PHOTO COURTESY OF PITTSBURGH REGIONAL TRANSIT

The city’s public transportation company, long named Port Authority Transit, last week announced that it will henceforth be known as Pittsburgh Regional Transit, or “PRT.” They further announced that the proper pronunciation of the acronym will be “part,” but time will be the judge of that (I’m betting on “purt,” with a long U).

With due respect to the market research firms and focus groups that received … let’s see here … more than half a million dollars to change one letter of a three-letter acronym, we’ve got some suggestions. In fact: We have 20 suggestions, and each is a step up.

1. YinzRide
2. Network of Allegheny Transportation [N’AT]
3. Bus Ridership Organization [BRO]
4. Neighborhood Trolley System (All buses would be painted to look like Mister Rogers’ trolley under this proposal.)
5. RoundTahn
6. System of Transportation Encouraging Equitable Local Engagement and Ridership [STEELER]
7. YinzGo
8. The T (It’s not just for the train part anymore! It’s all the T! It’s all one big T! The T stands for traffic!)
9. The Flying Bus Company
10. Pittsburgh Road Guidance Innovations [PiRoGI]
11. YinzBus
12. The Incline and Other, Less Fun Modes of Transportation
13. Local Area Transit Engineers [LATE]
14. Jerome Bettis (We called him The Bus … now we call the buses him!)
15. YinzTranzit
16. Take Bigelow Transportation
17. ’Burgh Urban System [BUS]
18. Port Authority Transit [PAT] (Because no one around here starts calling things by their new names anyway — just ask Star Lake — so you really could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars and put that money toward better pay, more routes and cheaper fares, couldn’t you?)
19. YinzYinz
20. Pittsburgh Area Regional Transit [PART] (If you want us to pronounce it part, make up an A word, please.)