April 2007

State's transportation crisis creating numerous casualties

Derrick Trexler may be quitting his job.

A maintenance assistant at a local retailer, Trexler likes the work and believes he does it well. He’s comfortable with the schedule, gets along with co-workers and sees the potential for advancement. What would make him walk away?

“I’ll just have no way of getting there,” he lamented. “The bus is my only dependable means of transportation. I don’t live close enough to the store that I can walk there and I don’t really make enough to take a cab. Or buy a car. It’s not a great situation to be in.”

Trexler’s dilemma is one that many others may soon be facing, thanks to a severe decrease in funding for mass transit that has caused Altoona Metro Transit (AMTRAN) to consider eliminating routes and increasing fares. Pennsylvania’s transportation crisis, which projects as a $1.7 billion annual shortfall in funding for transportation infrastructure and mass transit services, is hitting home for Blair County residents and AMTRAN looks to be the first victim.

The most unfortunate aspect of the mass transit debacle is that mismanagement and misappropriation are largely responsible for what’s occurred within that industry statewide and AMTRAN and others like them will be painted with the same broad brush.

In reality, AMTRAN is regarded as one of the most efficiently managed and operated transit companies on the entire east coast. If the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) in Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh-based Port Authority Transit (PAT) followed the example set by Eric Wolf and his AMTRAN staff, mass transit would one of the Commonwealth’s assets instead of an embarrassment with no short-term solution.

Rather than dwelling on the frustration, AMTRAN’s management team is reluctant to point fingers.

“As far as SEPTA and PAT are concerned, it’s very tough for us to criticize because they’re doing something vastly different than we do,” remarked Tom Klevan, AMTRAN’s Director of Business Development. “They carry more people in one day than we carry in two years. Their challenges require more complex solutions”.
Klevan contends that having high-profile transit companies like SEPTA and PAT may actually aid AMTRAN’s cause as it looks for more consistent revenue streams.

“With the number of people in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh being affected by the threat of mass transit cuts, the state legislature has significant pressure to do something about the entire industry,” he noted. “That should benefit us. If it was just AMTRAN having the problem, we’d be gone.”

Klevan acknowledged that the prospect of people losing their jobs because of diminished routes and higher fares has been a source of angst for he and his co-workers. He doubts that many people in Blair County who don’t use public transportation have a true picture of the consequences of the funding cuts, at least as it pertains to employment.

“We know that 27% of our ridership are people going to and from work,” he pointed out. “And that figure is actually 40% when you take out the school students that we transport. We’ve had people tell us that they’ll probably lose their jobs if we cut our routes and raise our fares. So we’re doing everything we can to avoid having that degree of impact.”

The other side of the employment equation is the employers themselves who are already challenged to fill positions from within a labor pool that is shallow at best. Losing people because they can’t get to work happens occasionally, one local manufacturer told me. But losing a handful would be almost catastrophic, depending on the time of year and the experience level of those needing to be replaced.

In the meantime, AMTRAN will continue to look for ways to keep the buses running and hope that Governor Rendell’s efforts yield a workable solution.

“Believe it or not, we’ve been preparing for this situation for the past three years,” Klevan stated. “The boss’s mantra the entire time has been ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst.’ We’ve done that, even to the extent that we’re working on how to rebuild our entire system if that turns out to be what’s needed. We understand how important this all is and how many people are counting on us.”

If everyone with a stake in the future of transportation in Pennsylvania had that attitude, it’s likely there would be no crisis.

It’s nice that these guys are on our side.

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