Pittsburgh Regional Transit is seeking feedback for a redesign of Herron Station. Officials showed off concept designs and solicited community input at a Wednesday neighborhood town hall in the Strip District.
Herron Station is located at the intersection of Polish Hill, the Strip District and Lower Lawrenceville and connects the neighborhoods to the Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway. PRT describes it as a “critical transit-connection point”
The redesign is meant to make it easier to get to the station with a focus on accessibility for pedestrians, cyclists and people with mobility issues. It’s part of a larger PRT project to improve existing stations and add new ones along the busways and light rail.
Currently, the station has the lowest ridership of any station on the East Busway, said Moira Egler, manager of transit-oriented communities at PRT.
“Surprisingly, we've heard that a lot of people haven't even really heard of it. They don’t know it’s there, necessarily,” she said.
Ensuring people know about the station will be one part of the project. PRT will also try to make it more appealing to riders.
“Right now, it's just not very welcoming. It's kind of down in a valley.
“It's not visible from the street. It's a little dark, not very friendly,” she said.
“So [we’re] trying to make it more accommodating and friendly to get more people to use it.”
Potential changes include a longer, less steep ramp with covered landing points along the path to allow people to take a break, and a larger, covered platform for people waiting for the bus. Egler added folks hoping to understand what this might look like can look to the improvements at the Negley Station for a model.
“That's our new standard for busway stations: making it lighter and brighter and increasing the visibility of the station so more people know it's there and they feel safer while they’re using it,” she said.
The Herron Station project is still in the planning stage, so riders shouldn’t expect construction to start any time soon. But they can weigh in on the kinds of improvements they’d like to see.
Riders can offer feedback on PRT’s website, or tune in to the final public meeting for the Herron Station plan online on Feb. 15.
