Category Archives: Uncategorized

MARCH TO STOP THE CUTS! 3/19!
Location & Time
Beacon and Murray to Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill at NOON
Created by:
The Port Authority plans to institute an unnecessary and devastating 15 percent service cut on March 27th. Transit riders, workers, and all those concerned about the health of our city must show Port Authority’s management and the politicians that run our county and state that we won’t stand for this attack against our transit system. Wisconsin and Egypt have shown us the way to fight back!

WE DEMAND:

More transit, not less!
…
Stop the March 27th cuts!

Dedicated transit funding now!

No to privatization!

Port Authority’s workers are the heartbeat of our city, not the problem! Defend their livelihoods!

Fund transit instead of bailouts, wars, and tax cuts for the ultra-rich!

Please forward as widely as possible! This issue effects every person living in Allegheny County! The cuts WILL put thousands more cars on the road, so even if you drive, your daily commute will become much longer!

Organized by Pittsburghers for Public Transit and ATU Local 85

www.pittsburgersforpublictransit.org

Questions? Want to help? Contact: SavePGHTransit@Gmail.com

Riders, Workers Take Fight Against Service Cuts To Grant Street

County Council Asks Port Authority To Postpone Bus, Trolley Cuts
From WTAE:

PITTSBURGH — About 75 Port Authority workers and riders gathered early Tuesday evening in front of the Allegheny County Courthouse — where a County Council meeting was taking place — and rallied against proposed cuts to bus and trolley service.

Protesters wanted the council to pass a resolution asking the Port Authority to spend all of its $45 million in emergency state funding by the end of the fiscal year in June, in an effort to avoid transit cuts that are scheduled to take effect March 27.

The resolution passed, but the Port Authority has not said whether it will go along with the request to shelve the cuts.

Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85 President Pat McMahon said that the Port Authority’s budget is balanced, so there is no reason for the cuts to be made.

“It will affect my ability for literally going everywhere,” bus rider Katrina Kilgore said about the cuts. “It will limit my ability for going to doctor’s appointments, for getting to work.”

Signs at the rally included “Save Our Transit,” “We Need The Bus” and “Pretend We’re A Stadium — Fund Us.”

In December, then-Gov. Ed Rendell struck an agreement with the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission to divert $45 million to the Port Authority on an emergency basis to head off a much larger round of service cuts.

The Port Authority has said that a new, smaller round of cuts in March will allow it to stretch the temporary funding over 18 months, rather than spending all of it by June 30.

Also, CEO Steve Bland has called for a larger dedicated source of annual state funding that the authority can count on for its budget each year.

EMERGENCY RALLY – STOP THE MARCH CUTS

Time
March 1st· 4:00 pm

Location
Allegheny County Courthouse,
436 Grant Street
Pittsburgh PA

Tomorrow Tuesday March 1, 2011 at the Allegheny County Council Meeting. Assembly will begin at 4:00 pm in front of the Allegheny County Courthouse, 436 Grant Street. Council Meeting will begin at 5:00 pm on the 4th Floor in the Gold Room. County Councilman Nick Futules from District 7 will be introducing a resolution to stop the closing of the Harmar Garage and the Unnecessary 15% service cuts. County Council has also invited Port Authority Board of Directed President Jack Brooks to testify in front of Council. We need attendance from every available person. Let our voices be heard.

Please Pass this along to your contacts!

Message from the ATU, “Come Out Tomorrow!”


Video by Marvin Bing from today’s union rally downtown in solidarity with Wisconsin workers.
 Pittsburgh Rally and Press Conference for Public Transportation
Time
25 February · 08:30 – 10:00
Location
Mellon Square Park

Mellon Square Park. 6th & Smithfield, Pittsburgh (Downtown), PA 15219
Pittsburgh, PA
Created by:
More info
Enjoy your bus ride while it lasts because on March 27, County Executive Dan Onorato, Chief Executive Officer of the Port Authority, Chief Financial Officer Steve Bland and members of the Port Authority are slashing bus routes all over the county.

This is what the Port Authority audit said in June, 2010:

“At a time when the economic downturn is hurting metropolitan areas and residents across the country, these service reduction …are occurring at the worst possible time. Service cuts, layoffs, and fare increases will result inn significant traffic congestion, adverse economic impacts on businesses across the region and the loss of an essential lifeline to many seniors, youth and the disabled.”

SO HERE ARE THE QUESTIONS FOR COUNTY EXECUTIVE DAN ONORATO, STEVE BLAND, Chief Financial officer of the Port Authority and the board members: CALL OR E-MAIL THE OFFICIALS TODAY

1-Why kill jobs? Why Kill jobs with record high unemployment?

2-Why are you hurting the disabled and students, the middle class, seniors, and workers who depend on transit?

3-Cutting Bus service puts more cars on the street and increases air pollution. Why do that?

4-don’t we have enough traffic congestion already?

There is $21 million available to run the system. There is no need to cut services.

STOP THESE CUTS.

SAVE OUR JOBS.

SAVE OUR NEIGHBORHOODS, SAVE ALLEGENHY COUNTY TRANSIT.
.

CATCH AN EARLIER BUS ON FRIDAY FEB 25TH AND ATTEND OUR RALLY OUTSIDE THE PORT AUTHORITY BUILDING ON 345 6TH AVENUE AT 8:30 am. FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS to all to sign a petition to stop the cuts. WE WILL BE JOINED BY A SPECIAL GUEST!

www.atu.org

Bad deal on bonds costs Port Authority $39.2M

Thursday, February 17, 2011
By Jon Schmitz, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Port Authority this week paid a bank $39.2 million to escape from a bond deal it entered seven years ago that turned out sour.

The payment to Bank of America Merrill Lynch canceled a complicated and risky transaction called an interest-rate “swaption” that the authority agreed to in 2004, partly to reap a $9.5 million upfront windfall.

The payment was part of a $263.3 million refinancing bond issue that the authority completed on Tuesday.

The cost of the payment will be spread over Port Authority budgets starting next year and continuing to 2029, adding $2.3 million in debt service expense per year, authority officials said.

Because the authority pays debt service from its capital budget, the added cost will not impact operations or require service cuts, spokesman Jim Ritchie said. But it will reduce the amount available for longer-term projects such as bridge, busway and rail reconstruction.

“It’s essentially a refinancing. We’re trying to get out of an arrangement that was putting us in greater financial jeopardy,” he said.

The authority agreed to the swaption deal with Merrill Lynch in 2004, during the administration of CEO Paul Skoutelas. Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch in 2008.

Ellen McLean, the current chief financial officer, who joined the authority last October, said the swaption deal enabled the agency to cash in on anticipated future savings from debt refinancing. But it also exposed the authority to risks based on interest-rate fluctuation.

The collapse of the credit markets in 2008 and 2009 drove down rates and left the authority’s side of the swap at a considerably lower value than what it would be paying out.

It also gave Merrill Lynch the option to convert the authority’s debt to a variable interest rate starting March 1, she said. “What we knew was the volatility in the market would create such a difficulty in budgeting … it was impossible to budget for.

“It made absolutely no sense as a public agency to take on that volatility,” Ms. McLean said.

“We reached a point because of the market downturn where this clearly didn’t turn out the way anybody was predicting,” Mr. Ritchie said. “It does not make sense for us to continue down this path.”

This week’s refinancing extracted the authority from the deal and put all of its bonded debt at an average fixed interest rate of 5.29 percent.

The authority is not alone in being victimized by swap deals. Several Pennsylvania school districts and municipal governments lost big money on interest-rate swaps, deals that produced big upfront windfalls but exposed them to losses when rates fell.

State Auditor General Jack Wagner last year urged school districts to get out of such deals as quickly as possible, saying “interest-rate swaps are tantamount to gambling with taxpayer money.”

Bloomberg News, reporting on the Port Authority bond issue, said it has compiled data showing that borrowers across the U.S. have paid more than $4 billion to get out of swap contracts.

Randy Woolridge, professor of finance at Penn State University, said he was unfamiliar with the circumstances of the Port Authority’s deal. Generally, he said, “a lot of these [swaps] have turned bad because they’re all doing the same thing. They hedged against higher interest rates and the rates went down. As a result, these things are underwater.

“Everyone thinks interest rates and stocks are always going up,” he said.
If there was a bright side to the authority’s action this week, it was that the three big New York agencies raised its credit rating.

Fitch assigned the bonds an AA-minus rating, up from A; Moody’s assigned an A1, up from A2; and Standard & Poors gave them an A-plus, up from A.

 
Jon Schmitz: jschmitz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1868. Visit “The Roundabout,” the Post-Gazette’s transportation blog, at post-gazette.com. Twitter: @pgtraffic.


First published on February 17, 2011 at 12:00 am

RALLY TOMORROW FOR TRANSIT WORKERS

Our bus drivers, technicians, and other Amalgamated Transit Union workers will be having a rally tomorrow (2/15) at 4pm downtown at the County Courthouse in support of President
McMahon’s address to County Council.  As many PPTers as possible
should be there!

Andrew

Next Meeting

 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130184457049849
 
Time
19 February · 12:00 – 15:00
Location University of Pittsburgh – Posvar Hall room 5203

Pittsburgh, PA
Created by:
More info Really important meeting, we’ll be discussing the upcoming march in Squirrel Hill on 3/19, the upcoming publication of our newsletter, and promotion for both items. Please be there!

Proposed March transit cuts to affect Oakland routes

Re-posted from Pitt’s University Times:

bus

The Port Authority of Allegheny County will cut its service by 15 percent, including some service to Oakland, beginning March 27.

The plan, approved last week by the Port Authority board, will eliminate 29 routes and cause 180 employee layoffs. The plan amends a scheduled 35 percent service cut that was set to go into effect in March, prior to a $45 million infusion of emergency state funds announced by outgoing Gov. Edward G. Rendell in December. (See Jan. 6 University Times.)

Under the revamped plan approved Jan. 12, weekday service cuts will be made on 37 routes instead of 79; 63 routes will remain unchanged. Service to about half of the ridership will be affected, Port Authority officials estimated. The new plan is expected to produce an estimated 5 percent weekday ridership loss, that is, about 12,000 fewer passenger trips each weekday. The transit company’s average weekday ridership is 240,000.

The transit company also will close its Harmar garage.

The 15 percent reduction allows the transit company to stretch the emergency funding from the commonwealth over 18 months, through June 30, 2012.

Port Authority CEO Steve Bland said at the Jan. 12 public board meeting, “We want it to be absolutely clear that this is only a temporary solution and a painful one at that. We’re going to work very aggressively with the state legislature to find a sustainable transit solution. We’ve only bought some time.”

Absent a permanent fix to the chronic budget shortfalls, Bland said the Port Authority likely will reinstitute the 35 percent service cuts approved under the previous plan, although he did not specify when such cuts might occur.

The March cuts will be the fourth phase of service reduction, which began last April, followed by cuts in June and September.

Under a five-year contract with the Port Authority that runs through June 30, 2012, Pitt is paying $5.91 million for the current fiscal year (2010-11) for free bus rides for its valid ID holders. Pitt riders account for about 6 million rides annually, according to the Port Authority.

The contract includes a re-opener clause wherein either party with 60 days’ notice prior to the end of a contract year may demand a renegotiation of the fee for the following year. Pitt is contracted to pay $6.8 million for the year July 1, 2011-June 30, 2012, an increase of 15 percent over the current year.

Eli Shorak, associate vice chancellor for Business, told the University Times, “The University’s agreement with the Port Authority does include language acknowledging that the compensation paid by the University is in consideration for a certain level and type of service. The University does plan to consult with the Port Authority regarding service modifications and the impact these may have on our riders. These discussions may also include recommended compensation adjustments if it is determined that service modifications have a significant impact on the University’s overall ridership levels.”

The contract also calls for a renegotiation of the annual fee to be triggered by the installation of “smart card” technology on all Port Authority vehicles, a process that has been slowed by technology glitches, Port Authority officials have said.

That program will change the way Pitt riders are counted, with fare boxes that scan Pitt ID cards replacing the system of drivers manually tracking the number of Pitt riders. The new system is expected to eliminate human error and catch invalid IDs, thus yielding a more accurate count of Pitt rides, Port Authority officials noted.

The University’s payment to the Port Authority is subsidized in part by the $90 per term security, safety and transportation fee that Pittsburgh campus students pay. (The balance comes from the auxiliary operations budget of the Office of Parking, Transportation and Services.)

John Fedele, Pitt associate director of news, said that students will not face an increase in fees in the near term.

“There is likely no need for student fee increases in the near future. Once Port Authority has the smart card put on all transportation, we will review this,” Fedele said.

Among the Oakland service cuts starting March 27 are:
• 42 Mt. Lebanon-Oakland bus will have weekday service eliminated (there is no weekend service on this route).
• 54C Northside-Oakland-South Side will see service increased on Saturdays and decreased on Sundays; weekday service remains unchanged.
• 58 Greenfield will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 61A East Pittsburgh-Wilkinsburg is being rerouted (ending the route sooner at the Wilkinsburg end); the 61B Braddock-Swissvale will be rerouted to serve North Braddock in lieu of the 61A.
• 65 Squirrel Hill will have service reduced on weekdays (there is no weekend service on this route).
• 67 Monroeville will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 67E Greensburg Pike will be eliminated on weekdays (there is no weekend service).
• 67J Lincoln Highway will be eliminated on weekdays (there is no weekend service).
•  69 Trafford will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 71A Negley will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 71C Point Breeze will have service reduced on weekdays and Saturdays, with no change on Sundays.
• 71D Hamilton will have service reduced on weekdays and Saturdays, with no change on Sundays.
• 75 Ellsworth will have service reduced on weekdays and eliminated on weekends.
• 81 Oak Hill will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 83 Webster will have service reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• 84B Oakland Loop will be eliminated.
• 93 Lawrenceville-Oakland will have service reduced on weekdays and eliminated on weekends.
• EBA will be renamed P1 East Busway-All Stops. Service will be reduced on weekdays and weekends.
• G Greensburg Pike Flyer will have service reduced on weekdays (there is no weekend service on this route).
• G2 West Busway-Oakland will have service to Oakland eliminated and the route will be renamed G2 West Busway-All Stops.
• P3 East Busway-Oakland will have service reduced on weekdays (there is no weekend service).
Service to Robinson Towne Center via the 28X Airport Flyer, which had been eliminated last April, will be restored.
Transit fares were raised Jan. 2 to help counter a budget shortfall for the current fiscal year, Port Authority officials said. By law the transit company must balance its budget. Passenger fares cover about a quarter of the Port Authority’s expenses.
Details of the 15 percent service reduction are available at www.portauthority.org or by calling customer service at 412/442-2000 or the TTY number, 412/231-7007.
—Peter Hart

From http://www.utimes.pitt.edu/?p=14702

TRANSIT RALLY 1/28!

PLEASE JOIN US AS WE FIGHT THE UNNECESSARY 15% SERVICE REDUCTION APPROVED BY THE PORT AUTHORITY.
THESE CUTS WILL SHED 140 GOOD UNION JOBS, LEAVE 13,000 ALLEGHENY COUNTY CITIZENS WITHOUT SERVICE, AND PUT MORE STRAIN ON AN ALREADY STRUGGLING ECONOMY.
                                            WHERE
       345 6TH. AVE ACROSS FROM THE PORT AUTHORITY OFFICE
                                            WHEN
                   FRIDAY JANUARY 28TH 2011 8:30 AM