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Hey buddy, I haven't been to elementary school in years. Why should I have to pay for someone else's crotch fruit? I SAY PRIVATIZE IT
I have actually heard this, well other than the "crotch fruit" part. You won't hear that in my circles obviously. Most of the time it is an elderly person on a fixed income worried about staying in their homes.
If schools were privatized, they might actually be better and no doubt run more efficiently, but it is a wasted discussion. Not going to happen. Just compare Penn Dot to a private company that does road work and watch them work. Private companies work much harder than the 50% or more wasteful Penn Dot workers that just hang around leaning on shovels.
There are lots of ways PAT can save money, but I don't think they look very hard. They don't need as many stops as they have. People can walk a block or two, goodness. That will help with brake use and more fuel in the stop and go stuff. Obviously the biggest thing was this huge pension problem that was promised due to the powerful unions. That is killing everyone today. This is what many of our schools will face soon enough. These huge salaries and giant pensions with all medical benefits not having to be paid into will bit most districts soon enough. Oh well, get by today, and never plan for the future. That seems to be the way things are run. What happens when the crap hits the fan? They get a new tax going like the drink tax. What happens then? That industry suffers and places close because people can't afford the extra 10% now lowered to 7%.
Well, that makes no sense. *Pittsburgh's key roads are already seriously congested at peak times. *Meanwhile, many people going to key destinations at peak times are using PAT. *That's a pretty straightforward situation: eliminate PAT, congestion will get much worse, and the whole local economy will be negatively impacted. There are other categories of lost benefits, but that one alone should be obvious.
I'm not disagreeing that there would be no negative consequences at all of a no PAT world just that it wouldnt significantly undermine things as PAT just isn't good enough to be so integral to things here....some cities would literally ground to a halt when mass transit goes down, Pittsburgh's system has no where near that level of sole reliance & efficiency.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
Can we at least be clear on what happened? *The state promised a certain level of funding to PAT. Then the state cut that level of funding (which happened because their funding scheme for all transportation in PA, including both roads and transit, fell apart). So, PAT has to cut service levels.
So it isn't that PAT went into a crisis and now is asking for more than the state promised. *It is that the state has set off a crisis by cutting PAT's funding.
Did the state promise & then take away so much funding though that pat is talking about needing to slash 40 more routes + night & weekend services on top of the recent 15% cut?; if you're relying on that large of a chunk of outside funding something is wrong.
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Originally Posted by BrianTH
Seriously, around half the people commuting Downtown use public transit. *Efficient or not, PAT is in fact providing services we need.
Is it really that high?
Let me be clear, I have no opposition to mass transit & actually wish there was a system that was relied upon heavily by the majority of the population, I've lived places that has quick, efficient transit that can get you anywhere conveniently at all hours & it is heavenly. Those adjectives don't describe PAT.
I don't think we are polar opposite on the issue of mass transit, I just see the PAT specific situation in a much worse light then you, & don't see any new/fresh ideas from them that would improve things fundamentally to make it an efficient system but rather just patches here & there or multi million dollar studies for things that never come to fruition - all coupled with a perpetual hand out for more & more funds. Show me a bold plan that fundamentally changes/fixes/improves the system across the board & I'll be more supportive of things, until then forgive me for seeing PAT as a giant black hole that sucks away money to be never seen again.
Lenzner has already said that they would pick up some of the routes that the Port Authority can't afford to handle. There is no reason to believe that many of the routes PAT currently covers couldn't be covered more efficiently by others.
Lenzner charges DOUBLE what the Port Authority charges for these routes.
That's one of PAT's problems, it needs to find a way to get more of it's routes to operate closer to a profit.
Which it has already been doing in recent years, and was planning to do a lot more of with the TDP.
Note that when transit has to compete with free roads and has to use those same roads (so is subject to the same prevailing congestion on top of its need to make stops), it is difficult to operate transit without substantial subsidies. To address this issue you can offer public transit on dedicated rights of way that bypass congestion, and in fact PAT's most efficient bus routes are the ones using the busways, particularly the East Busway. Meanwhile, in other transit authorities with higher overall operating efficiencies, often a lot of that is attributable to their using more rail on dedicated ROW.
PAT currently doesn't have the capital funds to invest in new rail or a lot of new ROW for buses, but one of the things the TDP involved was making greater use of the busways. They also planned to introduce Rapid Bus, which would use a variety of less capital-intensive measures to increase speed and convenience along key routes, thereby operating at higher efficiencies. Finally, they are also upgrading to more efficient buses, including more natural-gas buses (which now have an even larger operating efficiency advantage thanks to the divergence of diesel and CNG prices).
In an ideal world, we would have a lot more capital to invest in higher-efficiency transit technologies. Nonetheless, the TDP is a good start, but fully implementing it will still take at least some capital investment, albeit much less than building out rail or busways. It is too bad that instead of talking about how to make the TDP happen as soon as possible, we are instead talking about whether or not transit will even survive in Pittsburgh. And again, the precise reason that conversation shifted from improvement to survival is that the state screwed up its funding plan for transportation, not anything PAT did.
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With these cuts, we're going to have to find a way to make the most of what mass transit we'll have left. That means, if PAT can't get to the people, then we're going to have to bring the people to PAT. If funding it's restored soon, this may create a real demand for TOD. Even if funding is restored, part of an overall solution for PAT, is going to be for it to become more efficient, and moving more people, so I think TOD is going to have to be part of PAT's solution.
I agree more TOD is in order, but that takes time. A very real possibility is that PAT will go into a downward spiral as service cuts lead to ridership loss that dictate more service cuts, and so forth, and that could happen way faster than TOD can make a meaningful difference in ridership. In fact, it is pretty hard to convince people to invest in TOD while at the same time officials in key positions are trying to kill off transit.
So I don't have an inherent problem with PAT tightening its footprint and doing things that would encourage TOD--indeed, I think it is fair to say the TDP would do exactly that. Once again, though, instead of actually talking about that, we are talking about whether PAT will survive at all, which is a real shame.
This is an aside, but that is completely wrong in a modern economy. Rural areas are not remotely self-sufficient anymore, and transportation in rural areas costs a lot more. That's actually one of the chief economic advantages of cities--low transportation costs.
I completely agree if you are saying that people in a rural area gets much more benefit from a road system compared to taxes that they pay them a person living in the city ever does.
Not really an argument, just was pointing out the absurdity of saying my odometer is at 0 so my tax dollars are therefore all going out to pay for others driving around, when in actuality most everyone benefits from the existence of roadways to a greater extent then they pay tax dollars.
PAT just isn't good enough to be so integral to things here....some cities would literally ground to a halt when mass transit goes down, Pittsburgh's system has no where near that level of sole reliance & efficiency.
Seriously, we couldn't have places like Downtown or Oakland without PAT. Regardless of what you think about PAT, the proof is in the actual number of people using PAT to get to such places. And without places like Downtown and Oakland, we don't have a city, and we don't have a competitive larger metro.
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Did the state promise & then take away so much funding though that pat is talking about needing to slash 40 more routes + night & weekend services on top of the recent 15% cut?
Yes, that is exactly what happened.
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if you're relying on that large of a chunk of outside funding something is wrong.
Why? PAT is actually a state agency, although it controlled by the county through its appointment power. It has always been funded in part by the state, which makes sense because the state is involved in all sorts of transportation funding. In fact funding transit in the larger metros is part of the tradeoff for the state funding a massive network of roads in rural areas, and the large metros are losing out on that deal on net terms--the state's funding for transit just makes the net loss a little less worse than it would otherwise be.
And again, if you could cut PAT's funding and nothing happened, THAT would be a sign of massive waste. Conversely, the fact that PAT has to cut so much service when the state cuts its funding is precisely what you would expect if PAT was actually putting that funding to good use.
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Is it really that high?
Yes. To be specific, 53% of Downtown commuters use public transit according to the PDP:
I just see the PAT specific situation in a much worse light then you
I would actually agree there are many fundamental problems with public transit as it stands in Pittsburgh. I do think people are way too quick to blame PAT's current management for things they have no ability to change on their own, but generally I think we need a lot of changes to get an efficient and sufficient transit system. The problem is that you can't get there from here by just slashing PAT's funding and then waiting for a miracle.
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don't see any new/fresh ideas from them that would improve things fundamentally to make it an efficient system but rather just patches here & there or multi million dollar studies for things that never come to fruition
Most truly fundamental changes would require capital investments that PAT alone can't fund. But I do think the TDP was very well done given those limitations. Generally I understand PAT has built a bad reputation over decades and that can't be changed quickly, but in recent years, under Bland, they have in fact introduced a much higher level of professionalism and made substantial progress on various issues.
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Show me a bold plan that fundamentally changes/fixes/improves the system across the board & I'll be more supportive of things, until then forgive me for seeing PAT as a giant black hole that sucks away money to be never seen again.
Again, though, such a plan would require capital investments that PAT doesn't have control over, and probably also reforms to state law to make it possible for them to do more to cut their legacy costs. I just don't get punishing PAT for not doing things it has no power to do--all it can do unilaterally are the sorts of things in the TDP, and even then it can only do some of those things without additional funding.
And in the end, you aren't really punishing PAT, you are punishing the entire region.
Not really an argument, just was pointing out the absurdity of saying my odometer is at 0 so my tax dollars are therefore all going out to pay for others driving around, when in actuality most everyone benefits from the existence of roadways to a greater extent then they pay tax dollars.
Right! I fully believe in there being many free public roads (although as an aside, I do think we may be overdoing rural roads in PA), for the precise reason that they are necessary and everyone benefits indirectly if not directly. My point is just that the exact same logic applies to public transit, which is just another way of providing the same benefits, and a more efficient way of doing so under certain circumstances (but not others).
Conversely, very few people would argue that if there are efficiency problems in the myriad of public road agencies--which of course there frequently are--that the correct solution would be to eliminate public roads entirely. Rather, we should directly address the problem by trying to make our public road agencies more efficient, but we can't just shut down all the public roads for a while first.
Again, the same logic should apply to transit agencies. If you can identify inefficiencies, which will often be the case, then you should directly address those inefficiencies. But you shouldn't just shut down public transit in the meantime, because we actually do need transit to be operating.
Now it just sounds like one of the failed investment firms on wall street's argument.....yes this mess is of our own doing, but unless you give us $$ now the dire consequences to everyone will be beyond what you can imagine, oh, and we promise This time things will be done differently then all the other times in the past.
Now it just sounds like one of the failed investment firms on wall street's argument.....yes this mess is of our own doing
But no! Again, it was the state cutting PAT's funding that necessitates these massive cuts. That's NOT of their own doing.
I know lots of people out there are being misleading about this, and telling the story wrong because it serves their own purposes. But the first thing everyone should understand is that PAT did NOT fall into a crisis then ask for more money from the state. Rather, the state cut PAT's funding thereby causing a crisis.
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Private companies work much harder than the 50% or more wasteful Penn Dot workers that just hang around leaning on shovels.
