When speaking to TallE, he posed a question to me that I thought was both interesting and deserved a look here. He asked me "What sort of problems you think better public transit will solve for Pittsburgh/other medium American cities?" It's a very open ended question, and as such, I will be responding to it in a roundabout way. First, I am going to examine the quality of public transportation in Pittsburgh. Then, I will discuss why it's important for our city to continue to improve public transportation in order to make our city successful.
Let's face something. Pittsburgh's public transportation isn't that bad. It really isn't. In a recent discussion with my father, we marveled about how despite the size of our region, you can get nearly anywhere in Allegheny County on public transportation. Now, we ignored the fact that it might take you two or three hours to get there, and that you will undoubtedly be routed through Downtown whether that makes sense for where you're going or not. But still. That's not too bad, for a Port Authority which covers about 1.2 million people. But here's the problem. Faced with budget problems and ever increasing costs, consistent service is suffering. Late buses are being cut. Buses are coming less often. Routes that aren't used as often are going by the wayside.
Now let me pose a hypothetical situation. You have one bus route - the 900 - that travels east/west across the region. Prior to budget cuts, it runs three buses an hour, and has approximately 30% capacity on each trip. It's easy to say, in this situation, "why not cut two trips, run one per hour, and put everyone on to one bus. " Then you'd have one route that runs at 90% capacity." I don't think it's quite that simple. With every decrease in frequency, rather than shifting riders to new buses, you lose a significant percentage of them who no longer can handle the reduced frequency. It's simple economics: If you have a bus coming once an hour, people will wait longer for buses or will no longer have a bus that fits their work schedule, making it more inconvenient to use the bus. Because of this, many of these people will drive, rather than taking the bus. This is a problem for a number of reasons:
Let's face something. Pittsburgh's public transportation isn't that bad. It really isn't. In a recent discussion with my father, we marveled about how despite the size of our region, you can get nearly anywhere in Allegheny County on public transportation. Now, we ignored the fact that it might take you two or three hours to get there, and that you will undoubtedly be routed through Downtown whether that makes sense for where you're going or not. But still. That's not too bad, for a Port Authority which covers about 1.2 million people. But here's the problem. Faced with budget problems and ever increasing costs, consistent service is suffering. Late buses are being cut. Buses are coming less often. Routes that aren't used as often are going by the wayside.
Now let me pose a hypothetical situation. You have one bus route - the 900 - that travels east/west across the region. Prior to budget cuts, it runs three buses an hour, and has approximately 30% capacity on each trip. It's easy to say, in this situation, "why not cut two trips, run one per hour, and put everyone on to one bus. " Then you'd have one route that runs at 90% capacity." I don't think it's quite that simple. With every decrease in frequency, rather than shifting riders to new buses, you lose a significant percentage of them who no longer can handle the reduced frequency. It's simple economics: If you have a bus coming once an hour, people will wait longer for buses or will no longer have a bus that fits their work schedule, making it more inconvenient to use the bus. Because of this, many of these people will drive, rather than taking the bus. This is a problem for a number of reasons:
- More cars on the road means more congestion, causing more delays to main destinations
- More cars on the road mean more smog and worse air quality
- Car ownership costs
- Parking costs
- Gas costs
There are many other reasons that it is bad that people would have to drive instead of taking public transport, but I tried to hit on some of the main ones. Those five reasons have some far reaching consequences, too. For example, public transportation is safer than driving. If more people are driving to work congesting roadways, that only increases the spread between the safety between driving and public transport. If people are spending more money on cars - car ownership/gas/parking/insurance costs an average of $700 a month (according to Flexcar, and granted they're biased) - they are spending less at their local restaurants, bars, and shops. So this brings me to perhaps the best reason that public transport is important in Pittsburgh - effective public transport helps the economy.
If people are more able to quickly and cheaply make it from their homes to the city, or from destination to destination within the city, they are more likely to take advantage of opportunities to shop, dine, and be entertained. If they have to schlep in the car, pay for parking, pay for gas, they will be more likely to stay close to home. Also, quality dedicated right-of-way public transit has been shown to boost economic development. When the government makes significant investment into, for example, a light rail system, businesses develop around it because they know it will be there and it will make their business more accessible. Silver Spring, MD is a fantastic example of this - despite having a history back into the 1800s, the DC Metro station brought new investment and development into Silver Spring and has made it into the bustling town it is today. So really, quality public transport is a huge boon to the economy in any city, large or small, and that's what makes it so important to Pittsburgh.
I could go into a few more issues on why it's important, especially for young people, but I will leave that for another day. I will also, in the next few days, outline why route and frequency cuts in bus routes are perhaps the opposite of what Port Authority should be doing to save our public transportation system.
In other news, I'm very excited for the Mayoral election tomorrow, and I'm hoping that this election will be the catalyst that Pittsburgh needs to start moving forward.
If people are more able to quickly and cheaply make it from their homes to the city, or from destination to destination within the city, they are more likely to take advantage of opportunities to shop, dine, and be entertained. If they have to schlep in the car, pay for parking, pay for gas, they will be more likely to stay close to home. Also, quality dedicated right-of-way public transit has been shown to boost economic development. When the government makes significant investment into, for example, a light rail system, businesses develop around it because they know it will be there and it will make their business more accessible. Silver Spring, MD is a fantastic example of this - despite having a history back into the 1800s, the DC Metro station brought new investment and development into Silver Spring and has made it into the bustling town it is today. So really, quality public transport is a huge boon to the economy in any city, large or small, and that's what makes it so important to Pittsburgh.
I could go into a few more issues on why it's important, especially for young people, but I will leave that for another day. I will also, in the next few days, outline why route and frequency cuts in bus routes are perhaps the opposite of what Port Authority should be doing to save our public transportation system.
In other news, I'm very excited for the Mayoral election tomorrow, and I'm hoping that this election will be the catalyst that Pittsburgh needs to start moving forward.
2 comments:
I agree with most of the things you say here. $700 per month seems high to me, but if you live in the suburbs and drive an SVU 50 miles a day I could see it.
What you said about Silver Springs is true, but for every Silver Springs there is another place where the Metro did not build a station and did not grow. I'm not sure you can say public transit creates economic growth, though it certainly moves it around.
To me it is irrelevant if transit development doesn't "create growth" per se. It would create growth in the city Pittsburgh. If we can attract people who would normally be inclined to live in the burbs and add to sprawl, to instead live in the city through transit oriented development then that is just as good as "creating growth" in my book. You may not be spontaneously generating growth but you are reducing sprawl and attracting people to live in the city.
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