Schaff: Pitt shouldn’t let students suffer from bus cuts

Pitt administrators take note: Bicycles aren’t that student-friendly. Pitt administrators take note: Bicycles aren’t that student-friendly.

Sure, if ever touched after purchasing, bikes can do wonders for your heart, raise your energy level and maybe even get you those magnificent glutes that — you were so convinced — would rake in gorgeous members of the opposite sex in time for the college student’s traditional orgy-in-Panama City spring break mayhem.

But as student bicycle owners can attest, such an account grossly warps reality. Taking a bike to class is like having a dog during college: Layered on top of typical student problems, you have a large, needy responsibility that you must regularly leave unattended, except that the bike gets sick (broken) much more often than the dog. Owners regularly defy traffic law and struggle to  provide unconditional amounts of love and saliva. More importantly, the $400 needed to acquire a machine that won’t rust out in two weeks could liquidate the monthly budget of someone without a job or a degree.

Students don’t normally consider required transportation fees as budget items, since they’re financed by loans or — if they’re lucky — loving parents. On this campus, part of the fee pays for students’ easy access to Pittsburgh’s Port Authority bus system, which up until now has contributed greatly to the quality of the Pitt experience by giving students a fast, cheap and ever-available transportation alternative to walking, and the inferior, bicycling.

And just our luck, reminiscent of 2011’s bus funding troubles, last week Port Authority organizers announced  their plans to make further service cuts — but this time more severe, especially for students. If the cuts go through as threatened, Pitt’s administration had better not stand idle. This doesn’t mean throwing in more tuition dollars to fill Port Authority’s deficit; rather, it might be time for leadership.

As reported by The Pitt News, next fiscal year Port Authority is set to fall short of operating funds to the tune of $64 million, and in language that could only be described as colorful, the public transit agency’s website fires the blame at Harrisburg politicians. Whatever the source of the funding problem, its result could significantly change the way Pitt students get around. Here’s a snapshot of the pain: Out of 100 current bus routes, 40 will be eliminated entirely, and remaining buses will run on reduced schedules, with almost all turning off their engines at 10 p.m. (this is not to mention the hundreds of jobs potentially lost, but that doesn’t necessarily relate to students unless bus drivers are students’ relatives or are taking classes themselves).

To be accurate, most of the routes earmarked for total destruction don’t carry much student traffic. But here’s one that does: the 28X — the airport flyer. Anyone who isn’t drinking or recovering from drinking when finals conclude can identify the following image: dense huddles of homeward-bound students, their bags littering the sidewalks, gathered at the bus stops along Fifth Avenue waiting impatiently for a nonstop ride to the airport. As precarious as this suitcase-strewn scene might be to someone running late to an exam, it’s nonetheless unmistakable evidence that Pitt students value the bus route, which among other things allows them to avoid adding an almost $100 round-trip cab fare to their holiday travel expenses. To allow the popular airport shuttle option to disappear is inappropriate of a University receiving thousands of students’ $90 transportation fees.

The University would also assault the social contract if it did nothing about the proposed 10 p.m. travel boundary on almost all routes. Primarily, it’s the issue of safety. When college students choose to inebriate themselves, so I’ve heard, the process often only completes after 10 p.m., and deprived of the buses that currently help sweep them into their beds, students would be more inclined to make unsafe transportation choices — and we certainly don’t need more headlines on the negative consequences of drunk driving. But more broadly, forcing more students far away from campus to walk back to their dorms in the dark or rely on an already-stretched SafeRider system doesn’t sound like a step toward a safer community.

That said, what can Pitt’s administrators actually do, if they are to form our elite team of stop-at-nothing mass transit advocates?

Well, if the cuts appear inevitable, Pitt’s own buses could fill the gaps. That is, the administration could shift a larger proportion of the transportation fee revenue to expand the Pitt shuttle system, hiring more drivers and covering more routes more regularly so as to replace at least some of the lost transit function. Surely, Port Authority might provide such service more efficiently right now, but that doesn’t matter if there’s no service.

And then of course, there’s the obvious course of action yet to be taken: for someone powerful in the University, like perhaps Chancellor Mark Nordenberg, to say something publicly. The culture of program-cutting that descended on our state legislature in 2010 has already taken a toll on this campus, and Nordenberg has properly responded by defending Pitt on the public stage. Here’s something else he can and should talk about.

Write Matt Schaff at matthew.schaff@gmail.com.