Current mood: cheerful
On Jan. 12-14, 2007, KQV Radio 1410 here in Pittsburgh ran a strongly worded editorial [see second comment below] suggesting that our public transit company be run by a private company. I sent the following response to the station on Tuesday, January 16. A couple of days later, I was invited to come to the station and tape this for broadcast. It was aired on January 23, 2007.As a regular rider of Port Authority Transit, I take exception to station manager Robert W. Dickey's editorial suggesting transit be privatized.
Port Authority's funding problems really began with a series of legislation in the 1930s and 40s that tipped the transportation playing field clearly against the private, tax-paying transit companies of that era. It took 20 years, but by the early 1960s every one of those private transit companies was going broke or already bankrupt. Government takeover rescued them, and state subsidies made up for those deficits for a while, but the tip continued and continues still. Now the discrepancy between means and needs is more than the political power brokers in Harrisburg are willing to pay.
You never hear about PennDOT running out of money. It has a different funding structure, a dedicated, self-renewing funding source in the gas tax, which, I might add, absolutely cannot be used to fund transit. On the other hand, transit has to start from zero every fiscal year, and cannot end with a deficit.
Port Authority is not mismanaged. For 12 years, I was a member of its citizens' advisory board, the Allegheny County Transit Council, one year as its president. I got to see the books, know the process, watch it operate, and fully understand what PAT is up against – namely, rises in fuel, health care and pension requirements, coupled with flat income, and prevention from running a deficit. The only thing you need to know about its doing a good job is to count the national transit industry awards it has received. There have been many.
On some of the lesser issues, Mr. Dickey, you are just plain wrong. The articulated buses are the most efficient way of moving large volumes of Pittsburghers on high-demand routes like the EBA. Full-wrap ads are used to cover the many and varied pre-painted-message buses. And finally, for all your editorials about the over $400 million North Shore Extension, you've been silent about the over four billion dollar Mon-Fayette toll road.
I speak from the personal experience of riding 15,000 buses in 15 years, routinely eight trips in a single day, all the while owning and driving a car, and previously owning four cars. The system works very well if you care to figure out how to use it. And therein lies the real solution. Since 1980, while the area's population has stagnated, U.S. Census figures show that 110,000 county households have added a second or third car. If each of these bought an annual transit pass subscription, at a cost close to just the insurance on each car (never mind payments, gasoline, parking or repairs), Port Authority would have its $80 million, the system would be growing, service for everyone would be excellent, and everyone who retired the now-extraneous car would be able to save five grand every year, like I did.
Bottom line, private transit companies cannot succeed without first rolling back the anti-transit legislation from 60 to 70 years ago, including a State Constitutional amendment. If you are not willing to do that, stop trying to destroy the good thing we do have.
*
Here are the numbers, which actually came from Census and other federal agencies. (I'll get you the URLs and research titles, if asked.) The 2006 figures are projections using the "=TREND" function in Excel.MSA | 0 Vehicle Households | 1 Vehicle Households | ||||||
1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | |
Pittsburgh | 214,207 | 151,751 | 125,087 | 92,386 | 375,351 | 353,498 | 357,546 | 347,888 |
MSA | 2 Vehicle Households | 3+ Vehicle Households | ||||||
1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | |
Pittsburgh | 295,460 | 325,816 | 356,954 | 375,272 | 104,189 | 116,183 | 126,913 | 133,941 |
So I crunched some numbers. Here are some differences:
2 Vehicle Households | 3+ Vehicle Households | |||||||
1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2006 | |
Change since 1980 | | 30,356 | 61,494 | 79,812 | | 11,994 | 22,724 | 29,752 |
Change since 1990 | | | 31,138 | 49,456 | | | 10,730 | 17,758 |
Change since 2000 | | | | 18,318 | | | | 7,028 |
That would be 109,564 total added-vehicle households from 1980 to 2006.
Assuming the one-to-two-car households bought a Zone 1 annual, $660, and the now-three-car households bought a Zone 2 annual, $825, that works out to $77,221,122 in "lost sales" to Port Authority.
Pretty darn close to that $80 million deficit they're talking about!
And sure, what the heck, I'll tell you my insurance costs: I have a mid-sized 1999 American car, two drivers (married, over 25), no wrecks or tickets, limited tort option, through a big-name company you've heard of, and I'm paying $661.40/year. How does that compare with anyone else out there?
Full disclosure, though: I had to shell out $29.95 last week for a new pair of sneakers, which I consider more a transportation cost than a clothing cost. I have to do that a couple times a year. How does that compare with anyone else out there? (When I worked, I kept a couple of pairs of good shoes at work, but that's a different story.)
3 comments:
Stuart Strickland [This is the text of that KQV editorial, broadcast January 12, 13, 14, 2007, written by the president of the radio station.]
It's Time to Retire the Port Authority!
Those of us who live in the Pittsburgh area are reaping the bitter vetch harvest of years and years of mismanagement and bad decisions by the Port Authority of Allegheny County.
Typical of so many public authorities, the Port Authority has been out of control since its inception and the result is that taxpayers and the public in general always get the short end of the stick.
Many years ago we had a number of privately run transit companies in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County - companies that were efficiently run - because they had to be - and companies that were self-sufficient. The politicians had a branstorm - round up all these companies and combine them under a public authority - and that's when public transit started to roll down hill out of control.
First and foremost - down through the years - this political entity - unwilling to offend labor and labor votes, caved in during union negotiations and dug itself a hole from which it couldn't recover. And, as the years passed, the hole it dug got deeper and deeper - as evidence [sic] by the labor baggage that still haunts us .. constantly rising labor costs, inflated salaries - and retirement perks that are totally outrageous!
Over the years, the Authority has piled up a string of bad decisions - from the purchase of cantilver buses that aren't suited to our narrow Golden Triangle streets; gaining exclusive rights-of-way contra bus lanes on one way streets which block customer and service access for adjacent retail businesses; all but eliminating income producing bus side billboard advertising in favor of esoteric painted gibberish that nobody understands; a $21 million, under utilized parking garage in South Hills Village; and now their latest indignities .. that $435 million North Shore Connector nobody wants or needs which will screw up business traffic Downtown and in the Strip .. and that multi-million dollar Wabash Tunnel project almost nobody uses.
Meanwhile, when the Port Authority runs into financial difficulties, which is all the time, it has consistently refused to deal realistically with the root causes, opting instead to run to the state and county for financial handouts.
Thus, it's us ... the taxpayers and transit riders who must pay the price for this Authority's repeated stupidities.
We think it's time to retire the Port Authority and return public transit to privately owned transit companies!
Think about it ... Not a bad idea!!!
Robert W. Dickey
President
KQV Newsradio
Stuart Strickland I taped the letter on Monday, January 22, 2007. I was aired five times the next day, January 23, 2007.
I forgot that I actually got several cities' data when I did that research. It's buried in some hidden HTML from the original MySpace post. As it is, some of the Pittsburgh data does not display correctly.
I am going to save it on a file separate from here and try to modify it so at least the Pittsburgh data will post cleanly.
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