If you live and work in center city you can rely on public transportation. I had a car when I lived there but really only used it on weekends to go out of the city. Most people I knew didn’t have a car but would rent on for the day.
This post comes to you from someone who’s reluctantly leaving Pittsburgh in just a few months because I got a better job offer in, of all places, Erie. That’s right, betwixt the Rust Belt Triumvirate of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo. Allegheny County bleeds people for two reasons: 1. County taxes are too high (ask all the tax refugees in Westmoreland and Butler counties) and 2. Nearly all business here refuse to pay a decent wage and I don’t expect they ever will. Yes, Mellon and PNC (despite your Santa bonus this year), I’m glaring at you. People were desperate for jobs after the manufacturing collapse of the late 70s/early 80s and they took what they could get. And the mindset remains the same today. “Just be thankful you have a job”…don’t know how many times I’ve heard that from relatives. Thus the cost of labor is pitifully small despite a declining labor pool.
As for the bus situation, it’s sucked for a long time and it’s about to suck worse. But remember, we’ll have the Mon-Fayette Expressway in just a few scant years…what’s it been 40 years in the planning? :mad: This is just another in a long line of Southwestern PA political bullshit. Yes, PAT is mis-managed. However, it doesn’t excuse those in charge of the management from taking the necessary changes to make the mass transit system at least a second-class organization. You can’t gut an organization to success. You can certainly make it more efficient and trim a LOT of fat, but what they’re doing borders on lunacy. I can only suspect that it’s a ploy to get money out of the state. Negotiate high and bargain down.
If you want true laissez-faire, why didn’t you move to Hong Kong pre-handover? Why do you live in the People’s Republic of Massachussetts if you hate anything that provides a public good or any program that helps people poorer than you.
Why must you be a dickface about everything that isn’t snow white pure open market capitalism. Christ on a pogo stick…mass transit is not semi-communist. Yes, the SUV is nicer than the bus, but many of the lesser workers (I know, I know, you tough it out in the jungle of the independent contractor) who don’t have a father in law who owns a company can’t always afford a Lincoln Navigator. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. So you see, with a bus, you can still get your workers to your salt mines cheaply without having to pay them the money you would need so that they could all get SUVs. It’s a damned shame that mass transportation helps the environment, but it’s the price you pay for getting cheap labor.
CapnErie, (sorry, probably not funny to you right now), surely Shagnasty was being ironic. I hope.
Whoosh?
Given the nature of his prior anti-union screeds, I really doubt it. But if I’ve been whooshed, then I’ll be glad for it. However, I doubt it.
It’s amazing how much shit SF’s Muni gets. I mean, public transit in general sucks by its nature, but shit. Six miles south of the city you’re basically stranded unless you’re along one of a few thoroughfares. Everyone else, tough noogies.
I was jut just writing in a humorous (To me. that is all that matters isn’t it?), reactionary style against the OP but I suppose I was tapping into innate feelings buried deep inside somewhere. That is a fine rant against me BTW. Most of it is true and I always like to hear things from the other side although I am inherently such a dick that I just chuckle.
I am going to have to sort out some of these feelings about buses. I really don’t like them or what they symbolize much although I would be even more pissed if everyone was driving an SUV. Talk about traffic congestion and increased costs due to market demand. I promise you that I will try to find a way to like them. I will find a way to like them possibly by substituting even more hatred for unions as an emotional proxy.
I was jut just writing in a humorous (To me. that is all that matters isn’t it?), reactionary style against the OP but I suppose I was tapping into innate feelings buried deep inside somewhere. That is a fine rant against me BTW. Most of it is true and I always like to hear things from the other side although I am inherently such a dick that I just chuckle.
I am going to have to sort out some of these feelings about buses. I really don’t like them or what they symbolize much although I would be even more pissed if everyone was driving an SUV. Talk about traffic congestion and increased costs due to market demand. I promise you that I will try to find a way to like them. I will find a way to like them possibly by substituting even more hatred for unions as an emotional proxy.
Troy McClure SF, sounds as if Philly, and now SFO, are not the public transportation havens I had assumed. Please don’t someone from Boston pop up now and burst my bubble about its public transporation system.
Go New York and Chicago then…we rule. 
Whaaa? What they symbolize? What do they symbolize to you? They’re a means of transportation to get people from Point A to Point B (or C, or Z) so I’m at a loss as to what you could possibly mean.
So it wasn’t as much of a whoosh as I thought? A mini woosh, rather than a back-slapping hearty BIG 'OL WHOOSH?
Meh, I was lazy about getting my license in high school, and now that I’m serious about it, I need new glasses before I can even consider it-no way I’d ever pass the eye exam. (That’s next on my list of Big Purchase Items).
So that’s my own fault. But even then, parking here is absolutely outrageous, so it’s not like it’s much better. And with gas prices what they are…
I already seem some ridiculous waste-My evening bus comes at 4:30, then the next one at 5:40, and then again at 6pm. So if I miss the 4:30, which I almost did today, then I have to wait over an hour for the next one. And yet, I’ll see THREE of the same route come through in one fucking hour. What the HELL?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers, it’s just pissing me off that just as I find this really cool job, this is thrown at me. Oh well, I have until June.
Count Blucher, I don’t know if Santorum has anything to do with this-PAT is controlled by state and county government, rather than federal. Believe you me, I’d LOVE to be able to pin this one on him.
Here is the page on the schedule cuts-you can read the PDF file, if you like. It’s absolutely insane.
Oh, and what buses symbolize?!?! Shagnasty, is this another one of those weird social customs that only you seem to know about?
…and here I always thought that people started moving out of Pittsburgh once they finally finished digging the holes through the mountains… :smack:
See, now that’s funny. I appreciate that. If I can, I rescind the dickface comment. Quality post.
I really loved public transit when I lived in New York, it certainly has its problems but in New York and several of the other major cities you listed, it just works. It will actually get you to where you want to go from just about anywhere in the city and once you learn the system it will get you there on time.
In a lot of other cities where I have had to go for business or something you almost need to rent a car to be able to do anything in a reasonable manner. When I went to Atlanta for business their mass transit system (MARTA) had a station that was 4 miles from my hotel. Given my itinerary I certainly didn’t have time to walk 4 miles to and from every day during my week in ATL. The hotel did provide a shuttle service to the station but it was very spotty and the shuttle served several other hotels so sometimes it was out for 3-4 hours and it had no set schedule, you basically had to call down to the front desk and they’d give you a rough idea as to where the shuttle was at that time and a rough idea as to when it could possibly return.
I relied on that the first day and afterwards I just had to start calling a cab each morning, and cab fares in a city like ATL where they aren’t apparently a major form of transportation are very high. Over my week’s stay I easily spent more in cab fare than I would have on renting a car, and that’s what I should have done in retrospect.
What I really don’t understand is cities like ATL where most of the locals seem to rely on cars for transportation that has abysmal parking. You’d think if a city wasn’t going to develop a cohesive mass transit system then they’d at least have reasonable parking accomodation, in most cases you’d be wrong.
Having a car is amazingly inconvenient in a big city. In the small town atmosphere I live in now, they’re incredibly convenient. Vast unused parking spaces every where and traffic is a foreign concept.
With gas prices and federal cuts, mass transit all around the nation is taking a hot, not just Pittsburg.
I would spend my last dollar before I would try to drive in Atlanta. About one- third of the drivers are Type A personalities, know where they are going, want to be there twenty minutes ago and think they can accomplish this bit of time travelling if they drive through you. One-third of the drivers have red eyes, scaley skin, green talons, and foot-long tongues. They are flesh-eating and are on the lookout for most of the rest of the drivers who are lost, disoriented, frightened, endlessly circling the city.
(From she who once passed the College Park Exit sign four times in one long night coming back from Marietta or Decateur…I’ve repressed the memory. I just recall it was “Viking Weekend” at one of the fraternities at UGA and my date – dressed somewhat like Odin – was “sleeping” in the passenger seat.)
Shagnasty, are you also opposed to trains?
Please do everything you can to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh. I do not want to see Kansas City sink its money into yet another sports-related rathole.
Yeah, the traffic was pretty terrible in ATL, but there isn’t a cohesive transit system either. I imagine most natives of ATL don’t really have much choice but to drive, even if they are lucky enough to live near a MARTA station, I looked at the map of their bus routes and rail lines and they don’t give anywhere close to comprehensive coverage to the city.
It’s 'cause they’ve got Youngstown to look to as an example of how not to do things really poorly so they can just do kind of poorly.
(yes, I live in Youngstown. Until I get a job elsewhere.)