Next Week: West Busway Transit-Oriented Development Workshops

Whether you’re a transit rider, a business owner or just someone who cares about your neighborhood, you probably have an opinion on what kind of role transit should play in community development.

If you have opinions or ideas about transit-oriented development at the Sheraden and Carnegie West Busway stations, you’re invited to share your thoughts next week.

The Allegheny County Economic Development and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, in partnership with the City of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Borough and Port Authority, will hold two workshops to discuss amenities, improvements and development that could benefit transit users and community members alike:

Sheraden Station Meeting
Tuesday, March 23
5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Sheraden Senior Center
720 Sherwood Avenue

Carnegie Station Meeting
Wednesday, March 24
5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Carnegie Borough Building, Council Meeting Room
One Veterans Way

Both meetings are open to the general public. Please note that only the Sheraden Station area will be discussed at the first meeting and only the Carnegie Station area will be discussed at the second meeting.

Community input will be used to create revitalization and development plans for the station areas which will be shared at a future meeting.

For more information, visit www.spcregion.org/westbuswaystations.shtml

What do you want from our Web site?

As Port Authority gears up to streamline and improve its transit system, we’re also turning our attention to our Web site. Our last redesign took place in 2006, and we realize there’s much that needs to be enhanced and updated.

Our goal is a more intuitive and user-friendly Web site – a site where key information can be quickly and easily accessed by Port Authority’s many stakeholders, including (but not limited to) riders, the general public, community organizations, business partners and visitors.

That’s why we need your help. We’ve already brainstormed many ideas and improvements, but we can’t move forward without learning what’s important to those we serve.

In the comments section below, please feel free to provide any kind of Web site-related feedback you’d like. What does our web site need that it doesn’t currently have? What on our current web site should we keep? What should we redesign? What should we scrap? What changes would make it easier to navigate? You’re welcome to answer any of these questions or simply provide your own take.

In addition to collecting general comments, we’ll also be reaching out to specific stakeholder groups whose Web site needs may be more specialized – last Thursday, for instance, we met with a group of riders with visual impairments to talk about how we can organize our site so screen readers can most efficiently use it.

As part of the redesign process, we’re also studying other transit agencies’ sites, so if you’ve seen a specific Web site or feature you like, please feel free to share a link.

The Public Relations department will be collecting comments, counting them, sorting them and bringing them to our internal Web meetings. We hope to start making changes to our site beginning in summer and to continue improvements throughout the year.