortfall permanent, thereby permanently slashing the amount of funding the state provides to public transit.

When someone promises you $100 in funding and you plan accordingly, then only gives you $50 and you have to cut back on your plans, asking for the other $50 isn't asking for a "bailout". So the first thing we should be doing is demanding the state fulfill its promises.

If you don't like that as a permanent solution, the only other thing we can do is try to persuade the state to devolve transportation funding and policy down to the local level. But they aren't likely to do that, because we are a huge cash cow for them. Allegheny County in particular has a relatively small percentage of state roads, which means we experience a large net loss on our gas taxes and other transportation-related state taxes paid. In other words, holding aside public transit, on net the state is sucking a huge amount of money out of Allegheny County and using it to fund state roads in other jurisdictions (mostly the rural ones). So if they devolved all this back to the local level, they would have an even bigger transportation crisis in rural areas, because they would have let their cash cow escape.

So they aren't going to do that, at least not in the near term. Our only hope, therefore, is to try to build a coalition to restore, and indeed increase, the state contribution to public transit. Because that is the only way in which we get even a portion of our extra state taxes returned back to us.
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:18 PM
 
5,802 posts, read 9,850,291 times
Reputation: 3051
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuburbanPioneer View Post
Public transportation doesn't have to be and is not always a public policy. PAT became a business the moment it started competing for ridership with private businesses. It failed as such.
Public Transportation is not a for profit and seems from past reports the Actual for profit business you seem to be comparing PAT's failure to isn't much of a success themselves.

More driving farther to lots for cheaper Port Authority rides - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:23 PM
 
5,802 posts, read 9,850,291 times
Reputation: 3051
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Yeah, blaming people for the decisions they are responsible for is no way to hold people accountable. The best way to show Corbett what you think of his policies is to blame someone else!

That is why I blame Denver Mayor Bill Vidal. That's how mad I am, Corbett! I'm so mad I am blaming the Mayor of Denver for what you are doing! Whattaya think of that?!?
Again the voice of mayor Denver has no effect on Pittsburgh or WPA....

Onorato and Ravestahl does they're our elected POLITICAL LEADERS....Lead damn it!
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:28 PM
 
Location: O'Hara Twp.
4,359 posts, read 7,481,853 times
Reputation: 1611
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH View Post
Let's take a step back and review history.

The state has always provided funding to PAT. It used to do so out of general revenues. Then it came up with the idea to shift that funding to a special transportation fund with dedicated revenues, which in principle is a good idea. But then the state failed to provide some of the promised revenues for the transportation fund, which means the state's promised contribution to PAT got slashed. So now PAT is getting a lot less from the state than the state originally promised, and has to make large cuts. And Corbett and his crew want the state to make this revenue shortfall permanent, thereby permanently slashing the amount of funding the state provides to public transit.

When someone promises you $100 in funding and you plan accordingly, then only gives you $50 and you have to cut back on your plans, asking for the other $50 isn't asking for a "bailout". So the first thing we should be doing is demanding the state fulfill its promises.

If you don't like that as a permanent solution, the only other thing we can do is try to persuade the state to devolve transportation funding and policy down to the local level. But they aren't likely to do that, because we are a huge cash cow for them. Allegheny County in particular has a relatively small percentage of state roads, which means we experience a large net loss on our gas taxes and other transportation-related state taxes paid. In other words, holding aside public transit, on net the state is sucking a huge amount of money out of Allegheny County and using it to fund state roads in other jurisdictions (mostly the rural ones). So if they devolved all this back to the local level, they would have an even bigger transportation crisis in rural areas, because they would have let their cash cow escape.

So they aren't going to do that, at least not in the near term. Our only hope, therefore, is to try to build a coalition to restore, and indeed increase, the state contribution to public transit. Because that is the only way in which we get even a portion of our extra state taxes returned back to us.
I just want to make sure I understand your point. It appears as if the only way for the PAT mess to be fixed is for the state to reinstate its funding. So if this doesn't happen, what do we do? We form a coaltion and say pretty please. Come on. At some point we have to at least acknowledge the possibility that the state may never restore its funding to PAT. If this happens what do we do?
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:30 PM
 
20,273 posts, read 32,869,081 times
Reputation: 2910
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuburbanPioneer View Post
Public transportation doesn't have to be and is not always a public policy. PAT became a business the moment it started competing for ridership with private businesses. It failed as such.
I don't want to waste much time on this, but briefly:

(A) Mass transit is subsidized throughout the developed world. There are limited cases in which mass transit can OPERATE without subsidies, and in those cases with PPPs you can also get SOME private contribution to capital costs. But those are only a fraction of cases, and generally there is no such thing as a comprehensive mass transit system that operates with no public subsidies at all.

(B) PAT was created when a bunch of private mass transit businesses failed. Once we started building free roads all over the place, there was no way to maintain a comprehensive mass transit system without some sort of public planning and financial support. In fact, the only reason private mass transit worked before then was that developers increased their property values by creating and operating mass transit services.

So those private services were being subsidized by the developers, and rarely generated a profit in isolation. Again, once we started building free roads on the public's dime to new developments, that model for providing mass transit was destroyed. And that is why public transit agencies like PAT had to step in.

Edit: By the way, state law right now does not provide much ability for local transit authorities to engage in PPPs. If anything good comes of this debacle, it would be in changing that. But PPPs can't provide more than a fraction of the services necessary.
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:32 PM
 
Location: suburbs
598 posts, read 743,415 times
Reputation: 395
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212 View Post
Public Transportation is not a for profit and seems from past reports the Actual for profit business you seem to be comparing PAT's failure to isn't much of a success themselves.

More driving farther to lots for cheaper Port Authority rides - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Yes, I've read that article and commented on it before. People driving further instead of taking public transportation doesn't necessarily mean they no longer use any transportation. It just means that they prefer one type of transportation over the other for reasons I've mentioned earlier. As long as people use transportation, doesn't matter what kind, there is always at least one successful business, the one that provides that kind of transportation. Even if such transportation involves driving personal vehicles.
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Old 06-16-2011, 12:41 PM
 
5,802 posts, read 9,850,291 times
Reputation: 3051
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuburbanPioneer View Post
Yes, I've read that article and commented on it before. People driving further instead of taking public transportation doesn't necessarily mean they no longer use any transportation. It just means that they prefer one type of transportation over the other for reasons I've mentioned earlier. As long as people use transportation, doesn't matter what kind, there is always at least one successful business, the one that provides that kind of transportation. Even if such transportation involves driving personal vehicles.
But see that's where you confuse the two...Public Transit is Not A Business and shouldn't be run like one...its a public service like the Police, EMT, and Fire Departments.
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