Join Occupy Pittsburgh, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, our union member sisters and brothers, and other residents to distribute post cards on buses, at bus stops, and at congested intersections to mobilize the public in support of public transit.

Meet and pick up flyers between 3:30 and 5:00 PM at one of the two action locations and learn more details about the proposed cuts, the campaign, and how you can help. 

Additional outreach days are planned for the same locations on Friday Feb. 24 and Tuesday Feb. 28. PLEASE JOIN US!

As many of you know, Port Authority of Allegheny County is pondering additional service cuts – up to 35% – effective in 2012. Last March, they proposed the same number, but after public outcry, demonstrations, and work done by Pittsburghers for Public Transit (http://www.pittsburghersforpublictransit.org/), the cuts were reduced to 15%.

But funding issues continue to prevail, and riders and drivers are faced with another round of cuts, which combined with the March 2011 cuts, would reduce transit service hours in Allegheny County by 50%! A recent article explaining the cuts: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11333/1193283-53-0.stm

As part of Occupy Pittsburgh’s call for a week of action to bring attention to the issues the movement focuses on, we are partnering with Pittsburghers for Public Transit and One Pittsburgh for a transit action this Friday, December 16, 2011. Occupy Pittsburgh participants will meet at the People’s Park by 3:00 pm, then will hit the streets to take part in an action throughout downtown, focusing on local bus stops during Friday’s rush hour. A call to action will be handed out to people waiting at the stops, which explains the looming cuts to service, who they can contact to voice their concerns and request a moratorium on all cuts to transit service.

Please join us in this effort to educate and empower people to demand that transit service not be reduced, effectively putting many people – both driver and riders – in danger with their jobs and limiting or eliminating their right to transportation.

Meet by 3:00 pm at People’s Park, 6th & Grant, downtown; contacts: Maria and Calvin

See you there!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

By Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Community groups calling for more public transit Wednesday met in the Hill District with a clear goal: If they’re going to get people on buses, they have to get people in the streets.
“As organizers, we need to adopt the civil rights model,” said Mel Packer of Pittsburghers for Public Transit. “We put thousands of people in the streets. That’s how they listen to us. Talk to people, and we can build a mass movement.”

More than 30 residents, students and community leaders gathered in a Hill House conference room to discuss the grass-roots method they hope to use to bring more funding for public transportation.
“We — as a coalition of community groups, religious groups, workers, people who depend on those buses — need to come together and put pressure on our elected officials and let them know,” said Patrick McMahon, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85. “Our voices must be heard as a collective group. One group going [to Harrisburg] is not going to get it done. We have to organize it and do it together.
“Our elected officials have to come up with the solution. The ideas are there, whether it’s new taxes, new revenues, new fees.
The legislators have to put the pieces together and must make the tough votes for the good of the commonwealth.
“It’s not just poor communities. With the rising cost of gasoline and parking, even people who can afford cars are looking for public transportation. Transit is part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
The organizers included students, community activists, representatives from church groups and members of the Hill District Consensus Group. Some came with petitions signed by residents whose lives have been disrupted by changes in bus service.
Brittany McBryde, a member of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, said that as upset as people are about recent cuts, more cuts are likely — if residents don’t unite and act.
“We need to make it a community dialogue,” she said. “We need to show them our numbers. We’re going to host rallies and let them know that we’re not going to go away. Then they can’t ignore us.”
Those attending vowed to attend a Sept. 13 public hearing on the topic in the City-County Building’s Gold Room. There also will be a Sept. 24 rally in East Liberty and a trip to Harrisburg in the fall.
“We need to reach people who are not dependent upon transit,” said resident Dan Sullivan, explaining the need for reaching beyond the boundaries of the Hill District. “We need other people to know why it’s important.”

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11223/1166633-53.stm#ixzz1Uk1ypZbQ

Thursday, June 16, 2011

By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Port Authority board is prepared to adopt an operating budget for the coming fiscal year that maintains current service and fares through next June.

After that, officials said, look out.

To balance the budget that begins in July, the agency plans to spend much of its reserve fund and all of the remaining emergency funding that was provided by departing Gov. Ed Rendell early this year.
Those one-time infusions total $40 million and will leave the authority with $10 million in reserves. If the state doesn’t act to cure the transit system’s chronic funding problems, the 2012-13 budget will be at least $30 million in the red.

“2013 will be horrendous if they don’t address the statewide issue,” authority CEO Steve Bland said.
That would follow March 27 cuts that eliminated 29 routes, trimmed service on most others and threw 180 union workers out of their jobs. Ridership for April and May was off by 9.5 percent compared with April and May 2010, according to figures released on Wednesday.

“This is about what we expected,” authority spokesman Jim Ritchie said.

The board will vote June 24 on a $370 million budget for the year that begins July 1. It is meant to tide the agency over until July 2012 in hopes that a commission appointed by the new governor, Tom Corbett, solves a statewide transportation funding crisis that is affecting transit agencies and highway and bridge programs.
State funding, the authority’s largest source of income, has remained flat or decreased for the past several years as inflation has driven up salary, benefit and fuel costs.

The authority’s contribution to employee pension funds will grow from $20 million this fiscal year to $33.3 million next year, a hangover from the 2008 market crash that depleted assets, forcing the agency to throw in more money to keep the funds healthy.

Health care, at $69.8 million, will swallow nearly a fifth of the coming year’s budget, with nearly half of that spent on retirees, who outnumber active employees. That is expected to be a major focus of upcoming talks with the authority’s unions, whose contracts expire June 30, 2012.

Mr. Bland noted that the previous round of bargaining in 2008 yielded the biggest union givebacks in authority history. “The next one will have to break that record for us to have any hope for sustainability into the future,” he said.

Union employees will get 3 percent raises in the final year of the current contract, while nonunion employees will continue under a wage freeze that began a year ago.

Diesel fuel, which cost the authority an average of $1.98 per gallon in 2010, is projected to cost $3.40 per gallon in the coming year, adding $5.5 million to the budget.

Average weekday ridership in May was 205,066, down 8.2 percent from May 2010. In April, average weekday ridership was 203,103, down 10.8 percent from April 2010.

For the two months combined, 21,500 fewer riders took transit on an average weekday. However, Mr. Ritchie said, the size of the dropoff might have been magnified slightly by glitches with the new fare collection system, which failed to properly register some customers. He said the problem has been corrected.
For the fiscal year, the authority had carried 58.2 million passengers as of the end of May, a 3.4 percent decline from the same period a year ago.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11167/1154086-147-0.stm#ixzz1PTC04hkw