Affirming the right to ride
On Rosa Parks’ birthday, activists push for transit fairness
For all 52 of her years, Lisa Gonzalez has used public transportation in Pittsburgh.
So there she was in Downtown at the Gateway T Station on Monday, marking her birthday — which she shares with the late civil rights leader Rosa Parks — with a public call for accessible and affordable transport for all.
“Equity means buses all run at the same time, at the same level, and that everybody has the same amount of service Monday through Sunday,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “I’m 52 years old, but I’m going to keep fighting until the day I die, just like Rosa Parks.”
Ms. Gonzalez, a member of the coordinating committee of Pittsburghers for Public Transit, joined fellow advocates for a morning
rally to commemorate Transit Equity Day on the 106th anniversary of Ms. Parks’ birthday.
Continuing the work they do year-round, the advocates shifted their message back to basics: that accessible, high-functioning public transit can reverberate through Pittsburgh, helping overcome poverty and combat climate change while reaffirming transportation as a civil right instead of a privilege.
But they also continued their public assessment of the Port Authority of Allegheny County’s efforts to address the issue, which ramped up recently with the agency’s hiring of a consultant to review its fare structure and to look at the ways any changes to it would impact revenue.
While conceding that the Port Authority has made steps toward progress, the advocates kept up their pressure on agency officials, some of whom were in attendance.
Josh Malloy, a 27-year-old community organizer with the PPT activist group, said transit equity is about making sure that “everyone, especially those who need it most, has access to transit.”
“It’s not just bus routes,” Mr. Malloy said. “We’ve noticed that places all over the area, especially in the poor, blacker suburbs, don’t have the same access to ConnectCards.”
In addition to working to establish more ConnectCard outlets in poor neighborhoods, Port Authority hired California consultant Four Nine Technologies in January to evaluate fare structures. The firm will determine how different proposals affect revenue and will ensure that changes won’t “inadvertently make one group pay more or one group pay less,” said Port Authority CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman, who attended the event.
The agency is also working on a long-term plan and looking into transit-oriented development, with an eye toward making sure affordable housing is adjacent to transit.
Under Ms. Kelleman’s leadership, the authority has done a “pretty good job,” said Mr. Malloy, citing its decision to reverse bus route cuts last year. He said he’s also encouraged that it is looking into fare capping.
With fare capping, the agency would keep track of daily customers’ rides, provided they use ConnectCards, and cap their payments at the monthly rate.
“I get the impression that [Ms. Kelleman] takes transit equity seriously,” Mr. Malloy said. “But at the end of the day, she is still someone in power, and there always has to be someone who is there to check that power or make sure that people who are not privileged have a say.”
Because of that, Pittsburghers for Public Transport is inviting Port Authority board members for a series of ride-alongs on public transit to discuss the issues. The ride-alongs have not been scheduled yet, and the group is still awaiting responses from board members.
“When you have people who don’t use transit or don’t use it every day on the Port Authority board, maybe that’s the reason they don’t feel the need to reach out to transit riders,” Mr. Malloy said.
One of those transit riders, Andrew Hussein, said equity means making sure transit benefits everyone, and to do that, the Port Authority has to secure funding that’s stable “so that service can be maintained and never threatened again.” But in total, Mr. Hussein — a self-described “high volume user” of public transport who said he once rode 600 times in one month — said the Port Authority has improved over the past few years.
The advocates also announced a campaign to extend the East Busway to McKeesport and Monroeville. Thousands of riders, Mr. Malloy said, spend more than an hour on the bus to get to work, including his brother who rides to Downtown from Trafford.