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PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 07.09/07.16.2014
fielded roughly 30,000 calls; as of press time, his account had sent out nearly 24,000 tweets and had 924 followers. But technological changes at Port Authority could force Andrew to change the focus of his operation. The agency has installed an automated phone system that gives out scheduling information during off hours. And by year’s end, Port Authority plans to completely launch real-time tracking — allowing anyone with an Internet connection to track Port Authority’s 700bus fleet. FOR AS LONG as he can remember, Andrew’s
dream was to work for Port Authority. When classmates talked about wanting to be police officers or firefighters, he recalls, “I was the oddball because I told everyone I wanted to drive a bus or trolley.” His family didn’t have much money, so almost all the traveling he did was on public transit. “I had a very hard childhood growing up, [and] one of my escapes would be to just ride the buses and trolleys,” he says. “He started talking to the bus drivers when he was a kid,” recalls Colleen Dearolf, Andrew’s mother. “I would notice he was over by the drivers watching what they do.” He collected schedules, gave bus drivers nicknames — “old man Allentown” — and would often help strangers navigate the system. As time wore on, it became clearer that a job at Port Authority might not be in his future. To get a job “you need to have a high school diploma or GED equivalent,” says Andrew, who says he went to Pressley Ridge but never ended up getting a diploma. (The school declined comment, citing privacy laws.) “You’re also going to need a driver’s license, and I’ve just never had anybody teach me, or had the money for it.” Sometimes, he’d dress up in a Port Authority operator’s uniform — and during this year’s Pittsburgh Marathon, he was “behaving as if he was a member of our road operations department and telling drivers where to go that day,” according to Port Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie. Andrew calls the marathon incident a “misinterpretation” — he had previously agreed to stop wearing the uniform — and changed the heading of his Twitter account from PGH Bus Help to “NOT PortAuthority!!” “He can be a good guy, but he also has his moments,” Dearolf says. For Andrew, running a transit hotline became the next best thing to actually
working for the agency. He started “back when Port Authority was making dramatic cuts to service,” Andrew says. “It’s not like Port Authority was going to pick up the slack.” In the mid 2000s, when Andrew was launching his hotline, Port Authority mostly got information to riders through its website, Ritchie says. It was a time before cell phones — let alone smart phones — were ubiquitous. When there were service disruptions or changes, riders were often left in the dark. “It was a huge challenge,” Ritchie says. “To this day we still lack that technology out on the street when we have a change like that.” To Andrew, starting the hotline that operated mostly during off-hours seemed like a public service. It started as “just a phone number I answered when I wasn’t in school or wasn’t working,” Andrew says. He distributed the number to transit riders and wrote it inside of bus schedules. “Within the first three months, it went from being a hobby to going over the [cell-phone] plan” he shared with his mom, Andrew says. Dearolf confirms she “had to get rid of the phone for him because it was too expensive.” Andrew started using whatever money he had on hand to pay for his own phone, though most of his attention now centers on updating his @PGH_BUS_INFO Twitter account — since phone-call volume has become “highly variable.” In fact, he received no phone calls on a recent Tuesday afternoon. And when he’s not scraping together money for rent, his disability and welfare assistance are spent keeping the operation afloat. “As much money as I can spare goes into the hotline,” he says.
“WE THINK [THE HOTLINE] IS FINE AS LONG AS THE INFORMATION’S ACCURATE.”
THIS PARTICULAR Tuesday afternoon, An-
drew’s phone is about to run out of power, and he’s stranded on a P76 headed to North Versailles, where he plans to get a money order for his landlord. He spits into a Gatorade bottle — a necessity after a tonsillectomy years ago that seemed to kick his salivary glands into overdrive. “If my phone dies, that’ll put me out of commission,” he mumbles, rifling through his backpack. “Bingo!” he says, pulling one of his three backup chargers out of his bag. “The day — and the public — are saved.” It’s just in time: Out of the corner of his eye, Andrew spots a broken-down bus alongside the East Busway. Within seconds he tweets, “A P12 Bus is broken down in Wilkinsburg and will be out of service! CONTINUES ON PG. 10