Amtran touts capital projects

At an event recognizing the completion of several capital acquisitions and projectsc, General Manager Eric Wolf recalled his first meeting with U.S. Rep. John Joyce, R-Altoona.

They shook hands, Joyce expressed his support for transit, and Wolf thought to himself, “Are you sure you’re a Republican?”

It got a laugh from the approximately 50 guests, but the joke was out-of-date, Wolf admitted afterward. While enthusiasm for transit was a Democratic monopoly 25 years ago, Republicans have since then been supportive — as indicated Friday by Joyce, who spoke appreciatively of riding Amtran buses as a high school and college student.

The local authority has benefited from bipartisan support for projects like the ones it celebrated Friday: seven new compressed natural gas buses, an auxiliary garage, renovations of the drivers lounge, dispatch office and administrative office and a new software system.

The high-level government support is beyond critical: Amtran’s fare-box funding covers only 15 to 20 percent of its budget, according to Wolf.

There are no public transit systems in the nation that make ends meet just with fare box receipts, said Jennie Granger, PennDOT’s deputy secretary for multimodal transportation, at the ceremony.

Granger exemplifies the bipartisan support that undergoes the grants that sustain transit agencies like Amtran, having been appointed by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, even as she continues to work for second-term Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

Republicans seemed to come around on transit during the Clinton years, after Democrats embraced welfare reform, Eric Wolf said.

But to make it work, the government had to ensure that the people who were on welfare — and who didn’t have cars — could get to the jobs they were required to find, Wolf said.

Republicans accepted that argument, he said.

Public transit actually has a broad constituency, Granger said. “It’s not just poor people.”

Many seniors depend on it for doctor appointments, grocery shopping, other types of shopping and appointments for personal care, like haircuts.

It also gives many people a way to get around without the burden of car ownership, she said.

Subsidies are necessary, but doing nothing would create harm that would ripple through the economy — just as helping out provides benefits that ripple through in positive fashion, she said.

Support from the state has helped Amtram preserve and reuse much of the infrastructure built by its predecessor, the Altoona & Logan Valley Electric Railway, Amtran board Chairman Scott Cessna said.

He spoke from a conference room in the former battery barn, which was rehabilitated about 12 years ago in a way that preserves much of its original charm.

It wasn’t easy for the architects of EADS to “put up” with his ideas and requests, especially because “nothing is level, nothing is square,” Cessna said.

But the results have “so much more character,” he said.

Such renovation is difficult, said Brent Cartwright of EADS, who worked with Wolf, Cessna and the board for years.

There are often few reliable prints that show locations of features like water and sewer lines and “old pipes in the walls,” he said.

It takes investigative work, flexibility and often, a designer’s “best guess,” he said.

There are sometimes surprises.

For example, there was nothing to show the presence of huge buried foundations that workers encountered behind the battery barn — foundations for the generators that provided power to the old trolley lines, Cartwright said.

But historic renovation work provides the scope to be “more creative” than when designing a “vanilla box,” he said. And there is “absolutely” satisfaction in getting the renovation work done.

Amtran has been dedicated to preservation, receptive to ideas and patient in storing materials until the right time to use them, according to Cartwright.

That includes keeping bricks from old buildings that ended up as pavers in a courtyard and a patio and keeping porcelain-coated block letters from an old sign that now grace the front of the new auxiliary garage.

Mirror Staff Writer

William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.