The word "delusional" comes to mind when one reviews some key operational statistics of the Port Authority of Allegheny County. Take, for instance, the numbers regarding the South Hills trolley system that feeds into the nation's shortest subway and soon will extend to Pittsburgh's near North Shore.
As the Trib's Jim Ritchie noted in a Sunday story, a "T" car costs twice as much to run than a bus and, based on 2006 data, fares from the trolley system netted just 2 percent of the mass-transit agency's budget. Now there's a rationale to spend nearly half-a-billion dollars to expand a system that most likely will become even less efficacious.
And we almost choked when we read that one of the plans to attempt to fix things is to continue to market the rail line for development. About the only thing that's been "developed" along the "T" line over the last 30 years is a massive taxpayer-financed garage adjacent to the South Hills Village mall.
This fantasy must stop. Decades of mismanagement have left the Port Authority broken. And some of those responsible -- management and labor -- have profited sweetly. Yet, you're more likely to see empty trolley cars and buses than fuller ones.
A new transit contract is being negotiated. There's plenty of talk of reform. We'll see. But if this nonsense is allowed to continue, the system's implosion is foretold.
