RALLY FOR FAIR FARES
Coalition seeks fairer Port Authority fares at Wilkinsburg rally
With a Martin Luther King Jr. mural in the background, the #FairFares Coalition kicked off its drive to change Port Authority’s fare structure with a rally in Wilkinsburg on Tuesday morning.
The coalition — which includes Pittsburghers for Public Transit, the Thomas Merton Center, Casa San Jose, Just Harvest and the Alliance for Police Accountability — believes the transit system discriminates against low-income riders. That’s because cash customers who can’t afford weekly or monthly passes pay higher fares and can’t buy transfers that are available to prepaid ConnectCard users.
The groups are pushing their message now because a Port Authority consultant is reviewing the fare policy and is expected to make recommendations by the end of the year. The coalition wants riders to make their concerns known at a series of public meetings the agency is having throughout Allegheny County through late April.
Veronica Lozada of Casa San Jose told more than 40 people at the rally that cash customers who need more than one bus ride to get to work and back can pay $11 a day for transit. The same travel would cost a ConnectCard user $7.
“This is discrimination,” she told the crowd at the East Busway stop during national Transit Equity Day. “This is robbery. This is a broken policy. They have to change this.”
The coalition wants free transfers; fare capping, where cash customers receive the discounts of weekly or monthly passes after they reach the minimum number of rides; and greater access to obtaining ConnectCards and other transit fare products, which often aren’t available in low-income communities.
Bethany Hallam, one of three Allegheny County Council members at the rally, said the county should help the most vulnerable residents get rides to work, grocery stores and medical appointments “with the end goal being a free public transit system.”
Eliminating fares wouldn’t be unprecedented. Ms. Hallam noted that the city council in Kansas City, Mo., voted in December to eliminate bus fares there.
Port Authority has said it is willing to look at the coalition’s concerns, but it isn’t sure it has funds to pay for all of them. The agency gets about 21% of its revenue, about $90 million per year, from fares.