 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
              
|
Getting Around: Surveys: We're No. 3, or 13, or... now you answer
Sunday, November 21, 1999 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
This is a survey. Here's the only question: Do you believe surveys? This month, information about three transportation surveys -- well, one is called a study -- have popped up on my desk. If there were others, which is likely, they are buried in a rat pack of news releases, notes, magazines, files, papers and food droppings on my desk.
In the first survey, a bunch of over-the-road truckers decreed that Pennsylvania's main highways were no longer the worst in the nation. Yippee! Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials were jubilant after having been No. 1 for nine years, saying that moving down on the list was "a positive sign that our roads are improving."
Then, a "mobility study" released by the Texas Transportation Institute last week ranked Pittsburgh as the 13th best among 68 small and large urban areas surveyed nationally about time lost traveling at rush hours vs. time taken to make the same trip in uncongested conditions. The institute said the cumulative traffic delays in Pittsburgh totaled 15 hours a year.
The outcomes surprised me, the old skeptic, so I rechecked the Overdrive and Texas Transportation Institute info for typos and mistakes. Nada.
Third, I received a PennDOT news release announcing that our favorite state agency is conducting a "QUIK random telephone survey of more than 1,100 customers," asking them to grade the department's performance. In similar surveys conducted in 1995 and 1997, people were nice. On both occasions, they gave PennDOT a B- grade.
I'm going to withhold comment about the latest QUIK survey until the results are in. Then, "Getting Around" plans to publish some of the more significant questions, so our highway bosses will know what you think, in case they don't call.
Because so many people went to so much trouble and spent so much time surveying the condition of our roads, they deserve the courtesy of a response.
Input from interstate truck drivers determined the results of the annual survey conducted by Overdrive magazine, the bible of the big truck industry.
The nerve of those CB-radio cowboys. Some of America's worst truckers drop us to No. 3, to a tie with Illinois, in their "worst roads" survey, despite nine years of interstate reconstruction, billions of tax dollars and lots of motorist inconvenience.
These overwhelmingly out-of-towners said we still had to drop 46 places to No. 50 if we wanted to earn their self-serving votes for the dubious distinction of providing the best roads in the United States.
One behemoth rig inflicts as much damage on a road or bridge as 10,000 cars. Pennsylvania's interstates are a funnel for truck traffic serving lucrative Northeast markets. These trucks have especially beaten up on Interstate 80, Interstate 70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike as they race through the state in growing numbers.
Jack Brannan of Upper St. Clair, a retired engineer who wonders why we should care what out-of-state truckers think, calls Pennsylvania the "sugar daddy of the trucking industry."
Brannan said our major highways could adequately accommodate the truckers who do business locally or who have Pennsylvania as an origin or destination on longer trips. But the abundance of out-of-state trucks operating as freight trains on wheels do not pay us for the damage they do while using state roads as convenient, direct routes elsewhere.
"To sit back like a spoiled child and say this state isn't keeping up with the damage they inflict on our highways is biting the hand that feeds them," Brannan said.
"We're paying an extra $1 billion a year for PennDOT just to fix the roads and to maintain the status quo for trucks. Tell them to go somewhere else."
Jack, you're nasty. But correct. A lot of other people would like to tell Overdrive readers where to go, too.
The Texas Transportation Institute study says it used "a variety of data" to measure mobility in several ways, including a calculation of the amount of delay drivers experienced.
Its survey of clogged arteries concluded that commuters in Los Angeles spent 82 hours a year in traffic delays caused by congestion, construction-related delays excluded. At 15 hours a year, Pittsburgh was below the national average of 34 hours a year.
Mr. Researcher: You try telling people who drive Route 28 past the 31st Street Bridge every day that they're wasting only 15 hours a year as a result of congestion and they'll call you a nut. At the least.
Obviously, the people from Texas never spent rush hours or even nonrush hours on Interstate 376 around the Squirrel Hill or Fort Pitt tunnels. Or Route 51 and West Liberty Avenue, around the Liberty Tunnels. Or on Second Avenue through Hazelwood, Eighth Avenue in Homestead, McKnight Road, Route 19 around Warrendale or on Route 88 through the South Hills.
Last week alone, I figure that I spent an extra 30 minutes a day, or 2 1/2 hours for the week, driving during rush hours.
If my math is correct, based on 50 weeks a year (after vacation), that adds up to 125 wasted hours a year.
Hey, L.A., we have you beat. Hey, Texas Transportation Institute, maybe we're No. 1.
"Duke" is a neat transportation gift for (mostly) kids. It's a soft-toy, bean-bag replica of the little red Duquesne Heights Incline cars that have been climbing Mount Washington since 1877. "Duke" is for sale in the incline upper station for $10.
On Monday, I followed a vehicle on Route 322 bearing a new www.state.pa.us-style Pennsylvania license plate reading FREE WMN. It was passing through Pennsylvania Dutch country. I can assure you the vehicle was a car, not one of the many horse-drawn Amish buggies in that area.
Send your transportation questions, complaints and suggestions to Joe Grata c/o the Post-Gazette, or e-mail him at jgrata@post-gazette.com. Please include your address and phone number.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
