Weird conversation

CoWorker 1: When’s your last day?

Me: Sunday, I start my new job on Monday.

CoWorker 1: Where are you going?

Me: To blahdiblah Co. It’s the downtown office.

CoWorker 2: Oh, I wouldn’t want to work down there.

Me: Why not?

CoWorker 2: I hate driving downtown.

Me: (laughing) I’m not going to drive. I’m taking the bus.

CoWorker 2: Why are you going to take the bus?  I would never take the bus.

Me: I don’t want to drive, I don’t like to sit in traffic. I can read when I’m on the bus. I don’t have to pay for parking. I love the bus.

CoWorker 2: {{blank look}} I would never take the bus.

Me: Why? You said you don’t want to drive downtown.

CoWorker 2: {{long pause}}  I like driving my own car.

Ok, this is stupid. I have talked to a lot of people in Pittsburgh who think the bus is a lowlife conveyance device. My experience is that a lot of younger educated people don’t want to drive. It’s expensive, it’s inconvenient, it’s time consuming. So, they are moving to more urban neighborhoods and riding their bikes and taking the buses. When I worked in Oakland, the buses were full of regular people who got off at the Whole Foods stop and read on their iPhones during the trip.

It is the older boomers who have this really negative attitude towards mass transit. They can’t figure out why a person would rather commute to work via a bus. It’s easy. You drive your car to the busway, park the car in FREE PARKING, get on the bus to your destination. Think of it like a shuttle. It extends the life of your car. You will avoid accidents. You will avoid parking fees. The busway makes it easy to drive your car to the store on the way home after you get off the bus.

Duh.

I don’t know who is propagating all the negative mass transit propaganda around here (because I don’t watch the local news) but this is silly.  The bus system is one of the best things about Pittsburgh but someone has average older people convinced that its sole purpose is to import the ghetto to their neighborhoods. That kind of attitude is disgusting and deprives the rest of us of cheap, efficient transportation.

Ahem, I live in Pittsburgh…

Afternoon rush hour on the East Busway at Wilkinsburg Station

… and I take the bus to work.

Granted, I only go partway to downtown, stopping at Oakland.  But I can’t say enough good things about the East Busway, where a constant, steady stream of buses and free parking, make it a breeze to ditch the car and take public transportation.

I’m not sure I’m totally onboard with the decision to eliminate the buses in downtown Pittsburgh just because there are too many people waiting for the buses.   That sounds like the dumbest excuse from a government official since the Republicans shut the government down for some unspecified gain they haven’t even dreamed of yet.  I mean, really, there are too many people waiting for the buses so let’s cut back on the buses and the crowds on the sidewalks will disappear?  No one will go downtown anymore because it will be impossible  to get there.  I don’t see any plans to expand the Parkway right over the river, because that’s what it would take to accommodate the increased car volume.

There are potentially good reasons for curtailing the buses downtown, but none are exceptionally convincing to me.  After all, my grandfather was a PAT bus driver for many decades and the buses downtown never struck me as the primary reason there were issues with traffic or crowds.

What I see as the traffic problem downtown is not the buses but the absolutely ridiculous amount of traffic trying to get across the Fort Pitt Bridge from either direction.  Basically, too many people are taking their cars downtown.  It’s not the buses that are causing the traffic jams.  After all, most of them are taking the Busways to get to downtown so they’re not the things cluttering up the Parkway, causing us hours to get from Monroeville to Ikea.

And while it’s true that Pittsburgh is very walkable, and because the city comes to a point, literally, nothing is very far away from anything, Pittsburgh does have possibly the most uncomfortable winter weather ever.  It’s damp, it’s slushy, it’s “slippy”.  You don’t want to go out of your house much less out of your car because the chill goes straight to the bone marrow like a thousand needles.  So, if the “presumptive mayor” wants to make life bearable for commuters who will now be forced to walk extra distances to work, he might want to take a cue from the Universities and medical centers in Oakland and employ a s^&*load of free shuttles.  They’re smaller and more nimble.

By the way, the universities pay quite a bit to PAT for the use of the buses for their employees.  If you have a university employee ID (Pitt, CMU, Carlow, Duquesne, UPMC), you can ride the buses for free.  That saves employees a ton of money in parking and gas.  And traffic in Oakland is actually kind of bearable, because there are dedicated bus lanes.   I’d call that a success.  Once you get to Oakland, your ID will get you almost to your workplace front door with plenty of shuttles and Pitt buses. There’s even a shuttle for the biotech corridor along the river. You don’t have to walk but walking in Oakland is pleasant and if you work in the medical center area, a daily workout up Cardiac Hill.  You can even track your shuttle on your mobile device.

So, maybe this plan is the “presumptive mayor’s” way of hitting up downtown businesses for money to support the bus system or a shuttle system.  Otherwise, I dread the increase in traffic.  It’s bad enough that the bus service to my area was cut back a couple of years ago.  I definitely notice a difference in the morning in traffic where the bus service picks up again.  The traffic jams going downtown are spectacular and just forget trying to get to work on time by taking the Squirrel Hill tunnels in the morning.  Nah-gah-happen.  Life would be so much better if the bus service to the suburbs went back to the pre-cutback state and more people took the buses to work along the breezy, fast moving busway.

Now, if Peduto wants to make the downtown district car free, I’m all for that.