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This is not Mission Accomplished. The pressure is just off for now.

Good news for Swissvale. Obviously these cuts could come back on the table, but this is a good start.

P3 going downtown, just made no sense to me…. It’s not needed not from a Busway perspective or Oakland, and making people from beyond Wilkinsburg transfer????? Who was this benefiting?

Actually, I think it would significantly help ease congestion on P1’s by going downtown. Right now, P1’s are so crowded every single bus that they really need help decongesting them (at least, they’re super crowded in the morning).

No ones going to take that longer detour through Oakland on the P3… They will still crowd onto P1 P2. I remember when they tried to stop P2s from entering downtown, it served no purpose but make P1 that more crowded….

Heads at PRT couldnt be more “I work for transit, but damn if you ever catch me riding the bus” out of touch people.

See- I would 😅😂 I’m in Point breeze north and I regularly wait for a non crowded P2 versus a P1…..like every day.

I’d do the same with a P3. But plan my day accordingly so I’m not late for work.

So changes they weren't going to be made until 2025 will still not be made... Until 2025. Got it. Cool.

Also catching at Homewood Station, hard agree

Good. Now keep the pressure on PRT to quit worsening service under the guise of BRT "improvements" and maybe actually make an effort to noticeably improve transit in the region. When NEXTransit was underway the planners called it a chance for Pittsburgh to have "world-class transit"...cutting service to some of the most underprivileged communities and calling a few cans of red paint "rapid transit" is not "world-class" to me.

The East Busway before COVID was pretty much at-capacity and seems to be back to if not past that point now. The most practical thing they could do is convert the busway to light rail (there are even tracks that terminate at Penn Station and connect to Steel Plaza that were built for this exact purpose) but given the staunch anti-rail attitude at PRT we'll probably never see that happen.

You should demand more P1/P2s then, not be forced to take an extra 15-20 min detour through Oakland and Uptown. And I venture to say most people would not be willing to take that detour you are, you in the minority.

P1/P2 Downtown P3 Oakland

Simple, nobody gets confused.

Or just run more P1/P2s seems like the cheaper solution.

I think you missed the part about the busway itself being at-capacity. If you run too many more buses than they currently do particularly during rush hour you’re going to have bus bunching issues like we currently see on the Pittsburgh-Oakland corridor. Contrary to what many people in this sub wish to believe there does come a point where buses, even articulated ones, are no longer the most efficient solution.

I saw some vagrant post something about making the Busway into light rail. What a joke. They're more likely to convert the rail into Busway. The rail system would be cheaper to operate and more efficient as a Busway.

Busway is nowhere near capacity… come on now… PAT had nearly 40 routes utilizing the Busway at Rush Hour back in the 90s, there aren’t even half that many routes today…. Commuter express buses have been slashed to the bare bone.

Okay, enjoy your gas guzzlers then!

Electric transition remember.

Yeah, to battery buses that crap out after a few months using rare earth metals that require insane carbon emissions to mine. Definitely the most sustainable option! /s

If you’re gonna have such a hard-on for buses you can at least admit trolleybuses are a better option if they want to be serious about electrification. But they aren’t, and you won’t, so here we are.

I've never seen the busway itself that busy, pre or post-COVID.

Hey, I’m late to the game and don’t really know the backstory- I just moved here in January. Will this spell the end of the countercurrent busses on Fifth through Oakland?

Yes. But, the plan is to better manage and streamline the bus trips between Oakland and down town. Currently we have so many busses heading downtown via Oakland that you might have noticed when you're on one that it gets bunched up. This can result in the whole pack getting slowed down because the first in line gets more and more crowded and takes longer to board and offload passengers. All the buses outbound will now travel up a dedicated lane on a Forbes.

I assume you're talking about college students, which make up 30K+ people in the city. Even when they move out, they'll be replaced by more people who's interests are similar, so I wouldn't discount all of their opinions. That said, even light rail is dumb expensive in the US and I think people get way too optimistic with imaginary transit maps. The busway would be easy routing for light rail, but it isn't where more transit is needed. Building a busway in the south hills would not be cheaper than maintaining the rail and rolling stock