Bus Transit proposal gets good reviews
About 200 attend two public sessions
Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald is pleasantly surprised at the mostly positive public response to the proposal to set up a Bus Rapid Transit system between Oakland and Downtown Pittsburgh.
The response to this project, developed jointly by planners for the city and Port Authority, is in sharp contrast to the public outcry over the last major transit project in this region a decade ago — the North Shore Connector that extended the T system from Downtown to the North Shore, Mr. Fitzgerald said Wednesday. He made his comments after opening remarks Wednesday at the first display of the bus system proposal at the University of Pittsburgh’s Alumni Hall, where about 200 people attended two sessions.
The general sessions followed about 20 meetings with neighborhood groups since the project was unveiled last month. The system will put electric vehicles on dedicated lanes to cut travel time in half between Oakland and Downtown, two of the top three job centers in Pennsylvania, at a cost of $200 million to $240 million.
“Everybody hated the North Shore Connector until it was built, but now it’s used a lot,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “They seem to love this idea from the beginning.”
Right now, 29 bus routes move 61,000 people a day between Oakland and Downtown. The goal is to end those routes in Oakland