A recent Allegheny Institute blog, penned by research director Eric Montarti and research associate Alex Sodini, detailed a revived state legislative plan to truly “regionalize” Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT).
It came in the form of a co-sponsorship memorandum presented by State Sen. Jay Costa and would, supposedly “foster the creation” of a “regional, multi-county transit authority” in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
It’s not a new idea, the researchers noted. And it raises a plethora of problematic issues – the least of which would be the rightfully fearful specter of strapping outlying agencies with PRT’s outsized costs, legacy and otherwise, and how to deal with different labor contracts.
Proponents have stressed the plan would not be an outright merger but, still, giant hurdles would remain. And lest we forget, there’s the gargantuan specter of attempting to fix one mess by creating a bigger mess.
All this said, Costa’s proposal to create a Southwestern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SWEPTA) in the image of SEPTA, the Philadelphia area’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, is a head-scratcher, given the even bigger mess that SEPTA is.
Montarti does note that PennDOT studied privatization for PRT, when it was known as the Port Authority, and other Southwestern Pennsylvania transit agencies as part of the same state law that called for the consolidation study. And Sodini reminds that there is currently a co-sponsorship memo for SEPTA to privatize its bus service.
Let’s all watch this go nowhere fast.
For privatization, of course, is a non-starter for those who want to either maintain the status bloat of taxpayer-funded public transit or moan and wail that privatizing or contracting-out services would make transit unaffordable for those who rely on it the most, “the poor.”
But we commend for your review a brief section from a rather expansive April 1999 Brookings Institute study on public transit privatization from scholar Clifford Winston:
“As long as government delivers the service and pays the bills, urban transportation is destined to remain inefficient—and inequitable,” the Ph.D. economist wrote 26 years ago. “The politics that has led to excessive labor costs, bloated bureaucracies and construction-cost overruns in the past promise more of the same for the future.
“I am convinced that the only way to improve the system is to shield it from those influences by privatizing it,” Winston wrote.
“Private operators, facing fewer operating restrictions, greater economic incentives and stronger competitive pressures, could reduce waste and make service more responsive to travelers’ preferences.
“Moreover, they could accomplish both without funneling income from poor to rich—the little-understood reality of the current system of financing urban transportation.
“To date, federal, state and local government officials have kept urban transportation in the public sector because the political benefits they reap outweigh the political costs of fallout from the system’s inefficiencies,” Winston reminded.
“As these costs continue to grow, however, a transition to a more efficient privatized system seems virtually inevitable. The real question is whether policy makers will stand by passively as a bad public system becomes worse or take steps now to expedite privatization,” the think tank scholar noted.
Concluded Winston:
“Eventually, I believe the political cost of sustaining urban transportation systems plagued by deficits and deteriorating performance will spur change. My hope is that policy makers will find it in their interest to act sooner rather than later, encouraging experiments in private urban transportation.
“Properly conducted, these experiments should generate popular support for privatization and pave the way toward a more efficient urban transportation system.”
That we’ve seen little serious discussion, let alone experimentation, of such a quite worthy alternative in the Keystone State in the ensuing 26 years is all taxpayers need to know about how unserious politicians are about truly “reforming” mass-transit funding and delivery in Pennsylvania.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
