The system here, like many others throughout the nation, has two speeds—slow and slower. People search on their cellphones for when the buses are coming. Yet the system's updates are often misleading. Buses never seem to come in the predicted time. Sometimes a promised bus—say one supposedly coming in ten minutes or less—will disappear from your cellphone. "The bus just dropped from my cellphone. That's the second time it's happened to me in the last few minutes," said one frustrated rider. The bus information is worse than slow, it's misleading.

Yet I am not criticizing Pittsburgh's polite bus drivers who seem to suffer under the same problems as the riders: their interaction with the incompetence of government reminds me of other government enterprises in other cities. (My childhood friend from New York City drove subway trains for several decades. He thought those running the system were "idiots"). My target is more than sleazy, vote-hungry, pols on the hustings calling for more and more of this noxious thing called government enterprise.