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Originally Posted by Jonboy1983
If anyone should be on the receiving side of bickering, it should be the Port Authority since they're one step closer to making this problem even bigger...
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Not to set off a massive debate, but I'd focus your attention on the state, and specifically Governor Corbett, since PAT's current funding crisis is the direct result of state funding cuts, which were themselves triggered by the I-80 toll plan falling through, and Corbett is currently blocking a solution to that broader funding crisis.
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My solution to this whole thing (depending on if Port Authority can get bailed out), should be to have transit planning professionals collaborate (yeah, I know) and discuss how to integrate the bus and LRT systems with each other better to maintain its existing level of service and how to improve it in the future (expand it to serve other neighborhoods, attract new riders, etc).
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So the Transit Development Plan process was pretty much this. PAT hired professional consultants (Nelson/Nygaard) to examine the entire system and work out a plan for redesigning the system to make it more efficient and provide more service where it was needed, and also to formulate proposals for upgrading the system (which ended up including a smartcard-style fare system, a proposed BRT (aka "Rapid Bus") network, and so forth). PAT is partially through implementing the TDP, and I would suggest that if the state funding crisis can be resolved, that should be the top priority for PAT (getting the TDP more or less completed).
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Also, it looks like PA get's almost all of its funding in the form of an "allowance" from the state. IMO, this detriment should have been rectified a long time ago. Why not adopt some of the measures by other transit agencies? WMATA uses adjusted land values to generate more revenue to be used ENTIRELY for transit-related purposes (more equipment, upgrades, expansion, etc)
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PAT also gets funding from the County, in a set ratio to the state funding.
In any event, all that is a matter of state law. To summarize a complex topic, the state funds a massive network of mostly rural roads and bridges, and to fund that system it takes a lot more in taxes out of the large urban counties than it returns to them in state road funds. To make that situation politically sustainable, the state then also returns some money to the large urban counties in the form of transit funding (note this only partially offsets the funding transfer to rural parts of the state, a net result which indicates how state politics has traditionally functioned).
It would be fine with me if we wanted to shift to a system in which more of PAT's funding was determined locally. But you couldn't just let the state off the hook for its transit funding commitments without further state-level reform, because again that state transit funding is how the urban counties don't get totally screwed (just partially screwed) by the state's rural road funding mechanisms.
Rationalizing this system is going to require a lot of changes to state law. I am hopeful that fundamental conditions are shifting in the direction of making such reforms politically feasible, but it is going to take a while yet, and the 2010 elections set things back quite a bit (for how long remains to be seen).