So, here’s a wild idea that that will be automatically dismissed as “radical,” if not “antithetical” to “progressives’” warped view of the “proper sphere of government”:
Before still-pandemic-ravaged Pittsburgh Regional Transit (or any mass-transit agency in Pennsylvania) can receive any additional new taxpayer funding, it must, in the least, cut its costs to come in line with comparable transit agencies nationwide.
Our proposal comes in light of the news (first reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer) that Gov. Josh Shapiro is proposing a $282 million annual increase in state public transit funding.
The Tribune-Review reports that about $40 million of that would go to Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) each year, representing a 7 percent hike to this year’s $535 million operating budget.
State officials say tax dollars would be moved around to produce the new transit money. Thus, no new or increased state taxes would be required. Or so they claim.
An Allegheny County official told the Trib the county will come up with a state-required 15 percent match for the increased funding – in this case, about $6 million annually – in a “fiscally responsible” manner.
The devil, of course, is in the paucity of any further details.
Abigail Gardner, the spokeswoman for Chief Executive Sara Innamorato, told the Trib that “building a robust, predictable and accessible public transit system is vital for our region’s economic future.”
But so, too, is there a dire need within PRT to rein in its costs.
PRT spokesman Adam Brandolph said the governor’s proposal, the first increase in public transit funding in more than 10 years, “will help ensure Pittsburgh Regional Transit can continue to serve and support Allegheny County.”
But PRT can do that, first and best, by getting its out-whack-cost structure in line with peer transit agencies nationwide. And that should be a prerequisite to it receiving any increase in taxpayer subsidies.
To wit, it was this past November that Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, noted that the cost to operate (PRT) buses oftentimes exceeds seven other comparison transit agencies in the United States, except New York City.
But when the cost of living was factored into the equation, PRT’s bus operating costs exceeded even those of the Big Apple.
That’s just not unacceptable, that’s outrageous. And without strict rules regarding economizing, PRT — and every mass-transit agency in the commonwealth — should be barred from receiving new taxpayer dollars.
For throwing good money after bad can only lead to more outrageous results.
And that’s not all: Should these agencies’ costs continue to rise in excess of inflation, their subsidies should be cut accordingly. Think of the check and balance that would create to thwart ever rising labor contracts.
And, of course, with that should come the rescission of public transit workers’ right to strike – the unfairest of cudgels held high above taxpayers’ heads.
Sans all these measures, the cost of public transit in Pittsburgh and all Pennsylvania will continue to explode as any semblance of the delivery of efficient public transit implodes.
Such a long-running, predictable farce never should have been allowed to develop and devolve in the first place.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
