What is the purpose of public transit?

Again, there’s a really interesting conversation about transit going on over at Nullspace: http://nullspace2.blogspot.com/2008/09/transit-tuesday-metrics-to-be-proud-of.html

Chris B. deconstructs some of the “facts” touted in a recent Forbes.com report and P-G article about Pittsburgh being in the top 5 commuter-friendly regions.

He points out that the figures that put us in the top 5 are ridership numbers from BEFORE LAST YEAR’S BUS CUTS.

Where once we were ranked pretty high in transit usage, the only question at the moment is how far we have fallen. Will have to wait for some more data for answer that for sure, but that was the cost we will pay for the route cuts last year.

Some highlights from the comments—

• Downtown business scribe, Ken Zapinski,  asserts that increasing ridership and serving populations who don’t have cars shouldn’t (necessarily) be  goals of public transit.

Underlying your premise is that more ridership is the appropriate goal for the Port Authority (or any transit agency.) All things being equal, the more passengers, the better. But all things are never equal.

Thanks for finally putting it out there Ken!

• Blogger Ed Heath wonders what the “public” part of public transit is supposed to mean.

• Chris argues that prioritizing the commuter market over the transit-is-their-primary-transportation population will lead to even more residential segregation in our region.  And he reminds us how segregated we already are:

http://www.briem.com/gis/AA_county.pdf

Please feel free to join the conversation here or there.  Just please, join the conversation!