Port Authority Service Cut (Pittsburgh: transfer, neighborhoods, to buy)

[bboy36win]

What does everyone think of the approved 15% service cut? Less drastic than originally proposed, but with an $80 billion projected budget deficit in '07-'08, is that enough?

[Drover]

I'm going to guess you mean 80 million. I have a hard time believing PAT's entire budget is measured in billions, much less the deficit portion of it.

I'm torn on the idea of service cuts. I hate to see people who rely on public transportation lose their service or have it made more incovenient. Public transportation also just makes more sense from an environmental impact perspective as long as it's efficient and well-utilized. And therein lies a big part of the problem.

Public transportation works best and is most efficient in areas that are densely populated. But the population density of the city core has dropped drastically. It gets harder and harder to justify maintaining the same degree of service and infrastructure to serve fewer and fewer people. Additionally, lower population density means it's easier to get around by car, and thus public transportation loses much of its utility and appeal. I almost never used public transportation when I lived in Pittsburgh. But here in Chicago, it's absolutely indispensible. If I can ever talk my wife into transfering to her company's office downtown instead of working out in the suburbs, we'd sell one of our cars. My car sits for days, sometimes weeks at a time without ever moving.

Additionally, it has become easier to afford cars so all but the absolute dirt-poor can afford to buy something to get themselves around. In a city like Pittsburgh where traffic is relatively free-flowing save a handful of bottlenecks and parking is relatively easy in most parts of town, use and support of public transportation is simply not going to be as strong as place like NYC, San Fran, Boston, Chicago, etc., where we're all packed cheek to jowel, traffic is gridlocked everywhere all the time, downtown parking costs $300/mo, some neighborhoods are so dense that deeded parking spaces cost $30,000, et cetera.

In a relatively low-density city like Pittsburgh, short of practically forcing people onto public transportation, which can be quite onerous, I don't see an easy answer to the problem.

[bboy36win]

Originally Posted by Drover

I'm going to guess you mean 80 million. I have a hard time believing PAT's entire budget is measured in billions, much less the deficit portion of it.

Oops. Yep, that's a typo. $80 million is more like it.

I read that the Port Authority is the 15th largest service in the nation (not sure if that means budget or ridership or number of routes or something else ...), but yet Allegheny County is the 29th largest county in the nation (and I assume that means population). So it would seem to be a bit of an imbalance. But then again, I don't know it well enough to know if buses are half-full or a quarter-full, or fully filled.

[Drover]

I don't think the disparity between size of transit authority and size of metro population is very meaningful. Take Maricopa County AZ, for instance, with some 3.6 million people. The whole place is like one giant, sprawling, relatively low-density suburb, with an infinite number of potential arrival points and destination points scattered across the whole area instead of concentrated along well-defined transit corridors (another necessary component in an efficient public transportation). There is just no way to retrofit a comprehensive public transportation system in a metro area laid out like Phoenix and the surrounding area is. Consequently, the metro area's public transit is pretty bare-bones compared to cities with well-developed public transit systems.

I think you'll also notice that those cities with the most comprehensive public transit systems are those that were already mostly developed before the automobile became the ubiquitous form of transportation. Once the car came along, it became easier to lay out cities with a lower population density and without the apparent necessity of concentrated transit corridors geared toward a common destination (as in the Loop in Chicago, lower Manhattan in NYC, and the Triangle in Pittsburgh -- at least once upon a time). Unfortunately as metro areas grow, the car-centric way of laying out cities has really come back to haunt. Los Angeles is a prime example.

[guylocke]

80 beh beh beh bil bil bil BILLION??????

[bboy36win]

Originally Posted by boylocke

80 beh beh beh bil bil bil BILLION??????

I heard that the Pittsburgh Pirates have offered their revenue-sharing money to reduce the deficit.

Just kidding. I already confessed to the typo: Should be $80 Million ... with an M. That's still a pretty big budget deficit.