Judy Mancini is just a few weeks away from starting an externship at a medical office in Swissvale and wrapping up her associate’s degree. For the last 10 months, the North Braddock resident has traveled Downtown to the Sanford-Brown Institute on Seventh Avenue for classes.
She takes an 8 a.m. bus for her 8:30 a.m. class. But if she misses that ride, she has to take two buses and is late to school. Other routes she depends on, such as the former 68D (now the P68 Braddock Hills Flyer) will be further reduced; come January, a few of Mancini’s other routes will be eliminated, if Port Authority’s proposed 35 percent service reduction goes through.
Mancini worries that an already crowded bus may get even worse.
“It’s a pretty packed route on the bus I take home,” she says. “Everyone is standing and it’s like that every day until 6.”
She finishes class around lunchtime, but says her bus doesn’t come until 3:30 p.m. Hanging out for a few hours at the bus stop isn’t an option, so she kills time around town and in her school’s library.
Mancini hopes to finish her medical-assistant program before any further cuts go through. If they do, she says she wouldn’t be able to get to class.
“I need it to get a better job and get a career,” she says. “I don’t want to do the minimum-wage thing anymore.”
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2010.
I’ve emailed a complaint to the Port Authority regarding the overcrowding on the 41D. We have several pregnant women that ride in the morning. We have a regular rider that uses a wheelchair. We were full in the beginning of our route and several riders were left behind. The driver didn’t even bothering slowing down. When we got to a stop near the bus way two women literally stood in the road, blocking the bus in order to get it to stop. People were standing in the front and back stair wells. It was over crowding to the point of being dangerous.