Thursday Night Fights

They used to have a lot of boxing matches at The Palisades, back in the day. They still do, occasionally, along with wrestling matches.

But nobody told Port Authority CEO Steve Bland. If he knew, no doubt he would asked the referee to stop the pummeling he was taking last night during a four-hour hearing on proposed public transit service cuts.

Bland, who looks a little like Chris Noth from the Law & Order TV shows, spent much of the hearing staring off of the stage at the Palisades at a point somewhere in the back balcony, over the heads of the audience and the speakers. One after another, every three minutes, they took the microphone to lambaste Bland and seven other Port Authority officials who sat beside him on the stage.

"Mismanagement and greed --- that's what's wrong with your system," one man said. "It's mismanaged because it's political." Another man accused Bland of being "ungodly" for cutting bus service to his neighborhood.

Sometimes Bland managed a wan smile, like when Mayor Jim Brewster came to the microphone and said: "Welcome to McKeesport. How did you get down here? Did you take a bus?"

A few times, Bland even made eye contact with the people testifying and smiled, sympathetically, as when a young mother with a Russian accent suggested that people should be "proud to ride public transportation ... it is a privilege to ride a bus, not a shame," or when a little gray-haired lady stumbled midway through her speech and confessed, "I'm nervous and I lost my place."

Most of the time, though, Bland just stared blankly at the back wall of the ballroom --- no doubt wishing he were anywhere but in Downtown McKeesport on a Thursday night, where the miserable cold outside was nearly matched by the bitterness inside.

. . .

Some of the other Port Authority officials on the dias wouldn't even attempt as much contact with the hostile crowd as Bland did. One woman spent much of the evening staring at her shoes. Others looked numb from all of the abuse they took in McKeesport --- and have obviously been taking, night after night, in hearings throughout the county.

If a proposed service reduction goes through later this year, McKeesport and much of the Mon Valley stands to lose most of its local bus routes. There would be little or no bus service south of Versailles, leaving a broad section of the county completely without public transportation. Several trips that connect McKeesport to surrounding communities would be rolled into a single bus route, and several routes to Pittsburgh would remain.

Yet even Pittsburgh commuter service would be vastly curtailed --- express buses from Port Vue and McKeesport would end while the heavily-used 56C would stop running after 9 p.m. on weekdays, and not at all on Sundays.

Ted Keeler, who described himself as a bus operator for 19 years, quoted a line from the Port Authority website that says the agency "connects people to life."

"How are these people going to be connected to life?" Keeler asked. "They can't go to the doctor's, they can't go shopping --- some of these people are 90 years old. These buses are the only thing that's keeping them alive."

A man from Greenock who says he rides the 60A said he would have to walk nearly four miles to catch the nearest bus after the service cuts take effect. "I'm on disability and my wife is on disability. I don't think we qualify for ACCESS. If you take away my bus service you're taking away my life."

"All I'm asking for is maybe four buses a day," he pleaded.

"I am single, live alone, and I never learned how to drive," said a woman who rides two buses each way to get from her home in McKeesport to her job in Cranberry Township. "I have to grocery shop on Saturday and I go to church on Sunday and I teach bible school on Monday. I make maybe three or four trips a day."

. . .

She, like many speakers, blamed wasteful Port Authority spending for the current crisis: "There has to be an independent audit. If we do not correct the problems now, three years from now, we will be back at the same place."

Many speakers pointed fingers at projects like the Wabash Tunnel HOV lane and the North Shore subway connector as examples of foolish spending.

"We can find the money to run a tunnel under the river," said Carol Katz of Port Vue, "while Port Vue and Liberty Borough have been completely eliminated from any service whatsover. Why not reduce the frequency of trips to two in the morning and two in the afternoon? Or at least give us local transportation so that we can get to the Olympia Shopping Center or to the transit center. And another thing --- why haven't you taken a pay cut?"

Her last remark got loud, lusty applause from the audience.

"When a tree dies, it starts from the top," said one elderly man. "You are responsible for the money coming in. If you can't handle it, resign."

"Scratch this," said another man as he brandished a copy of a Port Authority pamphlet explaining the service cuts. "It's garbage. It's trash!"

"I heard Governor Ed Rendell say that why is it that SEPTA is twice the size of Port Authority of Allegheny County, but Port Authority has more management staff than SEPTA," said Edward Craig of McKeesport, who rides four buses to get to his welding job in Jefferson Hills.

Pat McMahon, business agent of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85, which represents Port Authority drivers, asked why the agency has been spending money to rent offices in Pittsburgh's Heinz 57 Center when its old office building in Woods Run is empty.

"What business would eliminate its best performing products, like the 28X to the airport, or the park and ride lots in the North Hills?" he said. "We've brought these things to the attention of the Port Authority management and county officials, and they say, well, these are just little issues. Well, where I come from, a lot of little issues add up to a big problem."

. . .

Others, like Schnel Simmons of the McKeesport branch of the NAACP, blamed the state Legislature for failing to increase public transit subsidies. "I think you should already have had an increase from our officials, knowing that the price of gas has increased," she said.

Several speakers blamed Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, accusing him of pushing the Port Authority into drastic service cuts at a time when the county is pledging money to build a new arena for the Penguins.

"I've been to three of these hearings already," one woman from Park Street in McKeesport said. "This is the fourth one and I might be going to a fifth. I did try calling Mr. Onorato and left a message, but I haven't seen him yet. I think he's a freaking chicken."

There were a few moments of levity, as when a Port Authority official tried to locate a registered speaker who didn't come to the microphone when called.

"Is Patricia Jones here?" he said.

"She probably had to go catch a bus," someone shouted from the back of the ballroom.

A few speakers said Port Authority is cutting service when existing transit already doesn't work well. "Bus routes in the valley have been problematic from day one," said Judy Monahan Grystar, executive director of Mental Health/Mental Retardation, Inc., in Braddock. Patients trying to get from one side of the Monongahela River to the other are often forced to take buses all the way to Pittsburgh and back out again.

"I can't believe you're looking at cuts in these communities when we already don't have enough service," Grystar said.

A woman from the Rolling Hills apartment complex in North Versailles asked why the 60M bus from McKeesport to East Pittsburgh passes through so many unpopulated areas. "I'm a little disappointed in the utilization," she said. "Some of the places it goes, they don't pick up anybody." One of her neighbors asked why "we need so many 68J's in the morning, one after another."

. . .

Despite newspaper stories that have focused on the salaries and benefits provided to the Port Authority's best-paid bus and trolley operators, few directed their anger at the agency's rank-and-file, though a few did criticize what they considered inefficencies.

"I think there should be some accountability on behalf of the bus drivers and trolley operators," said Vince DeAngelo of Clairton. "Some of them, it seems like if people pay fares and show a pass, that's OK. But if they don't, that's OK too. I'm not trying to point fingers."

He suggested that bus passes should carry bar codes that would enable drivers to make sure they're valid, and that would track who is riding buses. Several drivers agreed. "We need updated fare boxes --- there is so much fraud taking place between bad Pitt (bus) passes and counterfeit passes," Keeler said.

McMahon, from the bus drivers' union, said he has tried to make suggestions to improve efficiency in the past, "not only to the old administration, but to you, Mr. Bland, and it falls on deaf ears."

"I've talked to a lot of people on that (Port Authority) board of directors, and they're business people, and I respect that, but there's a lot about transit that doesn't relate to a business decision," he said. "There should be citizen representation on that board of directors. There should be worker representation on that board of directors."

Many speakers, like Brewster, focused on how cutting intra-city bus routes would prevent residents from getting to jobs that don't pay enough to maintain and operate a car.

"I intend to bring 2,000 jobs to this area in the coming years, and many of them are dependent on the buses," Brewster said. "Move slowly is my request. McKeesport, Port Vue, Liberty, Glassport, Lincoln, Elizabeth don't have to be forgotten."

An employee of Echostar, the satellite TV provider, said up to 50 percent of her co-workers rely on buses to get to the company's national call center in Downtown McKeesport. "It would kill us," she said. "We'd be completely cut out of the loop."

Another woman, who rides the 60E bus from her home in White Oak to make a connection to Pittsburgh, predicted she will lose her job if the route is cancelled.

"Since these cuts were announced, every day my boss asks me, what alternate arrangements have you made to get to work?" she said. "I don't have a backup. And if these cuts go through, I will be fired. I already know that."

McMahon predicted that many transit riders would end up on unemployment, and then on welfare, "and I don't think anybody wants that."

"There's supposed to be 10,000 jobs coming into this area in the next year, but how many of them are going to be middle-income jobs?" he said. "They're not. They're going to be clerks. How are they going to get to work?"

. . .

Some of the people testifying tried to keep their tones concilatory. "This problem wasn't created overnight, and I think it's unfair to try to solve it overnight," said Joanne Beckowitz, president of the Elizabeth Township board of commissioners. "Please consider providing bus service Monday through Friday to our residents so they can continue to tend to their health."

Said Ed Falco of Port Vue: "It might not be a high income area like Squirrel Hill or Bethel Park or Mt. Lebanon, but we need the buses. We use them."

But most others were just angry. "Put yourself in our shoes," said Jermaine Scott of North Versailles. "Pretend that your cars are being stolen right now. We need these buses."

"How are we going to get to doctors' offices? How are young people going to get to school?" Kimberly Spencer, also of North Versailles, said.

Many Mon Valley residents will be forced to rely on jitneys, she said. "The jitney drivers are eating this up," Spencer said. "They're going to get rich. They're waiting for us to lose our services --- they're going to charge us extra money and we don't have it.

"The powers that be --- y'all got to resolve something," she said. "If you stop our transportation, there's going to be a war."

. . .

Back in the days when they used to have weekly boxing matches at The Palisades, they also used to have roller skating.

Someone should have told Steve Bland. At least he wouldn't have looked so helpless. He have known that there was a long history at The Palisades of people going around in circles without finding an exit, and then falling down on their rear ends.

And unless someone arrives quickly with nothing short of a miracle, roller skates may be the only way that Mon Valley residents who don't own cars can get from town to town.