Your physical card's value isn't updated until it syncs with the internet. This happens when you scan your card at a ConnectCard terminal, but it also happens within a day or two of you riding the bus, because the buses go back to the garage at the end of the day and sync all the cards that were used that day. The disclaimer says "up to 48 hours" because there is small chance that your bus won't sync every single day. But what the disclaimer doesn't tell you is that your card's value will never be updated until you do one of those two things. I added $20 to my card in October, in anticipation of maybe going back to the office more often, and that balance didn't actually take effect until I tapped my card on a terminal like two weeks ago.

Also, in addition to your proposal being several orders of magnitude more complicated than you realize, it's also kind of a "faster horse" suggestion. The solution to this problem isn't having ConnectCard terminals everywhere. The solution is being able to pay with your phone, which I think you already can to some extent. In NYC pretty much no one uses physical card anymore, the MTA just supports every single NFC payment platform and they just tap their phones and walk on through. I assume that's where PRT is trying to get.

I hesitate to even reference them specifically because I know I'm going to get overwhelmed by folks raving about them, but there's that donut place in the West End that's supposed to be the absolute best donuts in the city, and they sell out by like 9am every day. Why in the world would I ever go there? In literally every other city I've ever lived in or visited frequently, if you ask what the "best" of something is, you are reliably told about a place that operates like a normal business that you can just...go to. When you ask that question in Pittsburgh, though, the answer is always some place in a neighborhood you've never heard of, somehow it's never anywhere near you (no matter where you live), they're only open for 30 minutes one Thursday per month, and they accept every currency except the US dollar.

idk if this is exactly what you're referring to, but it seems like a lot of new restaurants open up with "normal" hours and then drastically cut them back once they've established themselves as a success, presumably thinking they make so much money with their original hours that they can cut back but still be sustainable. And in the short term that's true, but the problem is that they've then made themselves harder and harder to patronize, and they lose much more business than they expect. Apteka is my favorite restaurant in the city and I haven't been there since the pandemic started because their hours are so limited. My brother was visiting awhile ago and I tried to take him there, saw they were only open three fucking days a week, and just gave up.

Pittsburgh has way, way too many local restaurants (and other businesses) that make themselves needlessly difficult to patronize.