Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) boss Katharine Kelleman is crying poverty to state lawmakers.
And, per the Post-Gazette, she has told legislators in Harrisburg that if state government fails to pony up more subsidies, it could create “a situation where you have to have a car to live in Pittsburgh.”
Well, lions and tigers and bears, oh, no!
This would be the same PRT operation whose cost structure in some key metrics long has been out of whack, rivaling far larger transit systems.
This would be the same PRT operation whose ridership numbers, post-pandemic, remain a shadow of their former iterations.
This would be the same PRT operation that appears to have failed to effect few (any?) discernible cost-saving efforts.
And this would be the same PRT that appears to have continuing difficulty accepting reality.
CEO Kelleman says with no additional funding increases, that would mean service reductions, closing facilities and having vendors shut down.
Or, put another way, rightsizing a bloated operation that observers keep noting has a habit of still running quite empty coaches and trains?
Good grief, we simply can’t have any of that, now can we.
A few state legislators aren’t buying Kelleman entreaties. They’re pushing for greater spending accountability.
Good luck with that one, folks.
From the email inbox:
Kevin Moore, an inventory manager at U.S. Steel, wrote last week from Imperial, Mo., regarding the Sept. 18 At Large column about the United Steelworkers union’s misrepresentations concerning Nippon Steel’s prospective takeover of the iconic American steelmaker:
“I am a manager at U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works and have followed the Nippon purchase situation very closely for the last nine months. When the company recently published the email communications between Nippon and the USW [the week before last], I promptly read all 121 pages.
“Your perspective on the union’s response to Nippon’s offers to counter address their concerns is very much in line with my own. Given my proximity to the situation and its direct impact on me, it is difficult to be objective. I appreciate that you took the time to read all the information and to publicly share your opinion.
“Good to know an objective third-party sees it similarly,” Moore concluded.
Another regular correspondent, Chris Mooney of Whitehall, had another take on the now-stalled Nippon-U.S. Steel deal:
“There are a number of things in play here. But the bottom line is that the only reason why U.S. Steel is an acquisition target is because of its non-union scrap metal reprocessing facility in Arkansas.
“The plant is able to turn scrap metal into metallurgically stronger material than any other facility in the world. Cleveland Cliffs [a suitor rejected by U.S. Steel] has the only other facility that is capable of achieving the same kind of results.
“When they talk about making steel ‘greener,” they mean closing open- hearth furnaces and replacing them with electric-arc furnaces that do not make new steel, they remelt scrap metal. You don’t need as many employees, a coking operation or mines to reprocess scrap. This has been going on worldwide in the steel business for 50 years. …
“It doesn’t matter who owns U.S. Steel. Even with a large bag of government money to put in an electric-arc scrap reprocessor, [older, less-technologically advanced operations] are going the way of the Dodo bird. …
“Anybody who thinks that there will be a different outcome here is in need of serious medication,” Mooney offered.
Thanks to our correspondents for their insights. We always look forward to our readers’ input.
By the way, the Dow Jones newswire reports that U.S. Steel says “an arbitration board has ruled in its favor in a dispute with the United Steelworkers union over its planned $14.1 billion acquisition by Japan’s Nippon Steel.”
The steelmaker says the arbitration board was satisfied with Nippon’s written commitments to invest in union-represented facilities and refrain from layoffs and plant closures.
That means the sides could proceed with the deal without taking any further actions under the union’s labor agreement, Dow Jones reported Wednesday.
Now it’s up to a federal foreign investment oversight board to determine if the deal meets national security and other economics snuff. By all reasonable standards, not political ones, it does.
That decision, once delayed, now is expected in December.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
