"I Guess I'll Have to Swim the River"

Christian Morrow of the Courier nails the heart and soul of the issue by leading his three-article coverage with this unfortunate grammatical disaster:

Though many people still believe that if the state comes to the rescue again, the Port Authority of Allegheny County will not go forward with its proposed service reductions, both County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and PAT Executive Director Steve Bland said there is no ‘crying wolf’ this time—the cuts, perhaps with minor variations, are coming anyway.

This flies in the face of long-established Comet suspicions. Recent P-G pieces by reporter David Guo and columnist Brian O'Neil on the elimination of 28X Airport Flyer service must, we thought, be read as a dead giveaway, designed to generate maximum public outrage.

Though such outlying cuts may seem a small dose of the bitter medicine needed to cure the authority’s ills, closer to the city, the suburb of Braddock is losing much more. Of the seven routes that currently serve riders in Braddock, four are to be eliminated.

Perhaps the 28X will be given back to the constituents as a show of accountability, while the mass of cuts, such as Braddock, will go forward.

“In conversations leading up to the press announcement, the legislators we talked to all said they were committed to dedicated funding—now they’re silent." This last quote from Barbara Simpson, co-chair of the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network transit task force.