Bus

I hear tell the 71a might return to its former glory days of 10 routes per hour. This would make my heart sing, because I just cannot stand the bus in its current state of 3 per hour carrying the same overloads of people. I will not spend another morning with a penis pressed against my ear, I tell you!

Just yesterday I was complaining with my co-workers about the drink tax money. Starting in January, Pittsburgh began taxing each alcoholic drink poured in the city at 10%. That's a lot of money. Millions of millions of dollars, and they've been collecting it for six months. It's about time they started putting the money back into those bus routes.

I can't decide what the solution would be to our public transportation woes. I like that the bus drivers have strong unions and good salaries and nice retirement, but I hate that a bus driver could potentially retire at 38 years old and draw pension and full insurance for decades. Why should I have to work until I'm in my 60s while my bus fare goes up, up, up and the drivers get to retire after just 20 years? Perhaps I should try to get a job as a bus driver to supplement my income. I'd love to drive the 54C on a Friday night and haul around the drunk students from the Southside.

Oh wait. That would be a miserable, rotten awful job, worse perhaps than my bottle counting days at the factory. I tell you I want those drivers to have good benefits because they do thankless work that's important for the environment. But at the same time, those benefits are making it impossible for the city to maintain public transportation. It's a dilemma all right. At least I feel glad to know that when I drown my bus woes over a beer, the money finally goes toward getting me home.