The transit problem
Pittsburgh’s transit agency, the Port Authority, recently announced a major service reduction plan (details) aimed at eliminating the staggering $80 million deficit faced by the agency next fiscal year. Over half the routes – many of suburban in nature – are on the cutting block; overall service hours will be reduced by about 25%.
Needless to say, this has created quite a stir. I’ve been thinking about the issue for some time and finally sat down to write a letter to the Port Authority tonight. My take on the situation? The Port Authority’s is squeezed in several directions: a lack of a dedicated source of funding, relatively high management and labor costs, increased operating expenses, and an expectation to cover a nebulous service area.
The biggest losers in this round of cuts are the suburban commuters. As evidenced in this comparison of the current and proposed route maps (large, small), the fat that is being trimmed comes largely from the outlying routes. Instead of a fairly uniform dense web of coverage, the cuts leave in place a skeleton of routes running along major corridors.
Is this bad? Obviously something had to give, and based on the comprehensive route scoring performed last fall, it was determined that the suburban routes were the least cost-effective (I take issue with the elimination of the airport bus service, and question the scoring logic on these types of routes, however). As an opponent of the wasteful suburban commute, it pains me to see the retreat of bus service from these areas, but the numbers don’t lie: some of these routes aren’t worth the effort. And when you are required by law to operate in the black – well, desperate times call for desperate measures.
I feel that it is ultimately up to the government – from the city to the country – to pull their heads out of their collective ass and get serious about funding transit systems. They may never be profitable on their own, but they serve a common good that provides a more sensible alternative than the auto-heavy lifestyle that we live now. If corn ethanol is seen as a “way out” of our predicament (hint: it’s not), then certainly mass transit – the movement of large numbers of people by means other than their own private vehicles – qualifies as a winner.
