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Originally Posted by Jonboy1983
Instead of cutting routes, why couldn't he have tweaked them to make them more efficient and profitable?
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He did a lot of the latter, in part through the process called the Transit Development Plan ("TDP"), which included a systemwide redesign. Those changes, plus the opening of the North Shore Connector (which has proven popular), led to a large increase in PAT's systemwide efficiency (by measures such as passengers per service hour).
However, those efficiency gains were not enough to prevent service cuts. That is because PAT was experiencing unavoidable rising costs (most notably in terms of fuel price increases and increasingly expensive retirement benefits they could not cut by state law) combined with a state funding cut triggered by the collapse of the plan to toll I-80. I don't believe there was a way for PAT to completely offset that combination of factors such that they could entirely avoid service cuts, and in fact I think they likely came pretty close to doing as much as they conceivably could.
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Plus, much of the infrastructure I think is in a serious upgrade -- and no I'm not necessarily talking about added LRT or the introduction of heavy rail this time (altho I would LOVE it if that were to happen, and it SHOULD happen!), no, I'm talking about the existing bus stops. How about driving up and down Clairton/Saw Mill Run Blvd and tell me how many shelters you see versus just a sign on a post/telephone pole just mere feet from 40 mile-per-hour traffic.
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PAT hasn't had quite the same financial crisis on the capital side as it had on the operating side, but it still has very limited discretionary funds for capital upgrades (things like the North Shore Connector were almost entirely funded by the feds with a bit from the state). Of course it has to keep buying and maintaining vehicles, and it has to maintain its existing infrastructure. It is also trying to invest in critical ridership-increasing upgrades, such as the smartcard system it is rolling out, the bike racks it has installed, and so forth. Even with these competing projects, it seems to me there are in fact more and better bus shelters these days, but Bland couldn't make that the only priority over these other capital needs.
The bottomline is that PAT presently does not have the funds it needs to be the transit agency it should be now, nor to invest adequately in becoming the transit agency it should be in the future. To the extent PAT's financial problems are the result of things within PAT's control, under Bland I think they made huge strides in improving in all the relevant areas. But even with all those improvements, and even with the state having restored some of the funding it cut, PAT's current funding level is going to continue to lead to grossly inadequate outcomes no matter who is in charge. And unfortunately, I think it will be all to easy for a less competent CEO to do a lot worse.
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