|
Public transportation will change in Allegheny County, and not for the better
The topic of conversation on the bus had changed lanes, from the weather (yeah, it’s cold), to the Steelers (yeah, the coach is Black) and had settled on... the bus.
The passengers on my 51C were critical of the proposed transportation cuts announced by Port Authority Transit. PAT says that it has to eliminate more than one hundred routes and raise fares because they were facing a $60 million deficit with no way of closing the gap. Riders talked about how they wouldn’t be able to get to work, to the doctor, to the grocery store. They talked about how foolish it was to cut 60 percent of the routes. All of them had a suggestion for which routes should be cut (not theirs, of course).
What was in great supply was cynicism, and it’s companion, denial.
The bus driver, who said he had 13 years in the driver’s seat, said it was just another ploy by PAT management. He said that every two or three years, PAT says the sky is falling, and then the state (either the governor or the legislature), comes to the rescue and provides enough stop-gap funding to keep the buses rolling. He said he’d heard it all before, and that they just wanted him to pay a little more for his health care.
He didn’t think anywhere near 120 routes would be cut. He thought there might be some cuts, which he described as ‘no-brainers,” and he thought that some drivers would probably lose their jobs. But he was convinced that it wasn’t going to be as bad as advertised.
The passengers were nodding in assent, until one passenger, who listened to the tone of PAT Executive Director Steve Bland and County Executive Dan Onorato when they announced the cuts, noted that it didn’t seem like they were kidding this time.
It got a little quiet (except for the young woman in the back who was cursing out her boyfriend on her cell phone-on speaker), and then the conversation returned to individual bus routes.
I took it all in. I try not to join in the conversation on the bus. I sit in my seat, mean-mugging so no one will want to slide in next to me, and keep my mouth shut (yes, I know how to do that). But I couldn’t help it this time. I leaned over and asked the driver if he had talked to his union representatives, because they certainly think the route cuts, and the 400 job cuts, are coming. They have complained that Bland and his folks came up with this formula for cutting routes without consulting the union, and, seemingly, without even talking to the drivers.
I said, to no one in particular, that this time, the buses were going to get cut, drastically, because PAT didn’t have the guts to do what it really needed to do, which is overhaul the system to have it reflect what was really necessary. Instead, PAT was engaging in a union-busting work action, designed to inconvenience enough riders so that they would give management the cover it needed to attack union-won perks, like health care coverage for life, for the worker and his dependents. Bland and Onorato have said those costs are bankrupting PAT, and they can’t do anything about them until the current contract expires in 18 months.
Frankly, as a life-long PAT rider (I didn’t learn to drive until I was 31 and have only had a car in Pittsburgh for 18 months), I’m more upset that Bland came up with the plan without talking to riders. I’ve been riding PAT since... well, since it became PAT. I caught the trolleys from the North Side to Oakland for classes at Frick School when I was in grade school. The series of public hearings being held won’t forestall the bulk of the cuts, but may save one or two routes here and there.
For the record, the routes I use are safe (except for the 84C, which I use to get to and from the South Side Giant Eagle). Luckily, there are almost always jitneys near there, but I’m sure the jitney fares are going to rise (gotta love that free enterprise).
Obviously, Bland was brought in to wield a hatchet, not a stiletto, and he has taken to hacking away at the transit system as a way of saving it—kind of like amputating everything below the waist to save a patient.
As I was getting off the bus, the topic had changed again, back to the weather, and traffic and gas prices (though the girl in the back had made up with her boyfriend—he promised to do better).
After June 24, the conversation should be much different. Public transportation will change in Allegheny County, and not for the better.
(Lou Ransom is managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.)
|
