Latest MOVE fest is underway

The second set of workshops and meetings are underway in the progress of MOVEPGH, the transportation component of the city’s first-ever masterplan, PLANPGH.

I missed alerting you yesterday to the meeting that kicked off this week of work sessions, but you have today, tomorrow and Thursday to drop in on work sessions at the IBEW Local #5 at 5 Hot Metal St. on the South Side.

Consultants and planners will be on hand to talk to you about the data they’re analyzing. Today and tomorrow’s sessions run from 10a to 7p. Thursday’s is from 10a to 3p and Thursday night is the wrap-up progress report session from 6 to 8p.

You can investigate the whole ball o’ wax here.

This plan is your plan, this plan is my plan, from Marshall-Shadeland to Lincoln Place, so your ideas and feedback are critical to the plan being pertinent for the next 25 years.

I’ve been to a few sessions in the plan’s construction, from “open spaces” to “preservation.” Transportation is particularly meaty and topical and seems to be coming up against a headwind of contradicting attitudes.

On the one hand, mass transit is critical to nurturing a sustainable city — one that’s increasingly attractive and in the national spotlight. On the other, it is apparently possibly expendable to a particular Harrisburg resident who is either drawing out the drama as we inch closer to a 35 percent cut in bus service or who has no intention of extending state funds to prevent it.

This is a pretty good time to infuse mass transit with public money, when development plans and people’s decisions about where to live depend so much on it.

Honestly? We can’t raise the fees that drivers pay for licenses? Really? We can’t tax drivers more for the privilege of burning their own private gasoline?

Paying for transit is one of the most worthy things a state can do. And transit is the lifeblood of a vibrant city. We’re almost there... and it will be September before we know it.