Wednesday, September 13, 2006
PAT Tightens Screws on Commission
The Port Authority certainly acts in a timely manner and with an eye on results. How nice that would be if we were talking about running a transit service. Unfortunately, we are talking about PAT’s shrewd announcement of a possible fare hike and service cuts on the day the Transportation Funding and Reform Commission visited Pittsburgh to hear from the public.
Talk about getting your users riled up. A proposed $2.50 base fare, route cuts, and layoffs are the issues that bring the transit advocates and transit dependent out. They deem these changes as unfair and put the pressure on the commission to drive the reform options toward solving an immediate crisis. It takes the heat off of PAT, who is viewed as a victim of the funding formula.
This possibly could come at the expense of long-term solutions that really change the fundamental cost-side problems plaguing mass transit, and, by extension, highway and bridge construction, another area of focus of the commission.
The County Executive—who has sole appointment power of PAT’s board of directors—said this of the PAT plan: “if public funding of transit at the state level doesn't get fixed and the costs of the authority [aren't reduced] -- it's both sides of the equation -- tweaking the fares is not going to fix the problem”. It is too little too late for the Executive to press for cost reductions. He failed in doing his part of reducing the costs of the authority by not pushing the concept of competitive contracting of routes when he was involved in negotiating the most recent contract and by failing to make appointments who don’t want business as usual.
Is it too much to ask for transit riders, who are paying a base fare of $1.75 since 2002, to see an increase? After all, drivers have seen gas prices double (based on regular conventional retail prices for the Atlantic region) from $1.29 to $2.60 today. There are people who can’t use public transit. Those who use transit might need to put more into the farebox if they value the service they receive.
If there is concern about working poor who use transit, the state could start a voucher program to subsidize those workers.
Talk about getting your users riled up. A proposed $2.50 base fare, route cuts, and layoffs are the issues that bring the transit advocates and transit dependent out. They deem these changes as unfair and put the pressure on the commission to drive the reform options toward solving an immediate crisis. It takes the heat off of PAT, who is viewed as a victim of the funding formula.
This possibly could come at the expense of long-term solutions that really change the fundamental cost-side problems plaguing mass transit, and, by extension, highway and bridge construction, another area of focus of the commission.
The County Executive—who has sole appointment power of PAT’s board of directors—said this of the PAT plan: “if public funding of transit at the state level doesn't get fixed and the costs of the authority [aren't reduced] -- it's both sides of the equation -- tweaking the fares is not going to fix the problem”. It is too little too late for the Executive to press for cost reductions. He failed in doing his part of reducing the costs of the authority by not pushing the concept of competitive contracting of routes when he was involved in negotiating the most recent contract and by failing to make appointments who don’t want business as usual.
Is it too much to ask for transit riders, who are paying a base fare of $1.75 since 2002, to see an increase? After all, drivers have seen gas prices double (based on regular conventional retail prices for the Atlantic region) from $1.29 to $2.60 today. There are people who can’t use public transit. Those who use transit might need to put more into the farebox if they value the service they receive.
If there is concern about working poor who use transit, the state could start a voucher program to subsidize those workers.
