You think its bad for PAT now, it's about to get A LOT WORSE! (Philadelphia: legal, vs)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by LIRefugee

Let us all hope so, I see so much in Pittsburgh's favor that I would hate for something like this to put the kibosh on everything. I agree that more sensible heads will eventually prevail, I just hope it happens before too much damage is done.

Yeah, and even on my "optimistic" take, it is still way too late to prevent substantial damage--that happened with the last round of cuts, and the mere threat of this round of cuts is likely already causing damage.

So the damage just keeps increasing, although of course if this round of cuts goes through, the total bill will skyrocket.

[UKyank]

I wouldn't say strongly backing the bankruptcy route is giving up, I think that route has the greatest chance of getting people who are either on the fence or even mildly antitransit on board with a funding increase. Without bankruptcy a large % of whatever funds PAT recieved will still go to pay for its past poor decisions and that gets flak; with bankruptcy, those bad decisions are wiped away and the organization can continue with their current positive improvements & overhauls and even expand service so long as they pledge & have policies in place so their past errors will not happen again. Heck, give the state oversight of you want their money.

It's kind of like the federal government - I will fight tooth & nail against anything they do to extract another penny from me, not because I think they shouldn't be funded but because I see them as wasters of the $ that is sent to them - if they got their house fiscally in order I, and I bet many others wouldn't mind spending a bit more tax money to reduce our debt & such, but keep passing budgets that are over a trillion dollars in the red & you will never get me on board.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

That makes no sense at all. You're grasping at straws. I've never met someone who is 'anti-transit' and I doubt there is an organized group of people who could be called this, let alone that this phantom group would form an alliance with public labor unions.

Hah!

You've never met anyone who thinks, say, all public transit agencies should be done away with, and only private, for-profit companies should meet the relevant transportation demand? Because there are people like that posting here, and certainly lots of advocates of that view in the public discourse.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party types have specifically taken up the anti-transit cause as a core part of their platform:

The Tea Party’s war on mass transit - Salon.com

As for alliances, when you realize the public sector unions include fire and police, the idea that there would be opportunities for de facto alliances between Tea Party types and such unions is not exactly far-fetched.

So, yes, your "plan" to destroy transit in order to save it (the saving to come at some later, unspecified, date in the future, as a result of processes that don't currently exist) does in fact serve the purposes of anti-transit people. And you might think about the fact that your nominally anti-union "plan" doesn't actually seem to be doing anything to limit existing union benefits (except as to come at some later, unspecified, date in the future, as a result of processes that don't currently exist).

All a big coincidence? Sure.

[PDF]

Originally Posted by expdxer

I have been considering moving to Pittsburgh for awhile and I don't drive, so I am watching this very carefully. Even if there's some sort of deal made, and the cuts turn out to be less than 35%, I am now not sure about moving to Pittsburgh since there are other cities with far better transit. I am currently living in Northern VA and want to relocate within a year, so I am city shopping now. I just applied for jobs near Minneapolis and the transit looks far better there based on my research. I would be able to live in either Minneapolis or St. Paul and take an express bus to this job located in the suburbs. In Seattle, it would be the same--transit in both cities and suburbs. I visited Pittsburgh once and liked it very much (I am originally from NYC so I like historic architecture and dense urban environments), but transit is obviously very important if you don't drive. And I am one of those so-called educated people that the city wants to attract.

Thanks for your input. I think I am going to have to look at Pittsburgh as a non-option now based off the responses I have got here.

Interestingly enough, Minneapolis is another city I am really considering. And a few others. I am also looking to move this year and am city shopping as you put it.

Best of luck in your search.

[Anonymous939630]

Originally Posted by PDF

Interestingly enough, Minneapolis is another city I am really considering

Have fun being bored!

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by UKyank

I wouldn't say strongly backing the bankruptcy route is giving up . . .

Here's what you actually wrote:

To win the fight proponents of PAT should be focusing all their energy in getting the state to allow for a bankruptcy

Focusing "all their energy" on bankruptcy means leaving no energy left for fighting for fair and adequate funding. In other words, giving up.

Now if you just want to say they should be "strongly backing" bankruptcy WHILE ALSO fighting for fair and adequate funding for transit, great, I agree. But when you suggest they should be doing the former TO THE EXCLUSION of the latter, that's not a suggestion anyone who actually cares about transit is likely to accept.

And yes, I understand that a few people are willing to destroy public transit entirely, regardless of how devastating that would be for this region, if their impossible demands on legacy costs are not met first (largely through no fault of the people they are threatening with devastation). But I don't think people like that are as common as you are assuming/projecting.

[Goinback2011]

As for alliances, when you realize the public sector unions include fire and police, the idea that there would be opportunities for de facto alliances between Tea Party types and such unions is not exactly far-fetched.

Sorry, Brianth, but your conspiracy theory is so illogical it's lock-em-up-nuts.

So, yes, your "plan" to destroy transit in order to save it (the saving to come at some later, unspecified, date in the future, as a result of processes that don't currently exist) does in fact serve the purposes of anti-transit people. And you might think about the fact that your nominally anti-union "plan" doesn't actually seem to be doing anything to limit existing union benefits (except as to come at some later, unspecified, date in the future, as a result of processes that don't currently exist).

All a big coincidence? Sure.

More with the 'anti-transit' conspiracy. I guarantee you I'm not 'anti-transit'. And no, I've never met someone for whom public transportation, per se, is an issue.

Funding a bunch of layabouts who used control fraud to loot PAT year-in and year-out is the problem, not public transportation.

The fact is, it's PAT pensioners who put the organization in a financial death spiral, not some phantom 'anti-transit' conspiracy between police and firemen and tea party people.

Doing whatever it takes to keep those pikers in the green will only encourage other public sector unions to engage in the same kind of looting. And THAT will do more to destroy Pittsburgh over the next 20 years than anything else.

[greg42]

The problem is, and always has been, any death of said public transit entity will hurt the people who depend upon the service, not to mention have ripple effects for many other things such as businesses who employ those people.

[LIRefugee]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Bankruptcy won't be authorized by the legislature until the pensioners have no other option. When their checks stop arriving in the mail, all parties will have an incentive to solve the problem.

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Doing whatever it takes to keep those pikers in the green will only encourage other public sector unions to engage in the same kind of looting. And THAT will do more to destroy Pittsburgh over the next 20 years than anything else.

In the first post quoted above, you state that the pension issue would not be addressed unless the pensions are not fully funded anymore. The only way the pensions would not fully funded anymore is if incoming funding is inadequate to fund the pensions. The only way incoming funding would be inadequate to fund the pensions is if none of the incoming funding for transit goes for actual transit activities. Therefore, you are advocating that the only way to rescue PAT is to eliminate their capacity to provide any transit services entirely.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Goinback2011

Sorry, Brianth, but your conspiracy theory is so illogical it's lock-em-up-nuts.

So you say, and yet nothing I wrote can't be confirmed with ample observations.

Look, I get that in certain circles, you divide up everyone into the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, and the unions are Bad Guys and the Tea Party types are Good Guys, so it just doesn't seem possible to you that the Good Guys and Bad Guys could be working toward the same ends, even on a temporary basis.

The problem is that once you get behind closed political doors, I guarantee you that SOME unions at least do in fact have friends among the people you consider the Good Guys. Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows--or, as you would put it, makes for "lock-em-up-nuts" bedfellows.

Meanwhile, actual transit users--I don't know where you put them in your Good Guy versus Bad Guy worldview, although you don't seem to mind arbitrary numbers of them ending up collateral damage--are the ones being squeezed from both sides by both the unions and the Tea Party types. Your plan to keep beating the bejeesus out of actual transit users until some miraculous event intervenes and saves whatever few of them have survived your onslaught might well be heartfelt, but it does in fact also serve the interests of the people who just want to beat the bejeesus out of actual transit users, because THEY (if not you) consider them part of the Bad Guys too.

More with the 'anti-transit' conspiracy. I guarantee you I'm not 'anti-transit'.

Again, I don't know you, so I am not making claims about what is in your heart. But I do know that what you are advocating--keep destroying public transit until, in theory, the state finally relents and works toward a solution to the legacy cost problem--happens to align with those whose actual goal it is to eliminate public transit.

And no, I've never met someone for whom public transportation, per se, is an issue.

Then you need to get out more (or just spend a little time discussing public transit on any popular forum).

Funding a bunch of layabouts who used control fraud to loot PAT year-in and year-out is the problem, not public transportation.

And yet your proposal is not to cut legacy costs, but rather to defund actual transit services instead, and hope that somehow, someway, sometime in the future, destroying transit results in actually addressing the problem you claim to care about.

The fact is, it's PAT pensioners who put the organization in a financial death spiral, not some phantom 'anti-transit' conspiracy between police and firemen and tea party people.

The actual fact is that this current crisis is occurring because the I-80 toll was disallowed, which caused an automatic cut in PAT's state funding.

Still, there is no doubt PAT's legacy costs are a long-term problem--in fact, somewhat disasterously for your political theory, that has been a well-known fact for a long time, and has contributed to prior rounds of service cuts, and yet your anticipated miraculous change in state legacy cost policy has still not materialized.

Doing whatever it takes to keep those pikers in the green will only encourage other public sector unions to engage in the same kind of looting. And THAT will do more to destroy Pittsburgh over the next 20 years than anything else.

Once again, your actual plan doesn't involve cutting the funds going to those "pikers". It involves cutting funding for transit services instead.

Yes, you have this theory about how if you can just destroy public transit enough, the miracle day will arrive and legacy costs will be cut. But also once again, we've been de facto trying your plan for many years now, and no such luck.