Rider Paradox: Surge in Mass, Drop in Transit

[dropkickpa]

Source: NYT

ST. LOUIS — Buses will no longer stop at some 2,300 stops in and around this city at the end of next month because, despite rising ridership, the struggling transit system plans to balance its books with layoffs and drastic service cuts.

One stop scheduled to be cut is in the western suburb of Chesterfield, Mo., just up the road from a bright, cheerful nursing home called the Garden View Care Center. Without those buses, roughly half of the center’s kitchen staff and half of its housekeeping staff — people like Laura Buxton, a cook known for her fried chicken who comes in from Illinois, and Danette Nacoste, who commutes two hours each way from her home in South St. Louis to her job in the laundry — will not have any other way to get to work.

“They’re going to be stranding a whole lot of people,” said Val Butler, a nurses’ assistant at Garden View, who said that she feared looking for work elsewhere in a tightening economy. “A lot of people are going to lose their jobs. A lot of people.”

St. Louis may be girding itself for some of the most extreme transit cuts in the nation, but it is hardly alone. Transit systems across the country are raising fares and cutting service even when demand is up with record numbers of riders last year, many of whom fled $4-a-gallon gas prices and stop-and-go traffic for seats on buses and trains.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/04transit.html?th&...

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Where's the money for public transit? Let's increase traffic congestion, increase pollution, worsen already shitty parking problems, and line the pockets of auto manufacturers, but fuck public transit and the poor, who won't be buying new cars anyway. Where's the money for operating costs? The ONLY transit system in the entire country that is even close to self-sustaining and able to cover it's operating costs is the NYC system, and even they aren't close, every system is dependant on local, state, and federal dollars to cover operating costs. What's going to happen to the economy when people can't get to work and lose their jobs?

[arcadian]

1. What is the correct way to maintain a flourishing society?

Whatever it is, Americans will do the opposite. $$$ rules again.

[marmar]

4. "Whatever it is, Americans will do the opposite."

You can say that again......And it's gotten very tiresome. ..... But we're the best at everything, right? "USA, USA, USA!"

[nichomachus]

19. We can thank the internal terrorists

who have convinced the Sheeple that you can run a 21st Century enterprise with 19th Century revenue.

Their goal was always to destroy the US and they are succeeding.

From Reagan, to Howard Jarvis, to Newt Gingrich, to Tom Delay, to Grover Norquist -- their goal has always been to turn the US into a Third World country -- and the Sheeple helped them do it.

Idiotic Americans have been digging their own graves for over 30 years -- and whistling while they did it.

[Orrex]

2. Pittsburgh has done pretty much the same thing, alas

Ever since the last round of service cuts, the buses just drive once around the garage and then park for the day. And the T doesn't go anywhere but The Land of Make-Believe.

Of course, fares have risen every year for the past decade, at least...


It would be nice to see serious investment in public transportation, because even where it's currently good, there's a long way to go.

[dropkickpa]

9. Tell me about it!!!

My parents moved us to pgh 20 years ago originally because my Dad was hired to help get the spineline project study up and running. The spineline project was intended to extend the T from downtown through Oakland, Squirrel Hill, and perhaps even out to the East suburbs. That project would have served the most densly populated area of the city. It would have eased the horrendous traffic and parking problems in Oakland and downtown, and would have been a boon to the economy to the entire city. But no, that project died the death of light rail transit projects everywhere. Instead, we have the northshore connector (useless) and million of taxpayer dollars wasted on maglev study after maglev study. I am biased, as my dad has made his career in light rail transit, all over the world, but fuck, it MAKES SENSE!!!! Projects he's worked on in India, Turkey, and elsewhere since then have been completed and been resounding successes, some even now requiring expansions!

The silly belief that public transit is supposed to make a profit or even be self-sustaining is ridiculous. No one ever takes into account the benefit that school systems save money by not having to maintain bus fleets for high school students, all of the taxes paid by commuters going to and from work, reduced congestion, taxes paid by people using public transport to shop, etc etc etc.

[happyslug]

11. So your father was responsible for getting that referendum on transit passed?

It passed in 1920, the citizens of Pittsburgh voted for a bond issue that was to do a subway from Oakland to Downtown (The #3 and #2 business transit stops in Pennsylvania, downtown Philadelphia is #1). The city then used that money for the Boulevard of the Allies and the Liberty Tunnel instead of the subway it was voted for. Why? Pittsburgh was a Republican stronghold in a Democratic Region, and the GOP leadership of the City of that time period wanted a new highway NOT a subway, but the people wanted a subway, so the GOP set up the referendum for the bond issue as for a subway then used the money raised as they wanted to do. Within a Decade the City Council had a Majority of Democrats instead of Republicans and by 1934 NO Republicans, but it was already the depth of the Depression so no subway was built.

Now the Democrats of the 1930 had a problem, no money for a subway for it had been spent. The Democrats did look for ways to improve transit for example the Brookline and West Liberty Streetcar lines were given a ramp from West Liberty Avenue to the Beechview Streetcar line. This removed them from the Liberty Tunnel intersection (No Streetcar ever went through the Liberty Tunnels, the Streetcars till the late 1930s entered the intersection for the Tunnel and then turned left to take Warrington Avenue to the Streetcar Tunnel built in 1905). Now that ramp was NOT built with the money from the Subway bonds but was done with WPA money for the bond money was long gone. The Ramp was abandoned in the 1960s when PAT converted the West Liberty Line and the Brookline lines to buses, and stayed abandoned till the 1980s when it was made a ramp to the Southern Bus-way (Previous to the bus-way the buses went through the Liberty Tunnel and Bridge instead of what had been a Streetcar Tunnel but was converted to a Streetcar and bus Tunnel in the 1970s).

It has been estimated that it will cost One Billion Dollars to build a subway between Oakland and Downtown. It would be worth it. In fact I suspect that the majority of people in Allegheny County would vote for a bond to build such a tunnel (But let us not forget what happen when the Majority of the people in Allegheny County, which in 1920 was overwhelmingly in the City of Pittsburgh, voted for such a subway, the GOP used it for things it wanted NOT want the people wanted). Such a Subway has been needed since BEFORE 1920. The present system of reverse reserved lanes is NOT that much of an improvement over the older system of going with the flow of traffic. A subway would move more people and free up that lane of traffic (and cut out the times Buses hit Pitt Students who forget to look BOTH ways when crossing the one way street of Fifth avenue in Oakland).

[SteelPenguin]

13. Andrew Carnegie

Didn't Andrew Carnegie also offer to build the subway for the city (prior to 1920, but when they were first being built in New York and Boston) on the condition that he was allowed to receive the profits of the system until he made his money back, at which point he'd turn it over entirely to the city, but the City Council for some reason didn't like Carnegie and denied him.

[happyslug]

23. I don't know, but when Carnegie first offered the Carnegie Library the City said no.

It was only after Carnegie offered to provide a substantial endowment for the Library that the City took it (Carnegie had a policy of building the library and buying books for the Library, but operating it was up to the municipally given the Library). The GOP leadership of the City said NO, until he came up with money to operate the library.

[dropkickpa]

21. No,

20 years ago was 1990.

In 1993 it was estimated to cost $1 billion dollars to get the spineline project done (downtown to Oakland light rail), it will cost considerably more now. Dunn and Cranmer (republifucks) killed spineline and the northshore connector project (a useless fucking waste of money, it's 3-4 fucking blocks to walk ferchissakes) is the only remnant of all the work done back then. It was proposed as a future expansion of the spineline project after the Oakland/downtown line had been done.

[happyslug]

24. My point is this has been needed since before 1920 and STILL NOT DONE.

And when the City was in the best position to do so, the GOP had complete control of Pittsburgh. Do to what the City did in the 1920s the Democratic Party took over from 1928 onward, just as things went bad. People forget the peak year for Streetcar usage in the City of Pittsburgh was 1927, it decline slightly during the 1930s, rose slightly during WWII, then went into terminal decline only after 1946. The main reason was the Streetcars become slower and slower do to the increase number of cars on the Streets BLOCKING traffic.

My point was simple, this has been needed for decades, but no one is willing to raise the taxes needed to get it done. Today this has to be done at the County Level, but the County, especially the GOP members of the County Council, are NOT willing to do it. People come and go, but the backward ideas of the GOP survive.

[SteelPenguin]

12. It does even more than that

Raises property values near stops and also makes companies looking at new locations prefer your location.

Not spending tax money on light rail and public transportation because it can't make a profit, is like not spending tax money on roads because they can't make a profit. They're not supposed to generate a profit, they're supposed to increase the mobility of a population within a defined urban area to better develop that city by providing a wider variety of workers to multiple parts of the city.

If we had an East End connector we would totally use it to go downtown or to the museums, or even with the stupid connector, to the games or the science center or even the arboretum. As it is we drive even though we live in the city, because the bus ride would take an hour, whereas we can drive it in 15 minutes with normal traffic. The bus around here has become something for people to use if they don't own a car, whereas it really should be something that is convenient enough for people to use even if they HAVE a car. The only place in the city that was ever close to being convenient to use the bus was between Oakland <-> Squirrel Hill and Oakland <-> Shadyside.

[Orrex]

20. It's much more sensible to have a trolley run in a straight line due south

If they ran one to the east, then they'd have to deal with the sudden mobility of a certain demographic long trapped in that area of town.

A friend pointed out that the Stillers' congratulatory parade very carefully started just outside of the Hill district and stopped just before the gantlet of empty storefronts downtown. Clever, eh?

[dropkickpa]

22. That's partly what killed Spineline

the repugs in power at the time listened to the pale merchant in white neighborhoods (Squirrel Hill, Edgewood, etc) who were afraid that, if it had stops in the Hill, black people would "invade" their neighborhoods. They even proposed during community meeting that they would only support it if it DIDN'T have stops in the Hill. My dad was astounded, to say the least. But these were the same people who voted in the replifucks on county council, so there ya go.

[KamaAina]

26. That is also supposedly why the DC Metro does not have a station in Georgetown

and why Cobb County outside Atlanta has never joined MARTA, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

[happyslug]

28. Here is a paper on the efforts to get a Subway in Pittsburgh 1920-1935:

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/14019/232...

The biggest problem with this paper is it ignores the biggest factor occurring in Pittsburgh between 1920 and 1935, the switch from a GOP Mayor and Council to a Democratic Mayor and Council (The last GOP member of the City of Pittsburgh Council lost his re-election effort in 1934, none have been elected since).

[depakid]

3. Now there's a big lose/lose

Sometimes, it's difficult to even feel sorry for some places in the states. It's almost as if they're trying to self-destruct.

[barbtries]

5. this is so stupid!

and so wrong. why are bureaucracies full of idiots with no apparent stake in the common good?

[jpak]

6. Isn't there money in the stimulus package for this??

and don't republics oppose it?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. IIrc, $40B for roads, $5B for mass transit.

Numbers that should be reversed, imo.

[dropkickpa]

10. There's *none* for operating costs

That's what's killing transit systems around the country right now. What use is buying 2 new buses if they have to cut 50% of their routes and hike fares 50%? Transit authorities are getting their operating budget support slashed (generally comes from locality, state, and fed funds). The operating budget is what pays for gas, driver salaries, mechanics, etc.

[kenfrequed]

8. They have done the same

Here in the twin cities. Every few years they cut service and routes during a time when more and more people are using public transit.

[slampoet]

14. Lack of Transit is a SLUR against the Elderly, The Disabled, The Poor, and The Young.

Want to stop having the elderly crash their cars into street markets and killing people? Public Transit.

Want to curb teen unemployment and get kids out of the ghetto? PUBLIC TRANSIT.

Stop drunk driving? PUBLIC TRANSIT THAT RUNS ALL NIGHT

[Coventina]

15. Arg! Don't get me started about the night service.

Phoenix just got their light-rail system running. It's a great way to get from Mesa/Tempe to downtown Phoenix. But it stops running at about 11pm! Even on weekend nights!!

So, you can take it downtown to see a sports event, the symphony/opera/ballet/theatre or the arts district...but you better plan on an early return time or you're stranded!!

It's stupid beyond words.

[WriteDown]

16. Most light rail ends service early...

Here in Dallas, the DART stops around midnight and starts again at 5AM. Even the BART in San Fran ends service kind of early. Not sure why.

[Realityhack]

17. Tends to result in more drunk driving too.

Can't take public transit for your night out so people drive... then drive home intoxicated.

[happyslug]

25. That has been the rules for decades, at least since the 1960s.

When I was in High School and Collage, I had to get up every morning a 3:00 am to drive my father to downtown Pittsburgh. He would then take the Streetcar back home when he finished work about 1:00 pm. If I did not drive him, he would have had to either drive himself OR walk to town (Which meant walking through the Liberty Tunnels, which he did when I took the car on a vacation with my sisters and Mother without him, it was only a long weekend trip but he had to walk through the tunnels to ge to work). Yes, I had access to the car for the rest of the day, but I took the Streetcar to High School and then to Collage, so it barely moved (In High School I was given a bus pass by the High School to take the streetcar to and from school, I abused that pass).

I still remember getting up when my father called me, drove him to work and back and then went back to sleep (Traffic was light at 3:00 am in Pittsburgh, so it was a quick round trip). The reason was no streetcars between Midnight and 5:00 AM, on a streetcar line that did not even post how often the cars were coming between 7:00 and 9:00 except for the words "Frequent service" which meant walk down to the stop and wait 2-3 minutes for a car to come by (and often waiting for 2-3 streetcars to go before one would stop to pick you up do to all of them being packed, the 3-4 cars would come with five minutes of each other, so while I had to weight it was not long). After 9:00 AM service was reduced to every 5-10 minutes, then at about 3:00pm it started up again, dying down at 6:00pm but have service till about 10:00pm then slowing down to one every half hour till Midnight).

I go into the above to show how busy the line was (and is, it was rebuilt in the 1980s as a LRV line with longer and newer cars), and that even a line as busy as the 42/38 Beecheview/Mt Lebanon line (as it was known then, now the 42 S South Hills Village via Beechview LRV line, sometime in the future a 42 M Mt Lebanon LRV line as the operators of the line finally gets the most of the South Hills Cars to go with the Cars from Library to take the "Valley" line, which was completed almost 20 years after the Beechview to Library and South Hills Village lines were finished).

[Realityhack]

18. Now is an excellent time to tax the rich to pay for this type of thing.

That $10M a year executive gets his money in part by not paying people enough to maintain individual transportation. And we ALL benefit from increased use of mass transit.

This is a case where they should go after a tax increase to pay for continued service.

[KamaAina]

27. There is a DU Group that discusses these issues

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Today's top headline: "Senators seek to divert high-speed rail funding to roads".

[JackDragna]

29. This is the fruit of endless tax cuts.

When you gut the tax base, there's no money left to pay for things critical to the public infrastructure. Stories like this sicken me.