Pittsburghers for Public Transit Has an Ambitious Vision for Expanded Service
The city of Pittsburgh is “reimagining local transportation” starting with county bus lines.
According to the Pittsburgh City Paper, “Allegheny County used to have a vision. We led the way with streetcars, with busways, with light rail, with inclines,” PPT executive director Laura Chu Wiens told a packed Olympia Shelter House in Mt. Washington. She said Pittsburgh had “lost our way” when it came to taking bold action to improve transit and that it was time to act as Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) prepares to reevaluate the county’s bus lines.
Wiens said this is a rare opportunity to push for change and even expansion of the PRT’s network.
“PRT is assessing our whole network of transit service with their bus network redesign and how people are going to move in our region for generations, and we have supportive leaders at all levels, maybe for the first time in history,” she said. “This is a political environment that is ripe for growth.”
While the tone of PPT’s party was exuberant, with locals dancing and laughing over Chicken Latino catering while a DJ played in the background, many attendees spoke of the challenges a lack of access to public transit had caused them.
Tayveon Kevin Smith, a PPT member who co-authored the organization’s Visionary Service Report, was furloughed from an electrical job at Alstom after inconsistent bus service in the early mornings made getting to work a challenge involving a two-mile walk. Smith told PPT members that poor transit can quickly become a quality-of-life issue — he has multiple children and also takes care of his 90-year-old grandmother.
“If transit service ran more often into more places, we would have the ability to be at her side to help her meet more of her basic needs,” Smith said. “It would change the landscape of elder care here in Allegheny County.”
He said better transit would enable more economic mobility and free up valuable time for education and recreation.
“Visionary transit will open … parts of the county where people like me, my grandmother, like my kids, like all of you, my friends in the service sector, like our friends with disabilities, can afford to live and to work and to play and not sacrifice our time, our safety, our relationships and our dignity,” Smith said.
