Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilamonster
In every national objective rating on Pittsburgh, starting with it first being named "America's most livable city" in the 80's up to and including the very recent Washington Post report naming Pittsburgh the nation's most "In" city, I have never seen public transportation as a contributing factor as to why Pittsburgh won these awards. PAT Transit has been reducing routes and service for quite a while now and this new round of big cuts will likely not be the last, yet I haven't seen the sky fall in Pittsburgh. Certainly, this is still bad news, but in the big picture, I don't see it as a big deal.
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I actually do see it as a big deal --
particularly in the "big picture". An efficient public transit system is a very important key to producing a vibrant and successful urban core at the center of a metropolitan region anywhere -- and in the fractured mess that is the Pittsburgh region, especially.
Some people may view these cuts as not connected to what Pittsburgh is striving to become, and that is an incredibly faulty view to have -- considering transit, as its base function, is about connection. If anyone is in doubt about the wide-ranging effects of large-scale route elimination serving both near and far suburbs bringing thousands of people into the city on a daily basis and the scaling back of city routes, all I have to say is wait and see.