BusTalk

[RailBus63]

35 percent of service to be cut, 500 employees will be laid off, plus a January 1st fare increase.

Port Authority - Transportation Funding Crisis

If you want to understand why this is happening, check out the authority's budget presentation.

While lower tax receipts and other funding challenges get the bulk of the media coverage, the slides on healthcare, pension and other benefit expenses tell the true story. Expenses are up significantly and simply make transit service much, much more expensive no matter how you look at it. As much as the rise in fuel expenses since mid-decade gets a lot of attention, the increase in PAT’s benefits expense simply dwarfs the higher cost of diesel (the increase in healthcare expenses alone since 2004 is almost equal to the projected budget deficit). I’ll leave it to others who are more familiar with PAT to determine if the authority could have or should have managed this better over the years.

The lack of ridership figures makes it difficult to determine how sensible these cuts are, but the Transit Development Plan documents from 2009 indicate that many of the routes slated for elimination have low ridership or are expensive to operate. My guess is that the plan is relatively realistic should no additional funding come through, but PAT is also look to rally the public and the politicians by leaving some communities completely without service.

Jim

[HwyHaulier]

Jim -

Hardly a surprise! The storm has been gathering for a long, long time.
Myriad reports state the Nation is into times demanding austerity...

Some eggs may be broken in the "Today's Special" omelet! Maxim of,
"No Pain! No Gain!"?

.....................Vern..............

[timecruncher]

Wow. Pretty bad stuff here.

Thing is, there will be money in Pennsylvania for lots of pet projects around the state that have a lot less impact on the people who need transit to get to their low wage jobs. I think PAT has pretty much gone as far as it can with raising fares.

That said, they appear to have their ducks all lined up with well-made plans and proposals in place.

timecruncher

[HwyHaulier]

Often heard money expert, Andrew Gause, states any number of cities will take bankruptcy,
before the current wash, rinse, spin economic cycle is over...

There have been abundant hints in the Transit Workers union sites, last several years, of
experienced distress among the much smaller communities...

http://www.usgoldcoins.com/newsletters.html

........................Vern..................