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Leave your questions in the comments below this facebook video and we’ll get you answers from members of the Port Authority Board. If you ride public transit, then you’re an expert and your vision needs to be voiced.

What’s the Port Authority Board and what do they do?

They’re a group of 11 political appointees who make final decisions on the annual Port Authority budget and approve all large spending projects PAAC undertakes. They also choose the CEO, and this is important because the CEO hires a management team whose job it is to figure out how to provide reliable service, gather necessary funding, and end up with a balanced budget each year.

If the management team can’t balance the budget, they usually reduce service before taking pay cuts or reducing their own staff, and this can lead to huge inconveniences for riders, but you can let the board know how these things affect you. Many of the existing board members don’t ride transit and need to know what riders experience on and off the bus.

This is the first time that Pittsburghers for Public Transit has ever reached out to invite board members to ride the bus with us. We’re doing it because they need to see the importance of the Riders Vision for Public Transit, and hear and what riders go through day to day – difficulty reaching CONNECTCard machines, paying for transfers, poor sidewalks, complicated connections, and more.

Voice your questions in the comments of this Facebook video and we will take them with us on our ride.

And huge thanks to PPT Volunteer Dean Bog for putting together the video! Check him out on his YouTube Channel!

PPT believes that residents deserve a full, frank public conversation about all the possible effects of an Autonomous Vehicle future – the increase in car congestion, the job loss, the sprawl, the effect on our environment, the decrease in public transit service and ridership, the heightened displacement and gentrification, the Billions needed in public subsidy, etc.

However, when the City received a grant from the Knight Foundation for “deep education” on AV technology in Hazelwood, Glen Hazel and Greenfield, and denied that it was associated with the Mon Oakland Connector project where it is proposing to build a $23 Million road for an AV shuttle, PPT had cause for concern.

According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “The Knight Foundation said the grant is geared to finding what the community needs and how autonomous vehicle technology may help.”

But this is a huge problem.

If we begin a public “education” campaign about AV with a framework that only allows us to talk about helpful benefits, then we are starting from a biased position and we will have a biased conversation. The residents of Pittsburgh have spent three years as test subjects for AV technology that has proved to be dangerous and deadly. In those three years there has been ZERO public conversation about the effect of AV technology, or if we want it on our streets. It is wrong that the Knight Foundation only wants to discuss AV in rosy terms, with Tech Company talking points. We as residents need a space where we can talk about ALL the effects that automation will have, and whether this is indeed the future that we want to use our public dollars to build.

Fortunately, this week when City Council heard public testimony regarding the Knight Foundation grant from Four Mile Run resident, Ziggy Edwards, and Pittsburghers for Public Transit’s Director, Laura Wiens, Council voted to delay the start of the process. It is crucial that we structure a public discussion about Autonomous Vehicles from a framework that will allow full discussion about the effect that the technology will have on equity/mobility, jobs, traffic safety, environment, and privacy. The delayed vote allows us the opportunity to do just that.

You can make this a a reality by joining us at the next City Council Standing Committee Meeting and making your voice heard.

Pittsburgh City Council Standing Committee
Vote on Knight Foundation Grant for AV Education
Wednesday, May 29
10am-11am
414 Grant St.

News Coverage
WTAE report by Bob Mayo on Council vote to delay: Future of Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh
Post Gazette report by Ashley Murray on Knight Foundation grant: Grant to ‘demystify’ self-driving vehicles draws skepticism

Public Testimony for 5/15 City Council Standing Committee Vote on Knight Foundation AV Grant
Laura Wiens, Director, Pittsburghers for Public Transit
Ziggy Edwards, Resident, Four Mile Run

For more information, or if you need a ride to the 2/29 Council meeting, reach out to PPT at info@pittsburghforpublictransit.org

CALL to ACTION:
On Wednesday, May 15th at 10 am, 414 Grant St Pgh 15219, Pittsburgh City Council will be asked to approve a $410k grant for public outreach on self-driving cars in the Hazelwood and Greenfield neighborhoods. This is yet another indication that the City’s decision to have autonomous vehicles (AV) be the “transportation solution” for these communities was determined in advance of engaging with the communities, and in opposition to resident desires. Join us to testify when City Council discusses this grant, to ask city councillors why DOMI is so insistent that this unproven, costly and harmful technology be deployed instead of proven solutions that residents have identified – sidewalks, public transit, traffic calming.

BACKGROUND:
Residents of Hazelwood, Four Mile Run, South Oakland and Greenfield have real transportation and pedestrian safety needs that could be addressed with sidewalks, street lighting, bus shelters, weekend and evening transit service. Instead, $23 million in public money is being allocated just to create a roadway for Autonomous Vehicles that will drive through the heart of Schenley Park, which also threatens to undermine the water and sewer flooding mitigation efforts that are desperately needed in the Run.

Check out this coverage in WESA of the press conference, titled “A Shuttle System Through Schenley Park is Going Nowhere with Some Residents.”

The open letter sent to Mayor Bill Peduto signed by residents of the Run, PPT and Penn Plaza Support and Action Coalition about the Mon-Oakland Connector.

Strong policies are needed at the county level to tie great transit to quality affordable housing. Take three minutes to fill out Allegheny County’s Annual Action Plan survey to elevate transit/housing as a priority. More from the survey:

Allegheny County is undertaking the development of its FY 2019 Annual Action Plan (AAP), as required by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to determine the types of projects that will benefit County residents. Part of the AAP planning process involves outreach to community stakeholders and units of local government for input on housing, economic development, and community development needs across the County. Your responses are important and will help to determine the County’s investment of federal grant funds to address housing, economic development, and community development needs during the period from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. Should you need assistance or have questions regarding the survey, contact Karen Brean at 412.977.0271 or karen@breanassociates.com.
Please respond no later than March 15th.

Finally, after months of private negotiations over billions of public dollars, Amazon has announced it will pass on Pittsburgh as the location for its second headquarters. It is reported that Pittsburgh’s bid would have given enormous tax incentives and decision-making power over where their tax-dollars would be spent. All without any public input or transparency. That’s not how taxes work. That’s not how we create equity.

Pittsburghers for Public Transit led the call with a number of other community organizations and news outlets for more transparency and public process around the bid. We continue to assert that the Amazon bid does not measure up to goals outlined in the Mayor’s own p4 guidelines for equitable development.

At this point, we are relieved that some of our region’s most pressing issues (like our shortage of affordable housing, and access to quality transit) will not be exacerbated by Amazon’s arrival and the billions in public subsidies that would have been given to them. However, Pittsburgh’s Amazon HQ2 bid continues to be most egregious example of our City & County administrations actively choosing to stifle a public process in favor of backroom deals.

What we need now is for PGH HQ2 bid to be made public in order to rebuild community trust in this administration, and begin creating truly democratic processes that allow residents to identify collective priorities and spend shared resources.

Check these stories below with PPT quotes about Amazon’s November 2018 announcement:

• WPXI: What did Pittsburgh offer Amazon? City’s HQ2 proposal revealed
• WESA: Pennsylvania Was Prepared To Offer Amazon More Than $4B
  
• Incline: Pittsburgh is not Amazon’s HQ2 site
• Next Pittsburgh: After months of refusal, Pittsburgh’s Amazon HQ2 bid is released. Read it here.

Check our ‘Amazon ≠ p4’ campaign webpage for background on PPT’s organizing.

Follow us on twitter for PPT updates!

“Laura Wiens of Pittsburghers for Public Transit applauded the incremental progress the Port Authority has seen in winning the $500,000 grant for the agency’s first electric bus, but said there are multiple funding sources available that could help build a large scale fleet of electric buses. She mentioned that Pennsylvania is receiving about $118 million in a settlement from auto manufacturer Volkswagen. Wiens said some of that money could go to purchasing electric buses.

“Transit can dramatically reduce our carbon footprint,” said Wiens. “We hope to see a more robust effort.”

— Ryan Deto in the City Paper. Read the entire article here!

Thanks to all the hard work of the Don’t Criminalize Transit Riders Campaign over this past year, the Port Authority has walked back their initial proposal of having armed police check fare payment on the T!

Over the last year, we’ve had dozens of people testify at the Port Authority, more than 30 organizations and neighborhood groups sign onto a letter opposing criminalization of transit riders. The Pittsburgh School Board sent a separate letter talking about the impact to youth. We had hundreds of postcards that we delivered to Rep Dom Costa’s office and thousands of petition signatures. We had lots of immigrant transit riders say that they would no longer take the T, because it would become an immigration checkpoint rather than a safe and effective way for them to live their lives.

Going forward, there will continue to be work to do around this issue, because the severe criminal consequences for fare evasion remain in place, even if they are rarely enacted. Our coalition will continue to push the Port Authority to ensure that riders and drivers are at the table to advocate for changing the laws on the books to create a more humane civil fare enforcement policy in the future.

Pittsburghers gathered outside the City’s and Heinz Endowment’s “P4 Conference” to highlight the hypocrisy of talking about inclusion, equity, and a city for all while offering billions on incentives to attract Amazon HQ2 to the city.

Amazon HQ2 stands against everything the P4 says it supports and against the interests of the hundreds of thousands of residents that call Pittsburgh home now.

A couple of hundred tech jobs moving to East Liberty caused massive displacement.
If we call what happened in East Liberty a tragedy, then bringing Amazon here is a crime.