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Getting Around: The Port Authority should stand PAT
Sunday, June 11, 2000 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The headline in a recent edition of the Post-Gazette read, "PAT facing budget crunch."
I have nothing to do with writing headlines, but I expect to be scolded once again by Neal Holmes, board chairman of the agency: "We're not Port Authority Transit, but the Port Authority. So why does your newspaper keep using PAT?"
Holmes is basically correct, inasmuch as state legislation that created the public transit system in the early 1960s carries "Port Authority of Allegheny County" as the legal name.
It was the Port Authority that added "Transit" and promoted it for 30 years, incorporating it in advertising, news releases, speeches, documents, company letterhead, etc. The acronym was PAT. A variation of it became PATransit, used as a logo.
After PAT established its identity to the point of becoming part of the local vocabulary, the Port Authority opted last year to drop the "Transit" as part of a new marketing and image campaign, focusing on the word "gold." We now have "Port Authority Gold," with a giant, inky G wrapped around the name Port Authority as the logo.
We have a mascot, Gold Pan Dan; gold-colored buses; GoldLink suburban minibus service; Nike-like gold "swooshes"; a gold standard of service; a weekly employee newsletter, Gold Currentcy; even gold foil-wrapped candy and live goldfish at special events.
The glitter is blinding.
Nonetheless, the gold theme may be appropriate, inasmuch as Allegheny County enjoys one of the nation's better mass transit systems; names such as the Golden Triangle, the Black and Gold and Golden Panthers are indigenous to Pittsburgh; the local airline, US Airways, may soon be famous for golden parachutes.
As for the name, consider...
When the West Busway project was conceived, that's how I wrote it until former PAT executive director Bill Millar protested (successfully) to my PG bosses.
For a while, we changed it to the official Airport Busway despite my argument that the buses-only road ended in Carnegie, 10 miles from the airport; no PAT buses served the airport; and West Busway made sense since we already had a South Busway and the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway.
When Paul Skoutelas came to PAT as chief executive officer three years ago, he accepted the logic. It's the West Busway again.
What I'm suggesting to Holmes and colleagues is to come up with a better name than Port Authority, one that represents the agency's role and lends itself to a good acronym. Or quit complaining and stand PAT.
Trying to take the T out of PAT at this point is tantamount to kicking the H out of Pittsburgh.
Stay tuned. David A. Kotlinski, a senior project management consultant at a Forest Hills firm, wants to know why he can pick up AM radio reception inside the Fort Pitt and Liberty tunnels but not the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.
"Please ask that they correct this problem," Kotlinski says. "During my lifetime would be preferable."
Dear David:
You're asking for a lot. PennDOT has been tinkering with this for more than 10 years. They keep telling me trucks snag and pull down the radio wires strung through the Squirrel Hill and Fort Pitt tunnels. They've also argued that people pass through there so fast, why can't they go without radio for a minute? Guess they don't know we get traffic jams.
The Liberty Tubes are a different story because of the arched-roof design that enables the AM radio antenna wire to be strung overhead without danger of getting tangled by trucks.
Those riders have had reception for 50 years, starting when the county owned the tubes. A county commissioner missed the broadcast of a big Pirates inning while driving to his house in the South Hills. Two weeks later, motorists had their own radio Liberty.
Plate du jour. Barbara Daubner of Lawrenceville spotted the personalized Pennsylvania license plate DNT SMOK while shopping at the Waterworks Mall near Aspinwall. That's good advice for everyone, including me.
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The Port Authority has no port. A Port of Pittsburgh Commission deals with matters concerning our three rivers. PAT divested its "waterways division" years ago.