Joan Monroe spoke up at Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s board meeting last month to make a case for her community. “The older part of Trafford is a beautiful, walkable community,” Monroe said. “We have a senior residence called the Trafford Manor, located near the bus stop. Many residents in Trafford, in that older part of Trafford, don't drive and they do need public transportation. For some people, owning a car is cost prohibitive.”
In the first draft of an extensive overhaul of PRT’s bus routes, a bus wouldn’t make it into Trafford, which is in both Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. “Those who ride the bus need it and they depend on it,” Monroe said, asking the board to reconsider the route.
Monroe isn’t alone. Since PRT released their Bus Line Redesign Draft 1.0 back in September, they’ve received more than 9,000 comments either in community meetings or online through their website or social media. Because of the big response, PRT has extended the comment period until Feb. 15.
“We certainly have good comments and bad comments in there,” said Amy Silbermann, chief development officer at PRT. “So there are plenty of things that we want to dig into as we wrap up this draft one and start putting our pencils back to paper and moving toward draft two.”
A new look
This isn’t the first time PRT has overhauled the bus routes. About 15 years ago, the agency — then, the Port Authority of Allegheny County — released Connect Online. Like Bus Line Redesign, it was a cost-neutral plan.
And with the addition of a consistent funding stream from the state in 2013, the Port Authority gained ridership from 2014 to 2019. “In a place that has a stable population, that's not insignificant,” said Chris Sandvig, executive director at Mobilify, a transportation advocacy group. “And a lot of that can be attributed to that redesign.”
And they aren’t the only transit agency to consider redrawing their bus lines. Houston and Philadelphia wrapped up their transit redesigns about a year ago.
The pandemic changed how people used public transit. Ridership in Pittsburgh and in cities throughout the country plummeted during the pandemic and has been slow to recover, thanks in part to the rise of remote work. Instead of two big peaks during the traditional morning and evening rush hours, ridership looks more even throughout the day.
“In any large market, you really should be taking a good look at where the people who need the service are going to and where the jobs they need to get to are going to on a regular basis,” Sandvig said. “So doing this 15 years afterwards, I think is not a bad idea to do at a minimum.”
The changes PRT proposed in their first draft are exhaustive. About 60% of current routes have some sort of change from moving a bus stop over a few blocks to shortening or lengthening the routes. Current route numbers would stay the same, but they’d add a letter like D for Downtown to signal its destination.
PRT’s first draft is far too confusing and complicated for a plan that impacts the daily lives of thousands of people in the region, according to a recent report from Pittsburghers for Public Transit, a transit advocacy group.
“They need to dramatically reduce the scope of what kind of disruptions are being proposed,” said Laura Chu Wiens, executive director at Pittsburghers for Public Transit. “It shouldn't be the names of routes, the frequency of routes, the span of routes, where the routes are going, where the stops are, the accessibility of stops, the safety of stops. That's too much for people to be able to understand, especially because disruption is a harm.”
PRT shouldn’t change what’s already working for riders, Chu Wiens argued. For example, routes with significant ridership like the 54, the 93, the 71 are proposed to be broken up or changed in very significant ways.
The most positive feedback that PRT has received has been around the several new direct bus routes into Oakland, according to Silbermann. Both the North Hills and the South Hills have proposed new routes that get them on one bus into Oakland. Right now, many of these riders would have to transfer Downtown.
Down the road
Silbermann said they plan on making changes to routes through neighborhoods like Greenfield and Hazelwood, as well as Bloomfield and Polish Hill, among others.
PRT expects to have the next draft out sometime this summer along with a trip planner tool on their website so riders can see how the changes impact how long it will take to commute to work or run an errand.
But none of this will happen unless PRT is able to get more funding from the state. The Bus Line Redesign plan uses their current funding level as a baseline. They also have a more expansive plan that imagines a 20% increase in funds. But right now, PRT faces a $100 million deficit.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has proposed a plan that would give the agency roughly $40 million in additional state funding, which would spur more money via a match from Allegheny County. This conversation is still ongoing and won’t be resolved until the legislature votes on the budget in June.
If the money doesn’t come through, the project will be put on hold to avoid confusion between cutting routes because of a lack of funding and a redesign of the bus system to reach more riders.
“If we're going to be required to cut service because of funding issues, we're going to cut services because of funding issues,” said Adam Brandolph, deputy chief communications officer at PRT. “If we can make improvements to routes because of bus line redesign, that's the route we're going to go. That route that we want to go. Right now, it's sort of up in the air because we don't know the funding situation.”
