Construction of Pittsburgh’s bus rapid transit project, or BRT, will finally get under way this fall. On Friday, the board of Pittsburgh Regional Transit approved a $27.8 million contract with Independence Excavating, Inc. for the project’s first phase.
Agency CEO Katharine Kelleman said planners and engineers have spent nearly a decade trying to find a way to improve travel between Downtown and Oakland, the state’s second- and third-largest economic centers.
“I’m happy to report that this contract gets those years of hard work one step closer to reality,” she said.
The first phase of work will focus on the Downtown loop of the BRT, which will impact Fifth, Sixth, and Liberty avenues. Changes will include new bus-only lanes, pedestrian improvements, and five new bus stations. The full $291 million BRT route will eventually run through Uptown to Oakland, and into eastern neighborhoods. (However, planned new stations and bus-only infrastructure in Highland Park, Squirrel Hill, and Greenfield have been pushed to a later stage due to federal concerns about cost overruns.)
The second phase of construction — which will run from Uptown to Oakland — is expected to begin in spring 2024.
Kelleman said BRT will improve travel times not just on the corridor, but across the entire bus network.
“It will help us save nearly 500 hours of service every week. That’s 100 hours on average during a weekday,” she said. “We’ll redeploy these resources throughout the system to help bolster service reliability.”
On the topic of making sure buses show up on time, Kelleman said she expects more than 50 new operators will soon graduate from training: 28 next week, and 24 by the end of April. Pittsburgh Regional Transit, like most transportation agencies, has been short bus drivers since the coronavirus pandemic hit and continued to struggle to make its schedules.
In addition to the BRT work, the agency is also working to streamline other bus travel Downtown. Right now, 84 bus routes make 25 separate loops through the area. Officials expect to bring a proposal to the public in May.
