Blog This!

Options for intelligent, qualified transit analysis in Pittsburgh are pretty much non-existent. I talked a little bit about what Joe Grata's retirement has meant to real transportation media coverage late last year and it seems that the Post Gazette has no intentions of replacing Joe Grata with someone else to provide transportation/transit analysis.

That means that for now, we are stuck with the opinions in the editorial sections from the two big papers in Pittsburgh (We get it, people aren't happy about the North Shore Connector).

There are plenty of people out there with an opinion (myself included), but there are not plenty of people out there who have a QUALIFIED opinion about transit/transportation with the ability to broadcast their message. The Post Gazette, and the Trib continue to alert people of the various campaigns against potholes, and all the many many lane restrictions that can be found in Pittsburgh. But neither of them have consistent and qualified analysis.

What's my solution? Why Blogging of course. Check out PG and The Trib's website and you will see blogs galore (although The Trib's seems to be a liiiiitle shorter). In my mind, that's a pretty slick idea. Alot more newspaper readers are doing their reading on-line, and a sanctioned blogger is less expensive than a real live journalist. Why, even Pittsburgh's great sports curmudgeon Bob Smizik, who accepted PG's buyout has his own blog now.

Who is to say it couldn't work for transportation/transit issues? A blogger could give the PG a level of analysis that it has lost since Joe Grata left, and for the Trib, whose writers looooove to hate transit, a sanctioned blogger could give them a new perspective on transportation and transit.