ummmm, originally uploaded by Mike @ pittsburgh.metblogs.com.

This is the poor quality picture from my bus where the driver just yelled at two passengers who dared to ask to get on five feet after the stop while we were stopped at a light

Ok, now that I’m not trying to type out on my phone, here is the whole story:

Our bus (the 68A) was working its way through Pittsburgh and got to the stop at Oliver and William Penn Place.  A whole ton of people got on and the bus pulled forward, five or ten feet to the light, which was red.  Two men caming running down William Penn Place and knocked on the door asking to get on.  This happens a lot, and I have never seen a bus operator refuse to open the doors.

Well, our operator went nuts.  She started yelling through the door that she didn’t have to open it, she already service the stop and if they wanted to get on they had to either go to the next stop (up Oliver and down three blocks on Grant) or wait for another bus.  I heard her screaming through my headphones even while listening to a podcast.

Now to be fair, I could not hear what the men on the street were saying.  We moved up to the next stop on Grant and one of the two men got on.  The operator yelled at him, saying that the could not ride the bus since he dropped the F bomb.  He denied it and walked back and took a seat.

Overall, I think the whole situation was insane.  There was no need for the operator to not open the door, she was just rude, and I have never seen that happen before, operators have been nothing but kind to riders.  I got the bus number and I’ll probably send a note to PAT about it, and I just am thankful that it’s not my normal bus.

Note: I’ve been sitting on this story for a week, hoping for resolution (hence no column last week).  And in the meantime, I’ve listened to a lot of Lewis Black, so I’m going to pay myself on the back for not swearing or wiggling my fingers.

Today, I have a story to tell, about hellacious public relations by PAT.  Normally they seem to be on the ball, but this is inexcusable, at least to me, at least for now.

About two weeks ago there were ‘unathorized’ flyers distributed on some of the buses.  My route happened to be one of them.  They weren’t copied well, when folded they didn’t match up, but I read it, and walked away with some concerns: mainly the same I’ve had all along.  I still don’t know if I’ll have service.  Here’s the run down:

• It has been stated that service to Monroeville will terminate at the Mall park ‘n ride.
• The map of the new P68 (or P67, can’t remember which at the moment) shows service going past Monroeville Mall, on one of the current routes
• It is noted that there will be three route variations
• Those variations are not listed anywhere
• PAT has said it will keep service to all Park ‘n Ride lots and open new ones, as well as create transportation hubs

So, will there be service to my local Park ‘n Ride which is past Monroeville Mall?  The flyer said no.

I’m a little bit of a (read: a really big) dork, and while I don’t have a Twitter account, I read the Port Authority’s feed since it often has more information than their website.  There was a message on it saying that if you had questions, to contact them via Twitter.  Well, since I don’t have an account, I opted to instead use the form on the website to ask a question.

Here’s where things started to break down.  I sent in my question, using complete sentences and explaining my situtation, including the unathorized flyers, the twitter account, all of it.  I get a one line reply back the next day (to the best of my memory this is what it said, I can check it word for word when I have access to my e-mail tonight):

You need to send a letter to the TDP

That’s it.  No help.  Not even an offer to forward my question to the appropriate department, you know, like any reasonable customer service department would.  Nothing.  So I send an e-mail back asking for two things:

1. An answer to my original question, will I still have service or was the brochure correct
2. Some sort of explanation as to why I was not offered any kind of help whatsoever or even any kind of decency as a customer

It’s been a week.  I haven’t gotten a response yet.

PATransit Tuesdays: Bike rack, originally uploaded by Mike @ pittsburgh.metblogs.com.

I’m not a biker, I’m fairly uncoordinated, on occasion I have enough trouble walking.  However, I was intrigued to find out that the buses (and inclines and Ts at non-peak times) can accomidate bikes.

From reading the directions online, I was thoroughly confused, and convinced that it was even more complicated than cycling to work, but as it turned out, today for the first time, as I watched, a cyclist deftly pulled down the rack, hoisted up his bike, secured it and got on.  Easy as pie.  I’ve also seen the bike racks on a significant portion of buses, but from what I can gather, only a select routes are guaranteed to have the racks all the time.  But, I do have to admit, if you need a vehicle, what greener way is there than public transportation and bikes combined?

Ok, so I’m not really writing this until Wednesday, but I’ll back-date it to put it on a Tuesday, but really, I was late.  I’ll go to detention now.

I think I might have thought that this would be a bigger post, at least when it was in my head.  Really, I just wanted to thank PAT for how they handled the G-20.

It was stressful for everyone, commuters and anyone trying to travel especially.  While the detours seemingly were posted later than I had hoped for, or thought they would be available, getting reliable information about the G-20 seemed to be an issue that just about every company had trouble with.

So with my detour map in hand, I headed downtown.  The map actually proved very useful, as I said before, I work at the end of town near the Convention Center, so I’m not that familiar with the end closer to the Point.  The map helped me on more than one occasion, and helped me find my bus stop to get home, even though I kept double and triple checking it.

I ended up the wrong side of the street, to catch my bus home (a different route too, so all kinds of new experiences smashed into one day), but since the Boulevard of the Allies had as much activity as a graveyard, I was able to run across and get on.

As I stood there, waiting on what was to be the wrong side of the street, I did call PAT, just to make sure things were still running smoothly.  The customer service rep was nothing but helpful and very kind, a big thumbs up for that.

And of course, the constant e-mail and twitter updates, even retweeting messages from outlying transit agencies, kept everyone in the loop.  I am glad I didn’t have to experience the total shut down of transit during the march for peace on Friday, but PAT seemed to take it in stride.

All in all, a commendable experience.  Will it encourage anyone to make the switch to transit?  Sadly, I don’t think so.  With the TDP changes coming, and what will probably be the most noted, the fare increase, I seem to think that the deft handling of the G-20 summit will be lost in the PR shuffle.  Hopefully I’m mistaken.

The bus detours were posted today (sometimes I think PAT reads this column and helps me out, if so, thanks!) for the G-20.  Bus service will be available, just detoured heavily when entering downtown.

Individual bus schedules can be found here, and a somewhat interactive map showing the detours is here.

The T will run to the First Avenue station, but no further, and the downtown PAT office will be closed Wednesday through Friday of the Summit.

More G-20 transportation information tomorrow.

Update: I actually found this map to be more helpful in determining where routes will be going (PDF).

Individual route maps are now available for viewing at this link.  I feel like I’m complaining that I’m confused, but even from this, I still don’t know if I will have bus service.  My route mentions that it will have two variants, but there are no variations on the map.  Maybe we’ll be getting full schedules, that would clear up all the confusion.

Just a note, the routes are listed by their current number, generally.

Also put up between yesterday and today is an interesting article on Rapid Bus Service, as well as a the proposed weekend bus schedules.  Those are available at the main TDP site, here.

Information is trickling in about the TDP.  A big change from last week’s post is that the ‘large’ proposed system map is now bigger, and is now encompassing the entire area the Port Authority covers.  From this, it looks like I’ll still have service to my neighborhood, but I don’t know for sure yet. 

However, a word of warning, the map shows the proposed routes, but with the old numbers (corresponding as best they can to the new lines), but with the new color scheme.  The trick is to not think about it too much.  Same with when you read the document outlining the new downtown routes.  There are colors, but not the ones that match up with the new color system (bonus point: look for the barge on the Mon!).

Speaking of the downtown routes, I found myself answering questions this morning better than some of the newspapers.  There will not be only 9 routes going into downtown; only nine different routes for the buses coming into downtown to stay on.  And unless you’re riding a bus from Oakland, you’ll be able to transfer to any other line at the Wood Street T Station.  That would be a good change to make, seems a bit strange why one set of buses isn’t able to connect with the rest.  Granted, the connection wouldn’t be far, maybe two blocks max depending on where the stops are, but it seems strange to me, that’s all.

So, as the information keeps coming in, I’ll be checking it out:

• TDP Website
• Port Authority Twitter (previously focused on service changes and disruptions, but for now, fielding discussions on the TDP)
• Port Authority Blog (who knew?)

The draft recommendations of the TDP have been released.  I’ll be working my way through it (all 230 pages of it) over the weekend, but check it out in the meantime to see how your route will be affected.

Individual route maps aren’t up yet won’t be posted until sometime next week, but the document goes over (somewhat cryptically) changes to be made to each line.  I haven’t been able to tell if I’m going to have bus access in my neighborhood or not, reading it could go either way and the map, even though it is marked as “large” does not cover the entire area.  But we’ll see, it is such a process.  And besides, this give me more time to start saving money for the fee increase (or possibly decrease if you used to live in the soon-to-no-longer-exist Zone 3).

I’m not a huge fan of twitter.  Most of it has to due with my cell phone plan without free text messages, but besides that, I find them a bit unwieldy and not the most convenient.

That being said, I do check in on the Port Authority’s twitter page (from a computer) to check out the latest happenings, since much more appears there than on their website.  And it looks like the proposed final version of the TDP is going to be released on Friday.

Suddenly I feel like I should be taking bets…

Work has kept me very, very busy, and I’ve been doing a lot of driving (thank goodness for the invention of Easy Pass!), and with all the driving, I”ve burned through a lot of CDs, so I’ve even occasionally turned on the radio.

PAT is running ads about the north shore connector.  Which is all well and good; that combined with the news that they were able to cut some of the costs really is welcomed news. 

However, having studied advertising- actually, no,  having ears and living in Pittsburgh is what allows me to ask the question, “wait, really?”

And I don’t have the official transcript of the ad, so I’m going of my memory here, but it goes something like this:

Pittsburghers hate crossing rivers

This is where my brain starts to hurt a  little bit and I question the ad shop that put this together.  The only Pittsburghers I know who are afraid of crossing rivers are the ones I make fun of because they can’t go anywhere.  Same with going through tunnels, although it is a little easier to get around without using a tunnel.

But really?  Pittsburgh.  City of bridges.  Really?  And I’ve been asking for a long time why PAT felt we needed an underwater T tunnel, when we’re really good at bridges.  I mean really good, it’s kind of what we do here.  But hey, apparently I’ve always hated crossing rivers and never knew it.