Author: Dan Yablonsky

A cut is still a cut. No matter how big or small it is, a cut still bleeds. Right now, the public transit system in Pittsburgh is a bleeding wound. Despite the efforts by outgoing Governor Rendell to supply a band-aid to the Port Authority for this fiscal year and prevent our transit system from deteriorating even more, pressure from other elected officials, including County Executive Onorato, to stretch the supplemental funding over 18 months has made it that route cuts will still occur in March.

While many people may say to look at the positive aspects, that instead of a 35% cut we now only face a 15% cut, the result remains the same; The Pittsburgh public transit community is losing accessibility to our area. The only change to circumstances is that instead of ripping the bandage off quickly and inflicting the pain all at once, now we will have to the feel the pain slowly, each time the Port Authority continues to need to make more cuts and rips the band-aid off a little more.

According to County Executive Onorato, it was necessary to stretch the $45 million in band-aid funding  over 18 months as we could not expect our legislators in Harrisburg to find a transportation funding solution in the 6 months before the Port Authority’s fiscal year changes in July. Perhaps because he was running for Governor, Onorato fails to remember that the application to toll I-80 was denied a third time in April 2010 and the State legislature failed to take action throughout the remainder of the year. Thus the entire state transportation system has not had a secure source of funding since.

The bleeding wound that is Pittsburgh’s public transit system will not heal until our legislators put in the time needed and take action to fulfill the responsibilities of their positions as elected officials. The continuing cuts to the Port Authority are just the ramifications from the failure of Act 44. Use our links at the left to contact your legislators and tell them this issue needs to be a priority as they return to Harrisburg. Pittsburgh’s public transit community deserves action now! Subscribe to our blog or join our Facebook page to keep informed on the Port Authority and its effects on our community. Join us! Speak out! PublicTransit4Pittsburgh~Advocating for Access

Read more about the cuts approved today here:

Union opposes plan to extend transit bailout
Port Authority approves 15% transit cut

From the Post Gazette today:
Port Authority approves 15% transit cut
By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
PDF
See the Port Authority’s service changes that take effect March 27.

The Port Authority board of directors today approved a 15 percent transit service reduction effective March 27.

Board member Jeffrey Letwin said the decision caused him “intense anguish” but said the board’s job was to “save what we can.”

Today’s vote amended a scheduled 35 percent cut that had been scheduled for March before Gov. Ed Rendell provided $45 million in emergency funding.

Under the revised plan, 29 routes will be eliminated instead of 47. Weekday service cuts will be imposed on 37 routes instead of 79. Service to about half of the authority’s riders will be unchanged.

Today’s action will eliminate 270 authority positions, including 180 layoffs and closure of the Harmar garage.

Patrick McMahon, president of Local 85 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, called the action “an unnecessary mistake.”

He said the board should have maintained current service levels to force the legislature to solve statewide transportation funding problems sooner rather than later.

Board members, however, said doing so posed the risk of catastrophic cuts as soon as July if the legislature didn’t act.
More details in tomorrow’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

First published on January 12, 2011 at 11:01 am

Thursday, December 23, 2010
By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The union representing Port Authority drivers and mechanics is opposed to a plan to make smaller transit service cuts and spread $45 million in emergency state funding over 18 months instead of six.

Patrick McMahon, president of Local 85, Amalgamated Transit Union, said in a letter this week that the union disagrees with a proposal to stretch the funding provided by Gov. Ed Rendell over a longer period. That presumably would give the Legislature and the incoming governor, Tom Corbett, more time to find a permanent solution to chronic transit funding problems.

Stretching the funding would require service cuts, but smaller than the record-breaking 35 percent reduction that was planned for March 13 before Mr. Rendell stepped in.

“The governor’s intention was to prevent cuts in transit services in 2011, giving the new governor and Legislature six months to act on a transit funding formula that fairly and adequately provides for public transit at current levels,” Mr. McMahon said in a letter to Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato.

“We believe our fight is now. … Do not impose further pain on transit riders and commuters by misusing the funding the governor has delivered,” he wrote.

Port Authority officials denied an allegation by a union spokesman that the board decided during a private conference call to cut service by 15 percent in March and close the Harmar bus garage.

AFL-CIO spokesman Marty Marks said such a call appeared to violate the state’s open meetings law. “It’s not fair to take the public out of the process,” he said.

Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie said there was a conference call on Dec. 8 to brief board members about the options for using the emergency funding. “There was no deliberation on [the board’s] part and there was certainly no vote,” he said.

“We haven’t had that conversation yet,” board Chairman Jack Brooks said. He said the board likely will hold a special meeting in early January to decide on a course of action.

The board voted last month to raise fares on Jan. 1 and cut service in March by 35 percent, eliminating 47 routes and more than 500 jobs, to fill a projected $47 million deficit in its 2010-11 budget.

Mr. Rendell on Dec. 2 announced that he had found $45 million that was unspent on other projects and could be used to balance the authority’s budget through June 30 without service cuts.

The goal was to give Mr. Corbett and the Legislature time to address the larger issue of a statewide transportation funding shortfall caused by the Federal Highway Administration’s rejection of the state’s plan to toll Interstate 80.

The decision reduced the funding available for highways, bridges and transit from $922.5 million for fiscal 2010-11 to $450 million.

With the state facing a multibillion-dollar budget deficit of its own, some viewed the prospects for action on transportation funding by June to be remote.

Mr. Onorato floated the idea of stretching Mr. Rendell’s emergency funding over 18 months, giving the new governor and Legislature an additional year to act. He did so just before a crucial vote of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a regional planning agency, on whether to accept the money.

The funding was approved in a 27-22 vote.

“We respectfully disagree with your assertion the incoming Legislature needs eighteen months to solve transit funding inequities,” Mr. McMahon wrote to Mr. Onorato.

“More than three-quarters of legislators are returning to serve another term. These issues are not new to them, and our new governor has been a statewide elected official for eight years, surely enough time to have become well-acquainted with high-profile, critical state issues affecting millions of our citizens.”

“We agree with Local 85 that this isn’t an ideal solution,” Mr. Ritchie said. “What’s needed, obviously, is a permanent solution to the statewide transportation funding crisis.”
Jon Schmitz: jschmitz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1868. Visit “The Roundabout,” the Post-Gazette’s transportation blog, at post-gazette.com.

First published on December 23, 2010 at 12:00 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10357/1112831-147.stm#ixzz19dm4AiKc

DECEMBER 23, 2010
The Flat Line

BY LAUREN DALEY

The Port Authority of Allegheny County may have received a bailout to stave off huge service reductions, but the transit agency still faces a bumpy road ahead.

Faced with a $47.1 million budget shortfall, the Port Authority was bracing for a fare increase in January, followed by a 35 percent service reduction and layoffs for up to 540 employees in March. But on Dec. 2, just a week after the authority’s board approved cuts that would have left 50 neighborhoods without any transit service, outgoing governor Ed Rendell announced that he’d “cobbled together” some $45 million from a discretionary fund to tide the agency over. In a 27-22 vote, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission narrowly approved transferring that money on Dec. 13.

But how much help, really, has the agency received? While Rendell’s money reduces cuts and layoffs, the fare increase will still take effect. The agency has also been asked to stretch the money over 18 months, rather than merely through the current budget year, which ends in June.

“Any plan that gets us to June 30, 2012 … would include service reductions, it would include layoffs, it would include significant downsizing of the system,” said Port Authority CEO Steve Bland after the Dec. 13 vote. A 15 percent cut by March was likely, he said, with further cuts possible later on. “But clearly it wouldn’t be the level of disaster of 35 percent.”

But Port Authority officials, state lawmakers and transit activists say the $45 million is little more than a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. Such fixes, they warn, merely delay the inevitable, unless more permanent funding solutions are found.

“It’s not a remedy!” shouted the Rev. Dave Thornton, vice president of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network, at a transit rally on Dec. 17 in Mellon Square. “It is merely life support.”

Even though funding was found to hold off the Port Authority’s massive cuts, protesters say the move is only temporary.
Heather Mull

But remedies have been elusive. Organizations like PIIN, Allegheny County Transit Council and the Port Authority itself have advocated for a solid base of state transportation funding.

Bland blames the authority’s deficit on the collapse of Act 44, the state’s formula for transportation funding. Much of the plan relied on a proposal to convert I-80 into a toll road; when the federal government rejected that plan, it cut Act 44’s funding in half and reduced additional revenues PAT hoped to receive. (Even under Act 44, funds to the Port Authority decreased more than 2 percent, Bland says.)

“The deficit issue is not an expense issue or passenger-fare issue,” Bland told the SPC. “It’s a state issue.”

It’s not clear how much attention the state will give it, however. The November elections ushered Tom Corbett into the governor’s mansion, and Republicans will also control both the state House and Senate.

Lawmakers in both parties are waiting to see where Corbett stands on the issue.

There have been “no smoke signals from the Corbett camp,” says state Rep. Rick Geist (R-Altoona), who will chair the House Transportation Committee next year.

“The administration is going to dictate this, but we don’t know how that’s going to go,” agrees state Sen. Wayne Fontana (D-Brookline).

A Corbett spokesman did not return a call seeking comment. In a series of campaign proposals, “50 Ways to Rebuild PA,” Corbett cites plans to build a transportation trust fund “to support much needed repairs to our infrastructure.” But while it discusses the need to repair old bridges and build new roads, the document is silent on mass transit.

Transit has not generally been a GOP issue. State Sen. Jay Costa, a Forest Hills Democrat, says he can’t get Republican colleagues “to have a serious conversation about transportation funding.” He says Republicans plan “to do a complete review of all the funding streams” before proposing new ones. “That’s a code word for delay in my mind.”

Transit advocates do have allies. Geist, for one, describes himself as a “big mass-transit fan.”

“Transportation is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” he says. “And if it does turn into that, you can’t do anything.”

Geist has, in fact, proposed a transportation funding package of his own, which he hopes will be taken up next year. It includes tolling some of I-95, which links Philadelphia to other East Coast hubs, as well as raising a franchise tax on oil companies, and increasing the amount local governments must raise to match state funding. Citing a report by the State Transportation Advisory Committee, Geist points out that an additional $3.5 billion a year is needed to meet current transportation infrastructure work.

And still, Geist warns that finding long-term solutions won’t be easy — in part because of resentment at the short-term fixes.

When Rendell found the $45 million, he says, lawmakers weren’t even consulted. “What do you think that does for you when something comes up for funding? You think [lawmakers] who had those votes taken away are going to be inclined to help Pittsburgh out? … It’s not how you do it.”

Protesters say the loss of one bus will mean an increase in traffic on area roadways.
Heather Mull

In fact, Rendell leaves a legacy in which transit discussions have involved a “dynamic of rural versus urban,” says state Rep. Dave Reed, R-Indiana, and a member of the State Transportation Advisory Committee which advises the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. “It sets a really bad tone for transit discussions.”

Act 44 made matters worse, Reed adds: I-80 serves rural areas much more than, say, I-95 … so the perception was tolling it would tax rural areas to support urban transit.

Similar concerns were apparent at the Dec. 13 SPC meeting. Westmoreland commissioner Tom Balya, for example, argued over speakerphone that “it’s constantly [Allegheny] asking something of other counties.” And Armstrong County Commissioner Patricia Kirkpatrick noted that the $45 million could have been spent on structurally deficient roads and bridges all around the state.

Previously, the SPC has “flexed” money to the Port Authority — transferring money slated for road and bridge projects and using it for transit instead. But it has never been comfortable with the practice. While the SPC approved flexing $144.6 million to the agency in 2005, it also issued a resolution stating that “highway and bridge program funding cannot bear the continuing burden of filling the increasing fiscal gap for transit”

According to the SPC, it has now flexed PAT $199.6 million in road project money since 2003 to cover operating deficits. SPC chairman Charles Camp voted against the transfer this time around. The $45 million, he argued, was “supposed to go into economic development and now it’s again going to subsidize mass transit on a temporary basis.”

Or maybe not. Rendell’s plan is not a done deal and transportation funding rules are complex.

While the SPC gave up $45 million, Rendell plans to reimburse it with unspent money from an economic-development fund.

Unlike previous times the SPC has “flexed” money, “We’ll keep SPC whole,” says PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick. “It’s not as the cases in the past where [flexing] meant that some highway or bridge project wasn’t done.”

The SPC also must submit an amendment to the regional Transportation Improvement Plan to formalize the transfer, which must be approved by the Federal Highway Administration.

In turn, the Port Authority has filled out a grant application for the money. Technically, the grant money can only be used for capital expenditures like equipment, but spokeswoman Judi McNeil says the new cash will free up maintenance dollars that can be used for operating costs instead.

But the Federal Transit Administration has to approve the grant application, and Congress has to approve a federal transportation appropriations bill for 2011 before the flex can occur. “It’s everyone’s expectation that will happen shortly,” Kirkpatrick says — but as of press time, the measure was still pending in the Senate.

In the meantime, Port Authority brass is in “wait-and-see” mode. “We’re working the scenarios” for cuts, says McNeil.

And riders continue to battle to preserve their service. At a Dec. 17 rally organized by transit supporters, activists called for more permanent funding. A Port Authority bus covered in signs that read “$45 million Band-Aid” traveled from Oakland to Downtown, followed by a procession of 20-some cars, each representing some of the 48 routes that were slated to be cut. (The bus was driven by a volunteer driver, and the authority paid the “minimal” cost of its fuel: Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie said PAT supported the effort “to point out the fundamental problem causing us to commit such mass service cuts.”)

Rally participants say they were relieved that the March cuts won’t be as serious as planned. Still, they acknowledged the larger problem remains.

“Nothing has been fixed, the crisis is still here,” says Chris Sandvig, regional policy manager at the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, which helped organized the rally. “Cuts are still coming, and whether you drive or take transit, we all should be concerned.”

— E-mail Lauren Daley about this story.

Port Authority gets $45 million bailout
Funds will allow authority to avoid massive service cuts
Monday, December 13, 2010
By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Members of a 10-county regional planning agency tonight approved Gov. Ed Rendell’s plan to provide $45 million in emergency funding to postpone record-breaking Port Authority service cuts.

Members of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission voted 27-22 to redirect unspent federal funds to the transit agency to head off a 35 percent reduction in service scheduled for March 13.

Port Authority CEO Steve Bland thanked the commission and revealed that the agency may attempt to stretch the $45 million over a longer period of time by making small service cuts in March and possibly later.

Mr. Rendell’s plan was to completely fill the authority’s 2010-11 projected budget deficit, postponing cuts until at least July 2011.

Mr. Bland said he heard sentiment from commission members in favor of a plan to spread the emergency funding over an extra year to give the state Legislature a full 18 months to address a transportation funding crisis affecting the Port Authority, other transit agencies, and PennDOT.

That plan would require a smaller reduction in service in March, possibly 15 percent, Mr. Bland said.

“Clearly it wouldn’t be the level of disaster that 35 percent is but it would be harmful,” he said.

He said the Port Authority board would be considering its options over the next several weeks.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10347/1110511-100.stm#ixzz183YmpqZX