Last week I drove from our home in Ferguson Township on the west side of town to a few stores on North Atherton Street, using a detour around the Walmart plaza to avoid the one-lane road construction just before the intersection with Woodycrest Street. And yes, it worked – I was in and out of my first store before a vehicle that had been in front of me by Champs made it through the construction zone!
Because traffic was not being merged into one-lane on the southbound side of the street, after I completed all my shopping and errands I headed home the way I usually do from that area: south on North Atherton Street to Martin Street where I make a right, cruise down behind all the shopping plazas, and then turn right on Blue Course Drive. Even with a 25 mph speed limit on Martin Street, this is usually faster and less congested than driving North Atherton all the way to Blue Course Drive.
Except, I forgot that some students were back in town.
After crossing West Aaron Drive on Martin Street I found myself three cars behind a CATA bus, which then proceeded to stop twice on Martin Street to pick up 15 or so young adults. For those who aren’t familiar with that area, those are some of the few CATA stops in town where it’s impossible to pass a stopped bus. So, the cars in front of me, and a growing line of cars behind me, queued up and waited for the riders to all board the bus at each stop.
I was not in a hurry to get anywhere, and each stop was probably less than a minute, but it was long enough to remind me to just stay on North Atherton until Penn State’s winter break. It also got me thinking about CATA and what exactly it is that it provides to the residents of Happy Valley. Because, whenever I end up behind a bus, the people most often getting on or off seem to be students.
A friend in local politics once told me that CATA – the Centre Area Transportation Authority – is the third largest public transit system in the state behind SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) and PRT (Pittsburgh Regional Transit).
I’ve never been able to verify if that’s true, but it certainly sounds reasonable when you read CATA’s 2022 Audit and see they provided approximately 3,477,793 trips and recorded 2,342,490 revenue miles in all services during the year ended June 30, 2022. Except those numbers were massively affected by COVID and were less than half the trips in an otherwise normal year. According to the audit, in pre-COVID years CATA routinely provided nearly 7 million rides each year – an amount the audit declared, “an extraordinary number for a small transit system.”
I’m no stranger to public transit. I commuted to New York City from Trenton, New Jersey, for a number of years and understand the need. Back then I paid almost $400 a month for a NJ Transit pass and a parking space in the garage in Trenton (a cost that is now $600). But had I chosen the option to drive from Yardley, Pennsylvania to New York City five days a week, the gas, tolls, wear-and-tear on my car, parking in Manhattan and daily damage to my mental state would have been far costlier.
I always assumed that my large monthly payment was covering the cost of operating the trains. Or at least the bulk of the cost. Sitting behind the bus on Martin Street that day I wondered if my small inconvenience in time for what seemed like mostly students was actually being paid for by those students. It turns out it isn’t – it’s mostly paid for by me and the other tax-paying residents of the Centre Region and elsewhere.
Many folks think that a primary purpose of our public transportation system is to help those who are low-income. But that belief isn’t necessarily correct.
PennDOT’s website points out the main reason for public transportation is that, “Public transportation offers a convenient and easy alternative to gridlocked commutes and high gas prices.” It further notes that, “More and more, Pennsylvania residents are relying on public transportation as a way to get to and from their workplace, doctor’s office, shopping malls and recreational places.” Nothing about helping low-income folks.
Here in Happy Valley, CATA exists largely to support the thousands of Penn State students who now live beyond convenient walking distance of campus. So they don’t gridlock our streets driving to-and-from Penn State. But, the users are not the ones paying the full cost of the system.
According to the most recent version of CATA’s budget posted online, the authority projected $6,622,461.77 in passenger fare revenue for the year-ended June 30, 2023. The bulk of that money comes from two places: $2,059,920.00 in purchases from apartments, and $2,712,556.29 in purchases from PSU. Add in the $639,889.33 for PSU Ridepass and that’s 82% of CATA’s fare revenue coming from things associated with the university.
But CATA’s projection for total expenditures for the year ended June 30, 2023 is $20,396,156.00. That’s a bit of a difference between only $6.6 million in fare revenue and almost $20.4 million in expenses. How does a business operate like that? Easy. Subsidies.
CATA projected they would receive $13,447,468.32 in subsidies for that year. That includes $737,693.00 from local sources (of which Penn State is the largest contributor, making up about 24%), $2,872,188.98 from the state, and $9,837,586.33 from federal sources. Meaning almost two-thirds of CATA’s income is from subsidies, not fare revenue. And where is the money for those subsidies coming from? The tax-paying residents of the Centre Region possibly beyond. And this is purely an assumption, but we can guess that most of those student riders are paying little or no taxes.
Granted, there are a myriad number of governments involved in CATA’s operations and finances, which leads to minefields of regulations and rules, but in the end, wouldn’t it be nice if the majority of people who use CATA cover the cost of the service they receive? Especially since those most of those student users can probably afford it.
In any case, the next time I’m behind a CATA bus without an ability to drive around it, perhaps I’ll roll down my window and yell, “You’re welcome!” to all the young adults boarding the bus.
