Pitt, PAT contract set for vote today

In a contract slated for final approval today, Pitt has agreed to pay the Port Authority of… In a contract slated for final approval today, Pitt has agreed to pay the Port Authority of Allegheny County 15 percent more every year for the next five years to ensure that students, staff and faculty can continue to ride for free with their Pitt IDs.

The deal comes after a two-month negotiation period during which Pitt paid 15 percent more than it had under a contract that expired on July 31.

The Port Authority’s board of directors is scheduled to approve the agreement at its meeting today.

Port Authority spokesman Bob Grove said that the new contract is designed to bring Pitt’s average fare per rider closer to the system average.

Under the previous agreement, Pitt paid approximately 57 cents per fare, Grove said, while the average fare system-wide is closer to $1.20.

Carnegie Mellon University reached a similar agreement with the Port Authority in which its payments will also rise 15 percent each year until 2012.

Grove said that the increase was not necessarily based on higher ridership by Pitt or CMU affiliates.

“If ridership stays about where it is and the amount that the university is paying increases each year, then by 2012 Pitt and CMU will be paying what the average fare is now,” Grove said. “But we are cognizant of the fact that the average fare in 2012 will not be $1.20.”

Pitt spokesman John Fedele said the University will not comment on the new contract, nor on how the increases will affect Pitt student fees, until it has been approved by the Port Authority’s board of directors.

The new agreement also includes a clause that allows either side to open the contract for renegotiation before July 31, 2012, if the Port Authority installs new smart-card fareboxes on its fleet.

But, according to Grove, the smart-card conversion is not a matter of if, but when.

“I would say that our goal right now is to have [the smart-card conversion] done within three years,” Grove said. “I’m talking about done in the sense that our customers have the cards and are using them.”

Smart-cards, which scan individually to record a fare, reduce the margin of human error present in the current system where drivers must press a specific button on the farebox to record a rider with a Pitt ID.

With the installation of a smart-card system, Pitt could go from paying a monthly fee to paying based on actual ridership counts, Grove said. But Grove said the biggest advantage of the new system would be its ability to drastically reduce incidents of fraud because of fake and expired IDs and passes.

“There seems to be a perception among many people that using a fake ID or pass is no big deal,” Grove said. “It’s theft of services. It’s stealing, and if we catch anybody doing this, we will have them arrested, and we expect full restitution.”