community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
Port Authority Just Might Freeze Pittsburgh In the Heat of the Summer
by Megan
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 2:32 PM
mflocken@andrew.cmu.edu (email address validated)
Port Authority threatens to cut crucial services
Yesterday Pittsburgh residents gathered downtown from noon to 8 pm to voice their concerns at a public hearing about the funding crisis that faces the Port Authority of Allegheny County, and the subsequent proposed service cuts and route hikes that would affect Pittsburgh bus, ACCESS, rail, and incline riders by August 31, 2003. The meeting featured testimony of some 160 pre-registered speakers along with many patient people, fed up with yet another Port Authority reduction proposal, who were on a waitlist. The meetings venue, the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, seemed to serve a number of ironic purposes: visually, as a giant unfinished specter of mismanaged funds and inefficient use of resources it presented a tangible example of the kind of location the new route reductions and fare increases would make inaccessible to many of the people in attendance. The rate increases would raise the base fare to two dollars. The proposed route cuts would result in an elimination of all Sunday, special event, and holiday service, an elimination of all weekday and Saturday service after 9 pm, and a drastic reduction of weekday mid-day service that would amount to a 30 percent decrease in route/ vehicle miles and a 19.5 percent decrease in service hours.
For more specific information on how the fare increases and service reduction proposal affects specific routes, please visit the Port Authority website: http://www.portauthority.org/grow/pgnotice.asp
Such service cuts and rate hikes will affect all of the Pittsburgh community. As a citys public transportation system keeps geographically separated districts connected, allows service providers to span miles in their client base, and provides easy access to countless cultural, social, and work-related events, a healthy Port Authority is vital to maintaining and developing a bustling and modern metropolis. Based on the testimony at the hearing, I will list some of the most frequently raised concerns from specific interest groups:
For many people with disabilities, the Port Authority transit systems are the only viable means of delivering adequate health care attention or valuable recreational time. Those who work would have return home quickly by 7 pm so that their caretakers can perform needed evening tasks and catch the last 9 pm buses to their own homes. With no Sunday service and severely restricted weekday and Saturday service, such people of limited mobility will experience devastating constraints to their recreational opportunities, as many sporting events, shopping trips, evening movies, or religious services will be not be serviced by bus or ACCESS routes. The heart-wrenching pleas at the hearing by representatives of Pittsburghs disabled community, many of whom cant drive or walk easily, explained that such changes to public transit would essentially make them prisoners in their home.
The new proposals affect people with jobs of all income levels. Those who cant afford to own a vehicle or the exorbitant cost of city, especially downtown, parking depend on frequent service to get to and from work. The route cuts see a de facto normalization of nine-to-five, five day work weeks that makes much of Pittsburghs work force (sales, retail, service) fall through legislative cracks. Those who choose round-the-clock work schedules (like 24-hour-a-day health care providers) or those not privileged enough to work nine-to-five, in predominantly low-paying jobs (like janitors and cashiers) depend on a public transit system that is operational past 9 pm on weekdays for their economic sustenance. Such employees would face losing their jobs if the cuts were put in place. One worker commented on the low empathetic capacity of board members and politicians who all own private vehicles. Without later evening service, people working in communities far from their homes will be discouraged from public transit altogether. Another worker testified that the money he was giving to Port Authority for a monthly bus pass to ride home from his second shift job would instead go to cab companies in the amount of over $1000 per month. Many businesses will lose employees, and subsequently productivity, without Sunday service. A representative of some 6500 employees from Mellon Bank discussed the proposals implications for the nearly 800 evening, late-night, and weekend work schedules. Such devastating impact on corporations and their workforces would see the dilapidation of the economic health of a virtually inaccessible downtown area. More conveniently located suburban areas would become the site of the kind of development most needed in our downtown business districts, and such flight is antithetical to the economic turn-around downtown Pittsburgh hopes to enjoy. Such revamping can not happen without a public transportation system that caters to the economic demands of its city.
Though a starkly underrepresented group at the hearing (where was Pittsburghs motivated under-thirty-year-olds?), Pittsburghs young population accounts for a large percentage of Port Authority ridership. University of Pittsburgh representatives alone spoke on behalf of the 28000 commuter students, Carnegie Mellon representatives another 7000. With its many colleges and universities, art and vocational schools, high schools and special-needs facilities, Pittsburghs student community reaches the hundreds of thousands. The integration of ambitious young people, set on volunteer opportunities, work experience, or cultural investigation, into a greater-than-Oakland community relies on a functional weekend bus system. The Port Authority proposals limit students access to the citys resources, undermining the oft-advertised benefit of enjoying greater Pittsburgh as ones campus. Many students come from all over the country, even all over the world to attend Pittsburghs educational institutions, and they do not bring vehicles with them. Whether returning home from the school library--many which close at 2 am, from jobs essential to financial circumstances, from the airport on Sunday in time for Monday classes, or from the bar when Port Authority keeps drivers safer with alternative transportation, the proposed cuts in service would create a terrible disconnect between what Pittsburgh has to offer and the needs of its thriving young residents.
Apart from the economic, social, and cultural realm, what about the impact that increased road congestion and private vehicle use will have on the environment. A representative from the Sierra Club raised the grave concern that an inconvenient public transportation system will encourage those who do own cars to use them more frequently, transforming the city into a personal commuters-haven and decreasing air quality in our city.
There seems to be disproportionate consideration paid to routes that travel through Oakland to the downtown financial district, effectively awarding upper-class students and workers less service cuts than other lower-income areas. Polish Hill residents who depend on Port Authority for work, groceries, nursing care deserve equal, if not greater concern as they live in an area not as well-serviced as more wealthy, financial (as opposed to residential) ones. Fare increases are also disproportionate, as zone one and downtown zone fares increase the least. Many testimonies accused the board of bad management, as the proposals cut popular routes while more seldom traveled ones are left intact.
A flagrant testimony spoke to unfair grouping of all Port Authority services. The resident asked why, when ACCESS drivers are paid minimum wage and bus drivers $20-25 an hour, rate hikes for the two services were correlated. One man, who once worked for the Governors campaign to be elected, focused his criticism on Governor Rendell, who has threatened to utilize a line-item veto on additional funding for public transportation.
Though decisions must ultimately come from the legislature and the board, many community members have proposed more palatable solutions to Port Authoritys funding crisis:
For more information or means of participation, please see:
Contact your local state legislators: http://www.duquesnelight.com/GovernmentalRel/Allegheny2003.pdf the decision will be made soon! Your input counts! Do not think that because you do not ride the buses very frequently that such cuts will not affect you: the measures proposed demonstrate a poor fiscal prioritization and wanton disregard for the citys vitality that spans Port Authority ridership in scope to incorporate the greater Pittsburgh community in general. Please, dont just sit there!
THANK YOU FOR MARCHIN
by Stephen Donahue
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 3:15 PM
sdonahue412@hotmail.com
Thank you to everybody who came and marched with us from the State Building to the Convention Center. The web page version of the P-G has a good photo and the Trib-Review has some good shjots as well.
I have always thought that how something is done is just as important as the outcome. I always hope that our efforts now sort of mirror that which we want to see. I hope that we are doing that at least a litle bit at Save Our Transit. Marching and singing in the streets helps keep me sane. Thanks!
As to the comment about how Access drivers work for minimum wage while Port Authority drivers get $25/hr., such comments sadden me. I heard that same comment yesterday. If indeed ACCESS (which is contracted out work) drivers do get minimum wage then we should be mad as hell. I doubt that any Port authoirty driver has a base pay of $25/hr. They have actually been on a pay freeze for two years and also worked on old contract extensions for a long time. During hard times the powers will try hard to get folks to fight each other instead of going after them. Save Our Transit is committed to not being used as a wedge to divide people. It is only those at the top who make the rules and decide who gets what that we are going after.
Of course what is going on right now is just part of the neo-liberal agenda. Indeed the idea is for there to be NO public mass transit at all. Privatize it all and let the market determine wages. I am sure that Rendell would love to see Port Authority privatized. I talk to people on the street all the time who say that it should be privatized, even regular riders. (Oh, Mr. Block go jump in a lake)
We got a long row to hoe, and not just with protecting our public transit, but all things public.
pace e bene
Corporate media coverage
by Mike
Thursday, May. 22, 2003 at 3:30 PM
http://www.post-gazette.com/transportation/20030522hearingstr1.asp
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/news/s_135860.html
Co-workers inform me that the TV provided some decent coverage, too.
Purchasing mistakes hit hard
by Drew McCarthy
Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 at 12:18 AM
I am a Duquesne University student who commutes to school using public transportation and is getting sick and tired of rate hikes and service cuts. While riding home from school one day last year, my bus driver left the route and decided to take a break before dropping me off although we passed just one street away from my stop at one point. (This was not the first or last time a driver would go off route, sometimes skipping stops completely, while I was on the bus.) After talking to him about why he veered off course he explained he wanted a smoke and we began talking about recent price hikes from $1.60 to $1.75. He mentioned something that interested me very much and that I remembered from that day one. He told me that when they were buying new buses for the fleet, they bought several buses that were too big to drive on most routes and several that were too big to fit in the garages. I don't know how much money this wasted but it must have impacted PAT's budget significantly. No viable business could get away with such nonsense if their consumers actually had a choice. I believe that if there was any competition at all for PAT, it would revolutionize public transportation. Not only for Pittsburgh; it would undoubtedly draw nationwide attention. Of course the funds needed to initiate such a proposal would be difficult for anyone to come up with, but I believe that it could become a profitable aspect of any corporations business, and at the same time force PAT to lower prices.
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