A writer says he’s been reading a number of this scrivener’s “articles” – that would be, more accurately, opinion columns and/or op-eds – that I’ve written for the Allegheny Institute.
But, the writer adds, he “couldn’t find a single article that cited any research to back your claims about the current rail or bus shortcomings in our city.”
“Yes, you cited PRT’s (Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s) budgets and ridership numbers but gave little or no explanation as to why the system faces sputtering growth and ridership.”
Never mind that I have, and do, repeatedly.
I would commend my correspondent to search the many op-ed columns, usually posted on Wednesdays, that I’ve written in support of the Allegheny Institute’s Policy Briefs on PRT. And he also can find similar details in my many “At Large” columns, posted on most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Here’s just one of dozens of columns that do what the writer claims I haven’t done:
https://triblive.com/opinion/colin-mcnickle-again-prt-first-help-thyself/
And I offer this single reference, not merely in pursuit of being concise and brief, but also in response to this condescending reader’s statement:
“It’s not worth my time trying explain to you how expanding the light rail and bus systems in Pittsburgh would be highly beneficial for the city and region. I definitely recommend you do some serious research on the subject and maybe ride the T for once in your life.”
Well.
The writer himself engages in the same behavior that he accuses me of engaging in – but don’t.
The simple fact of the matter is that many days — and because of the T’s frequent stops and slow pace – it remains faster for many commuters to drive their cars.
Oh, and I rode the T for many years, and on a daily basis. It proved too slow and too unreliable for my needs.
As Frank Gamrat, executive director of the Allegheny Institute, also points out, many policy briefs, with plenty of corroborating data, are published on our website .”
As public transportation scholar Randal O’Toole noted a decade ago in a Cato Institute white paper:
“The race to build light rail is a race to waste money. American transit agencies should abandon this race and stick to comfortable, affordable bus service.”
That’s an evergreen truth.
And that bus service must employ the proper economies of scale, in both routing and in the size of the buses. That’s something PRT refrained from doing — until the taxpayer gravy train was threatened, that is.
As for buses, the Alex Danco Newsletter reminded in 2019 that buses are “a good form-factor for serving North American cities outside of their downtown cores.”
“They’re flexible, inexpensive, and when properly funded and managed [emphasis added] can be a really solid transit option that genuinely competes with car ownership for getting downtown, or to [a] subway.
“They’re not fancy, but they get the job done. It turns out when people say they don’t like taking the bus, what they really don’t like isn’t the bus itself, but mostly bus schedules that are unreliable or infrequent. High frequency, prioritized bus service is actually quite popular when done right,” Danco reminded.
But PRT has a long history of getting bus service wrong and on many fronts. Think, and this is just one example, out-of-whack operating costs that rival much larger cities’ bus service, including New York City.
In conclusion, my correspondent resorts to an ad hominin, intellectually bereft attack on my credibility:
“I hope you know that it’s the people like you that continue to slow the growth of our great city. Young people like me might actually want to move here for once if there was a transit system here with more and better access to certain parts of the city.
“Do better,” he concluded.
“Grow up. And be smarter,” is my advice to my baseless critic. For it is “the people like you,” sir, that believe prosecuting the same insane and failed transit public policies somehow is the key to “progress.”
It clearly is not, as history – and data — readily show.
But I’ll leave the final refutation to my colleague Frank Gamrat:
By my correspondent “saying young people want reliable mass transit, isn’t that saying they want someone else to shoulder their burden of their getting around?”
“He can also purchase his own vehicle or even a bicycle to get around,” the Ph.D. economist reminds.
“Of course, if he stays with PRT long enough, he will do just that,” Gamrat concludes.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitue.org).
