A new on-street bus rapid transit service is under consideration in Allegheny County to offer faster, more reliable and easier-to-understand transit service.
On Monday, stakeholders from throughout the community will gather for a Bus Rapid Transit Forum at Duquesne University’s Power Center Ballroom from 8 am to 4 pm. This forum will focus on Pittsburgh’s Downtown, Oakland and East End areas and how Bus Rapid Transit service could improve transportation and serve as a catalyst for community revitalization.
The forum will feature:
- Discussion from planning, development, and transportation professionals
- Bus Rapid Transit insights from other cities including: Kansas City, Los Angeles, and Cleveland
- An appearance by Secretary Allen Biehler, PennDOT
- Breakout sessions to facilitate discussion of benefits, challenges and community development issues
This forum is open to the public and free to attend. To register, send contact information to info@sustainablepittsburgh.org.
Forum participants include:
- Allegheny Conference on Community Development
- Allegheny County Department of Economic Development
- Allegheny County Transit Council
- Allegheny County Transportation Action Partnership
- Bike Pittsburgh
- City of Pittsburgh - Department of City Planning
- Hill House Development Corporation
- National Association of Industrial and Office Properties - Pittsburgh Chapter
- National Bus Rapid Transit Institute
- Oakland Planning & Development Corp.
- Oakland Transportation Management Association
- Oakland Task Force
- Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group
- Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
- Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development
- Port Authority of Allegheny County
- Remaking Cities Institute
- Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission
- Sustainable Pittsburgh
- Traffic21
- UPMC
- Uptown Partners
- Urban Land Institute - Pittsburgh Chapter
Posts
A Bus rapid transit (BRT)can only be as efficient as the access route to the busway or some other dedicated lane.
ReplyDeleteIf the changes to the P78 Oakmont Flyer are an example, then you would need to better plan these access routes and schedules. For some reason, you have taken an express and added additional time to the service while inefficiently scheduled the runs. And this will supposedly become a "premium" route in 2011.
Before attempting something new, try doing right what you are doing now.
I agree with Greg above.
ReplyDeleteThe current infrastructure will have to change to make something "rapid." Most of the busways don't have a clear run into downtown Pittsburgh from suburban areas.
The traffic before East Busway can be a headache, therefore unless you find some way to circumvent that so that only PAT buses have a designated lane before the Busway, this service won't be rapid or express for that matter.
While a designated lane would be best, I don't think you'd need one to get an improvement. The 61c spends a great deal of time sitting while people board or exit. Something as simple as having everybody pay on entry (or, as the plan is before entry) could speed things up greatly. People could exit from the rear door so they wouldn't all try to stand at the front.
ReplyDeleteI have hopes the plans will work well. On paper they seem to be a step in the direction needed for Oakland and the East End.
The outer areas of the city, suburban areas need more options; I live in the Springdale/Harwick area and even if I have a 1:00 pm doctors appointment in the city, I have to take the last am bus @ 8:53 am (P10) and wait around for 4 hrs to keep my appt, I am disabled and rely on PAT for all my travels. Please consider us on the outer areas, not just in the city. Then after my appt I have 2 options; the first is to utilize 3 buses and transfers to get home or wait until 3:45 pm when the P10 starts running again.
ReplyDelete