Help carry the torch from these awesome East Busway Organizing Fellows!
If you follow Pittsburghers for Public Transit’s work, you know we’ve spent the last three months executing a campaign with residents of the Mon Valley & Eastern Suburbs to build a grassroots vision for expanding great transit Beyond the East Busway.
If you don’t follow our work, welcome! You can check out more about our Beyond the East Busway Campaign here, or here, or here! We hope you’ll get involved!
Now – we have one more month left in our outreach, and our goal is to hit 750 responses on our tool. We’re a hair under 500 currently. Your help can get us across the finish line.
Check out these volunteer dates during September and sign up if you’re able to help make it happen.
For those that may not have heard, the Shakespeare Giant Eagle is being redeveloped by Echo Realty, along with the entire strip mall and lot at the corner of Shady and Penn.
The Shakespeare site is directly adjacent to the East Busway, Port Authority’s highest performing asset carrying around 24,000 riders each day, and it is in the heart of Pennsylvania’s most walkable neighborhoods. Additionally, the pattern of gentrification and displacement in Pittsburgh’s East End continues to move our most vulnerable residents to far-flung areas of the county, leaving residents isolated without access to jobs or transportation and bleeding our city of its diversity.
This is a chance to show what equitable transit-oriented development can look like. If you care about transit, housing and environmental justice, then join the project’s second public meeting on September 9th, 6-8pm at Calvery Episcopal Church, 315 Shady Ave.
For a redevelopment that furthers housing-, mobility-, and environmental-justice goals, join PPT and call for free bus passes for all residents at the site and affordable housing available to renters at 50% AMI and below.
As a starting place, we believe that there is no reason that the developer should not be required to make 15% of all units available to renters earning 30-50% of the Area Median Income – which is in line with the report that Grounded Solutions compiled for the Mayor & Planning Department back in 2017.
And how do we pay for it? Well, an easy place to start is to build less parking. Studies have shown that parking in the new development surrounding the East Liberty Station has a 30% vacancy rate during peak usage. That’s a ton of very expensive, very empty space.
The latest plans for Shakespeare Giant Eagle propose a whopping 492 space parking garage on the site. It is well-documented that a SINGLE structured parking space costs $20,000-30,000. So at the low end, that’s a ~$10 Million parking garage. Here are some quick numbers to get the conversation started:
Pittsburgh’s Zoning Code allows development in East Liberty to reduce their non-residential parking requirements by 50%. We can’t find a map that details the exact boundaries that the code outlines to for this East Liberty reduction, but for almost all would agree that the Shakespeare site functions as a central part of East Liberty, and institutional decision-makers have long-included it in their redevelopment plans for the neighborhood. The PGH Zoning Code also allows developers to swap 30% of their required car parking spaces for bike parking. Although regardless of the requirements included in the code, the Planning Commission and Department have the power to waive parking requirements entirely, as they have done in the past. The intention of these reductions is to allow developers to shift away from building such car-centric developments and free up money to build more equitable, walkable communities. Its time we push our neighborhood developers to use them.
Cities like Cincinnati, Seattle, San Diego, and countless others have all moved to build equity and decrease car dependance through creative new parking policies, such as:
Establishing “frequent transit zones” where developments within walking distance of great transit will have less car parking and more affordability
Providing tenants free bus passes and/or bike-share memberships.
“Unbundling” the cost of parking & housing – meaning the developer separates the cost of housing from the cost of their parking space and allows the tenant to decide whether to rent a parking space or not. If the tenant realizes that they’re paying an extra $200/mo for parking, they may be encouraged to use public transit more often.
Here in Pittsburgh at the Shakespeare Giant Eagle site, if Echo utilized both of the reductions that are available to them at no cost, they could open up around $5-6M in funding. Imagine what that could buy.
At full price, a yearly transit pass for every resident on-site? $248,000/yr.
Traffic headaches and pollution avoided from having 250+ new neighbors ride the bus? Priceless.
We aren’t developers. We aren’t planners. We aren’t bankers. We’re advocates and organizers. Our job is to get the conversation going. In this case, it doesn’t take much to look at the facts and the numbers and realize that things can be done differently at Shakespeare and other sites immediately adjacent to frequent transit lines to better support the neighborhood and its residents.
If you agree, come out to this September 9th Meeting, 6-8pm at the Calvery Episcopal Church and call for free bus passes & affordable housing. We know there’s plenty of $$$ to provide both.
In his recent article “What is “Microtransit” For?”, transit expert Jarrett Walker breaks down what “Microtransit” is and where it is successful. “Microtransit” a current fad in tech-based mobility solutions and cities across the nation are putting tons of public money into them instead of building out their public transit systems. Unfortunately (and perhaps unsurprisingly) the City of Pittsburgh is following in suit.
The Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is currently proposing such a “microtransit” shuttle to link Hazelwood Green to the Universities in Oakland. The project will build a roadway for motorized transportation to run through Schenley Park at a remarkable cost of $23Million of taxpayer money. DOMI says that the microtransit shuttle will carry 1,244 passengers on day one – meaning a shuttle driving through Schenley Park every 5-10 minutes. What’s worst, DOMI has even admitted that the microtransit shuttle is a short-term solution and will be unable to meet the demand that they project.
Jarrett Walker’s blog underscores the points that PPT and residents of these neighborhoods have been saying all along:
Any Mon-Oakland Connector project that focuses on micro/on-demand/autonomous shuttles could never, in any scenario, be the most efficient or viable solution for improving mobility for the Hazelwood neighborhood and the developing Hazelwood Green site.
From Walker’s post:
“…contrary to almost all “microtransit” marketing, [high] ridership is the death of flexible service.”, says Walker.
…
“[On-demand microtransit] one tool for providing lifeline access to hard-to-serve areas, where availability, not ridership, is the point.”
Yet that’s not the reality of Hazelwood and Oakland. These are dense neighborhoods in the middle of a strong public transit network with high existing ridership. Questions aside about the feasibility of driverless tech, the sustainability of increasing pavement above a stormwater-prone neighborhood, or the transparency of a public process that has ignored the input of residents; Jarret Walker shows that DOMI’s math just doesn’t check out.
Any Hazelwood mobility solution that relies on shuttle service over buses will be a complete failure for residents and commuters – and one that would cost city tax-payers $Millions of public dollars.
The answer for improved mobility in Hazelwood is to invest those dollars in better fixed-route public transit. Expanding service hours on the 93 or modifying routes like the 58 or 75 would do much more for connecting residents of Hazelwood to the entire region, as well as connecting the region back to Hazelwood.
These are all transit solutions that are within reason, with technology that is available to us now. PPT is currently working with residents of Hazelwood, Greenfield, Panther Hollow, and the Run to build a grassroots proposal of solutions that can be implemented & successful TOMORROW instead of one that leans on experimental, non-existent technology.
Stay tuned to see what comes of this organizing. And if you live in any communities that would be affected by the Mon Oakland Connector, EMAIL US TO GET INVOLVED.
In last year’s “microtransit week” series, I challenged the widely promoted notion that “new” flexible transit models, where the route of a vehicle varies according to who requests it, are transforming the nature of transit, and that transit agencies should be focusing a lot of energy on figuring out how to use these exciting tools. In this piece, I address a more practical question: In what cases, and for what purposes, should flexible transit be considered as part of a transit network?
For clickbait purposes I used “microtransit” in the headline, but now that I have your attention I’ll use flexible transit, since it seems to be the most descriptive and least misleading term. Flexible transit means any transit service where the route vary according to who requests it. As such it’s the opposite of fixed transit or fixed routes. But the common terms demand responsive transit, on-demand transit and “microtransit” mean the same thing.
This article is specifically about flexible transit offered as part of a publicly-funded transit network. There may be all kinds of private-sector markets — paid for by institutions or by riders at market-rate fares — which are not my subject here. The question here is what kind of service taxpayers should pay for.
As I reviewed in the series, the mathematical and historical facts are that:
• Flexible transit is an old idea, and has long been in use throughout the world. No living person should be claiming to have invented it. The only new innovation is the software and communications tools for summoning and dispatching service. You can now summon service on relatively short notice, compared to old phone-based and manually dispatched systems that only guaranteed you service if you called the day before.
• The efficiency of summoning and dispatching has done very little for the efficiency of operations. Flexible transit services have a very high operating cost per rider, and always will, for geometric reasons that no communications technology will change. Flexible services meander in order to protect customers from having to walk. Meandering consumes more time than running straight, and it’s less likely to be useful to people riding through. Fixed routes are more efficient because customers walk to the route and gather at a few stops, so that the transit vehicle can go in a relatively straight line that more people are likely to find useful.
• There is no particular efficiency in the fact that flexible transit vehicles are smaller than most fixed route buses, because operating cost is mostly labor. You can of course create savings by paying drivers less than transit agencies do, but you will get what you pay for in terms of service quality.
• How inefficient are flexible services? While there are some rare exceptions in rare situations, few carry more than five customers per driver hour. Even in suburban settings, fixed route buses rarely get less than 10, and frequent attractive fixed route services usually do better than 20.
• Therefore, flexible transit makes sense only if ridership is not the primary goal of a service. “
Each quarter the Port Authority adjusts its transit schedules and routes to account for rider’s requests, ridership shifts, construction, road closures and/or all of the other unexpected hiccups that might affect Pittsburgh roads.
The @PGH_Bus_Info Hotline is a volunteer-run twitter account that gives riders updates on Port Authority’s daily happenings. The Hotline has no official connection to the Port Authority (again, it is a volunteer-run twitter account) but the updates are helpful nonetheless. The Hotline is a big supporter of PPT, and an enormous advocate for public transit. We’re thankful for they’re support and happy to share this rundown of the Q3 service changes compiled by the @PGH_Bus_Info Hotline.
Rundown of Q3 Service Changes, with takeaways from the @PGH_Bus_Info Hotline
The @Bus_Info_Hotline’s overall takeaway from this quarter’s changes:
“These September changes don’t have a super #wowfactor, but they’re steady improvements across the board. We remain hopeful and optimistic about the continued service improvements.
It remains to be seen yet if these smaller changes are in place of generally bigger or “major” changes associated with the September operators pick [when the bus operators choose new routes to drive according to seniority] or if PAAC has still yet to determine 2019-2020 improvementsÂ
As of this publication, the Authority still hadn’t released a summary of service evaluations, which gives options for more significant service changes.
Additionally, a notation remains that the portion of the Annual Service Report was TBD With an addendum to come later this year”
These changes below will go into effect on Sunday, September 1st 2019 .
19L – Emsworth Limited – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. On weekdays, this route will now serve Penn Station to connect to the East Busway routes. This route will no longer serve Chatham Center on weekday afternoons. Customers who typically board at Chatham Center may want to board at the newly established stops on Grant Street.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
The 19L will better connect with East Busway and East End routes. The added stops on Grant will be good for some folk and an extra bus to move about town to/from the busway doesn’t hurt
21 – Coraopolis – Minor schedule adjustments have been made. The service will return to Neville Island.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
This route had been detoured through Groveton for months due to construction on the Neville Ave bridge. While its great for people on Neville who lost access during the detour, especially because of the number of jobs there, people who have been using the service while its been detoured through Groveton may be sad to see it go.
And a final bonus: service hours were made slightly longer for each day of service!
36 – Banksville – Travel times have been adjusted throughout the day. Many departure times have changed.
52L – Homeville Limited – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Two inbound trips arriving Downtown at 9:40 a.m. and 5:15 p.m. have been added. Two outbound trips departing Downtown at 7:37 a.m. and 3:23 p.m. have been added.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
More service never hurts!
Y1 – Large Flyer – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Bus stops at Century III Mall have been consolidated into one and the Park-and-Ride at the mall has been relocated to the area near the current Y46 sheltered stop south of JCPenney.
Y46 – Elizabeth Flyer – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Weekend service hours have been expanded.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
Unfortunately, the trade-off for later service is worsened headway between trips.
Y47 – Curry Flyer – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Weekend service hours have been expanded.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
Again the trade-off to later and earlier service is worsening headway’s, unfortunately
Y49 – Prospect Flyer – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Weekend service hours have been expanded.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
1 later trip on Saturday Nights
2 later trips on Sunday nights + holiday
Changes will benefit riders and workers. But a possible downside is that while Y49 riders gain more advantages here, the headway’s problem gets worse. It’s a theme across Y series routes. Unfortunately the tweaks on Y routes do appear to cause increased difficulty on weekends for folks transferring from the Blue Line T to the bus or vice versa.
67 – Monroeville – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. Earlier service has been added to weekends serving Monroeville Mall.
87 – Friendship – Many departure times have changed and schedules have been adjusted. An additional trip has been added arriving and leaving Downtown at 11:04 p.m.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
Nice but a shame they couldn’t do the same for Saturday’s.
P71 – Swissvale Flyer – On weekdays, a new morning and evening trip have been added.
@PGH_Bus_Info Hotline’s takeaway:
This will help rush hour commuters on the line!
PortAuthority Customer Service can be reached by phone @ 412-442-2000
Weekdays 5a to 7p
Weekend + Holidays 8a to 430p
or via Twitter @PGHTransit or @PGHTransitCare
The @PGH_BUS_INFO Hotline can be reached by phone @ 412-759-3335 ONLY When PortAuthority Customer Service is Closed/unavailable
The PGH Bus Info Hotline will be back on PPT’s blog in for the next set of Quarter Service Adjustments. See ya then! (And if you want, you can check out last quarter’s changes here. )
This was the first time that the Council has ever had the opportunity to publically discuss the effects of Autonomous Vehicles, despite the 5 companies have started AV testing programs on public streets, and more than $10Million of public money has been earmarked for the construction of a roadway through Schenley park for the operation of driverless shuttles.
The Councilmembers invited five experts to testify as to what effect driverless vehicles will have on labor, data privacy, environmental sustainability, pedestrian safety, and public transit access/equity. After each speaker’s testimony, the Council had the opportunity to ask questions and respond to what they heard.
You can check out this news coverage for reporting on the City Council Post-Agenda Hearing, and the Press Conference that PPT held beforehand.
Pittsburgh is long-overdue for this conversation. Whether or not PGH residents have given consent, Pittsburghers are already underwriting the development of self-driving cars with their tax dollars, air quality, and traffic safety. Council agreed that its time to look at these effects of driverless tech; who it will benefit and at who’s expense?
PPT wants to thank the experts for sharing their expertise with the Council:
Jarvis Williams, Labor Representative, Transport Workers Union, Local 208, Columbus, Ohio
Shefali Rai, Environmental Representative, Union of Concerned Scientists
Laura Wiens, Public Transit/Equity Representative, Pittsburghers for Public Transit
Michael Skirpan, Data Privacy/Ethics Representative, Carnegie Mellon University Special Faculty
Eric Boerer, Pedestrian/Bicycle Safety Representative, Bike Pittsburgh
Pittsburghers for Public Transit believes in transparency, accountability, public participation, democracy, collaboration, and shared leadership.
And we want to practice what we preach.
So each year PPT runs an open nomination and election process for our general membership to choose 5 people to serve on our Coordinating Committee (aka our Board of Directors). The Coordinating Committee is an 11-member body that helps to guide PPT’s campaign strategy, committee work, and fundraising efforts. Two of those seats are reserved for members of Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 85 (the union that represents all of the Port Authority’s bus operators and mechanics) because PPT believes fundamentally that riders and operators are the ones that are best fit to improve the system. Each elected member serves for a 2-year term.
For those that are doing the math, the final unelected seat is filled by the Executive Director of The Thomas Merton Center or their appointee because they act as PPT’s fiduciary.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit is very excited to announce the winners of 2019’s Coordinating Committee election!
Congratulations to the next slate of Coordinating Committee members who will serve until Summer 2021 (and possibly longer if they run for reelection!):
James Hanna, Port Authority Bus Operator & Member of ATU Local 85
James Hanna, Port Authority Bus Operator with ATU Local 85
Kevin Joa, Port Authority Bus Operator & Member of ATU Local 85
Kevin Joa, Port Authority Bus Operator & Member of ATU Local 85
Dean Mougianis, Filmmaker & PPT Cofounder
Dean Mougianis, Filmmaker & PPT Cofounder
Briann Moye, Environmental Justice Organizer with OnePA
Briann Moye, Environmental Justice Organizer with OnePA
Mayor Nickole Nesby, Mayor of Duquesne
Mayor Nickole Nesby, Mayor of Duquesne
These people were selected in what was our largest election to date – 13 people in total were nominated! This is perhaps the most exciting thing to celebrate. Because this large candidate pool shows that there is a strong and diverse network of leaders who want to take part in our organization.
Everyone has a role to play in winning more equitable transit. So whether you won this years Coordinating Committee election, ran in it, voted in it, or observed it – you are a leader in this work.
PPT holds open Membership Meetings on the second Wednesday of each month at 1 Smithfield Street, with a social hour potluck that starts at 6pm and the meeting that starts at 7pm. Come out and join us in this work.
Each quarter the Port Authority adjusts its transit schedules and routes to account for rider’s requests, ridership shifts, construction, road closures and/or all of the other unexpected hiccups that might affect Pittsburgh roads.
The Pittsburgh Bus Information Hotline is a volunteer-run twitter account that gives riders updates on Port Authority’s daily happenings. The Hotline has no official connection to the Port Authority (again, it is a volunteer-run twitter account) but the updates are helpful nonetheless. The Hotline is a big supporter of PPT, and an enormous advocate for public transit. We’re thankful for they’re support and happy to share this rundown of the Q2 service changes compiled by the Pittsburgh Bus Info Hotline.
Rundown of Q2 Service Changes, with takeaways from the PGH Bus Info Hotline
The Hotline’s overall takeaway from this quarter’s changes: The vast majority of these changes are positive, and will improve the transit experience for most riders.
List of Q2 service changes are as follows:
2-Mt. Royal– Several weekday outbound trips and a later inbound trip will serve Ross Park Mall and a routing adjustment has been made at the request of the owner of The Block at Northway.
The 2 will run slightly later and the Ross Park Mall Stop has been relocated
For 2, 12 and P13 will run closer to the mall (old 11A, 12A, 15A, R, 1F stop by old Sears)
Plus Northway finally has direct service, which minimizes challenges to transit riders @ both malls
12-McKnight– Several weekday outbound trips and a later inbound trip will serve Ross Park Mall and a routing adjustment has been made at the request of the owner of The Block at Northway.
82-Lincoln– All outbound trips will be rerouted via the new Lower Hill streets of Wylie Avenue and Logan Street. Inbound trips will remain on Centre Avenue.
83-Bedford Hill – All outbound trips will be rerouted via the new Lower Hill streets of Wylie Avenue and Logan Street. Inbound trips will remain on Centre Avenue.
This P16 cut/reduction is probably the only bad change and burdensome to riders in this quarter’s changes.
The Hotline is dissapointed that PAAC chose to cut service rather than finding an acceptable detour. Cutting service is wrong and inequitable, and leaving riders without any transportation option.
We strongly hope that service is actually returned ASAP or a Temporary shuttle is set up for riders.
PortAuthority Customer Service can be reached by phone
@ 412-442-2000
Weekdays 5a to 7p
Weekend + Holidays 8a to 430p
or via Twitter @PGHTransit or @PGHTransitCare
The bus Info Hotline can be reached
By phone @ 412-759-3335
ONLY When PortAuthority Customer Service is Closed/unavailable
Or via Twitter anytime @PGH_BUS_INFO
The PGH Bus Info Hotline will be back on PPT’s blog in September for Q3 changes and takeaways. See ya then!
Pittsburghers for Public Transit’s new report, “Wait, Who’s Driving This Thing?: Bringng the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table”, with Forward by Anita Cozart, Senior Policy Director at PolicyLink
It did not take much time for Pittsburghers for Public Transit to come to a decision about who to invite to write a forward to the organization’s new Literature Review on the impact of Autonomous Vehicle technology, “Wait, Whos Driving This Thing?: Bringing the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table”.
Anita Cozart, Senior Director at PolicyLink, has been doing important justice-oriented policy work at the intersection of race, mobility, and economics. Her work and that of her team at PolicyLink have been leading the conversation about how to ensure equity and human rights in a time where private investment is rapidly flowing into both the development of urban neighborhoods and new transportation technology.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit was honored when Anita accepted our invitation to author a forward to this Literature Review because we both agree: conversations about new technology need to begin with the people who will be most affected by them.
Read Anita’s forward below, and read the full copy of “Wait, Who’s Driving This Thing?: Bringing the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table”.
“Charting a New Course for Urban Mobility” by Anita Cozart, Senior Director at PolicyLink
Everyone deserves to live in a healthy, safe and inclusive community with affordable and accessible transportation that connects them to jobs, schools, health care, grocery stores, and more. Over the past few years, private sector leaders and some local officials in Pittsburgh and other cities have championed the idea of autonomous vehicle technology as a means to deliver on that vision.
The history and the future of our nation tells us that, as we consider integrating such technology into their transportation systems, community members must be at the table. Our historic transportation policies and investments, fueled by structural racism, have saddled communities of color with burdens including longer travel times, higher costs, environmental damage and illness. And, as we move toward a future in which by 2040, the U.S. will be a majority people of color nation, in order to realize a vision of healthy communities and shared prosperity, we must ensure that community has voice and agency in shaping the way we move through our neighborhoods, cities and regions.
The findings from Wait, who’s Driving this Thing? are a reminder that when it comes to transportation, we should embrace the “curb-cut effect”1. Curb cuts in sidewalks were originally developed to accommodate people in wheelchairs, but they benefit a broad swath of people. This concept can be applied in other areas of infrastructure (or the built environment): the most vulnerable transportation users should be the focus for the plans that are developed to integrate autonomous vehicle technology in cities. Simply put, the priorities of the most vulnerable communities should drive transportation policy and planning in our cities.
A national coalition of more than 100 groups dedicated to advancing racial equity into transportation policy, the Transportation Equity Caucus has developed a set of principles that can be used to consider the benefits and harms of automated vehicle (AV) deployment:
Create affordable transportation options for all people.
The cost of using AV for daily travel must be accessible for all incomes, particularly if they are to be an extension of the public transportation system.
Ensure fair access to quality jobs, workforce development and contracting opportunities in the transportation industry.
Jobs and contracts that come from the growth of AV must be accessible to workers and firms who have historically been shut out, namely people of color and people with disabilities. Economic security and new work opportunities should be prioritized for people working in sectors that will be eliminated due to AV deployment.
Promote, healthy, safe and inclusive communities.
Just like there are food deserts, there are transportation innovation deserts. Many communities of color are the last ones to have access to on-demand rides, bikes, and scooters. As AV is deployed, it is important to assess the spatial distributions of affordable transportation options using a racial equity lens.
Invest equitably and focus on results.
It is important to ensure that bias is not embedded in the computer algorithms that drive automated vehicle technology, and that rigorous data privacy regulations, which are currently lacking, are put in place. To ensure equitable outcomes, people of color and people with disabilities must be co-designers of the deployment of AV in cities.
Let’s take the wisdom from this report and chart a new course for urban mobility that is centered on ensuring that our most vulnerable in society can benefit from transportation innovation.
On Thursday, July 18th, more than 70 residents from Hazelwood, the Run, Panther Hollow, and the surrounding communities made it known: the public wants to be included in the City’s decisions about driverless vehicle technology on their public streets with their public money.
The high turnout at PPT’s first forum on driverless vehicle technology shows that neighbors have serious questions that remain unanswered about the technology and the City’s decisions to underwrite it with public resources.
The event, called “Bringing the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table”, was held to open a conversation with residents about the impacts of Autonomous Vehicles, and give space to have residents outline the needs they have in their communities, and compile the questions that they have around the technology.
This is a vital conversation to have with residents of these neighborhoods because they are currently being included in a City of Pittsburgh proposal to experiment with a driverless shuttle between the Hazelwood Green development site and the Universities in Oakland. Residents have never raised an autonomous shuttle as a need for their community, nor have they been given a voice in the City’s decision to use them as a test-site.
In fact, in the three years since driverless vehicles have started testing on Pittsburgh streets, the City has never held a public forum or conversation about AV.
PPT used the event to release a new literature review that was compiled with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh titled, “Wait, Who’s Driving This Thing?: Bringing the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table”. The review examines over 100 articles and publications to give context around the downstream impacts of Autonomous Vehicle technology.
At the event, a series of speakers gave context and perspective about why public inclusion is important, and what is at stake when deciding to invest in new technology over proven transportation solutions. Attendees then broke out into five tables – pedestrian safety, mobility, jobs, environment, data privacy – to discuss their needs and values, as well as list the further questions they have on AV, public investment, and public process.
We will update this blog with the input that residents gave at this meeting. But information like this (about the wholistic effects of new transportation technology), as well as the public forums like these (to allow for discussion and accountability), are essential to creating an equitable process for residents to make decisions about public investment.
Join us on Tuesday for this City Council Post-Agenda Hearing on Autonomous Vehicle Impacts.
Experts will be joining us from the Union of Concerned Scientists, Transport Workers Union, BikePGH, and CMU to talk about their work and the future that they see for AV. More information on the Post-Agenda Hearing here.
In the three years since driverless vehicles have been tested in real-life on Pittsburgh streets, the City has not hosted a single opportunity for residents to learn more about the technology’s impacts or decide if unproven AV solutions are worthy of public investment. Yet, the City of Pittsburgh has moved forward with earmarking millions of public dollars to facilitate an experimental deployment of a driverless shuttle in Hazlewood, the Run, Panther Hollow, Oakland.
Now more then ever, the public must be included in the conversation about autonomous vehicle investment. They deserve the public forum and resources to evaluate the impacts that AV will have on our communities, and determine if this is a future worth investing public dollars in.
It is time that the public is brought to the autonomous vehicle table.
PPT has spent the last 10 months working with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh to examine what the downstream effects of Autonomous Vehicles will be on our jobs, our environment, public safety, data privacy, and access to equitable public transit.
We, the public, need to have the space to examine at all of the associated impacts that new technology will bring to society in order to determine whether our public dollars should be used to facilitate the outcome.
“Wait Who’s Driving This Thing?” is PPT’s review of what the current literature and research are saying. It is a critical perspective to include as residents in Pittsburgh and across the country deal with pressures of new technology and call for a seat at the table where decisions about public investment are being made.
And see the Paper’s 1-page summary here, or check below for the document’s text.
Reach out to us with questions, comments, or if you’d like to get involved with the campaign.
Wait, Who’s Driving This Thing?: Bringing the Public to the Autonomous Vehicle Table
Pittsburghers for Public Transit (PPT) is a grassroots organization of transit riders and workers who advocate for mobility as a human right.
Every day, we see autonomous vehicles (AV) drive down the street in front of our office, and we read stories in our local papers about their deployment in our neighborhoods. Five companies have begun test-driving operations in our city over the past three years, and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been earmarked to support their deployment. Yet, in that time, our local government has not hosted a single conversation about how our communities will be affected by AV, nor held any public discussion about why public resources should be allocated to facilitating this technology over other inarguable mobility and pedestrian safety interventions.
We at PPT believe that we are long overdue for a public discussion of the impacts of Autonomous Vehicles. This is a conversation that should begin by examining our shared values and considering whether AV are truly the best way to address our collective needs.
We have an environmental crisis, a safety crisis, a jobs and mobility crisis that is happening now, and the impacts are irreversible. To prevent the worst outcomes of climate change, we need to dramatically reduce our vehicle emissions and change our land use patterns. To stem the rise in pedestrian and cyclist deaths that is happening in cities across the country, we need to prioritize traffic calming and people-centered design. To put an end to inequality in our country, we need to commit to providing high-quality, affordable, accessible transportation for all—as well as good family-supporting union jobs for folks to get to. Above all, we must consider the effect of eliminating driving jobs, because displacing workers is the most direct consequence of this technology.
None of the impacts of AV technology will happen in isolation, so in order to have a meaningful conversation, the public must be given the tools to weigh them as a whole. New technology, for whose benefit? At whose expense?
After our literature review, it has become apparent that any proposed benefits of AV to mobility, safety, and the environment will be realized far in the future under a very specific, impractical framework. Absent that framework, the impacts of AV will likely be harmful. As a society, we cannot wait 30 or 40 years for AV benefits to be realized. Nor do we have the luxury of simply hoping for the best outcomes when it is far more likely that AV will exacerbate existing problems.
In this time of multiple, pressing needs, we do not have the pub-
lic resources to finance such uncertainty. Autonomous vehicle
companies will continue to make rosy, unfounded claims in or-
der to sell their products for profit. But our collective resources
are finite, and with every decision to invest in supporting AV de-
velopment and deployment, we miss opportunities to put our
money and attention on inarguable improvements—including
more public transit service; better sidewalks and dedicated bike
and bus lanes; and good technology, like vehicle to traffic signal
communications and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
We offer a summary of our upcoming literature review paper below as a starting point for the public to evaluate the claims of autonomous vehicle companies, and to call for a truly open discussion of what we want “progress” to look like.
Find PPT’s complete AV literature review paper at:
www.pittsburghforpublictransit.org/av
Impact on Jobs
AV will affect about 10 million jobs where driving is a significant component of the work, and directly threaten between 3.8-4.5 million jobs where driving is the primary activity.
Eliminating bus operator positions will disproportionately affect women and people of color, and these jobs have been important for social and economic mobility. Driving jobs are primarily occupied by workers late in their careers, without college degrees. Just transitions are very unlikely, given these demographics, and there are no serious plans being advanced to support displaced transportation workers.
Impact on Public Transit and Mobility
AV is likely to diminish public transit use, which would create a vicious cycle of lower fare revenues and cut bus routes.
Any loss of services will disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color. Moreover, older adults and riders with disabilities rely on bus and paratransit drivers to access transit, so automating buses will reduce their access to basic needs.
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Environmental Impacts
AV will only lead to positive environmental impacts under specific conditions and decades down the road.
In the absence of regulations, public infrastructure investments, and radical social behavioral changes, AV will likely be environmentally destructive. Transportation emissions are now the single-largest carbon producing sector of the U.S. economy. We can’t afford to wait decades in the hopes that AV will have a positive impact, particularly given that there are clear green policy solutions that would reduce our carbon footprint now.
Bicyclist & Pedestrian Safety Impacts
The safety benefits of AV have not been sufficiently proven, and there are non-autonomous vehicle technologies that could achieve the intended safety benefits.
No industry standards exist for evaluating AV as a safety solution, and current data indicate that AV crash more frequently than vehicles with human drivers. Requiring new cars to install car-to-car or car-to-infrastructure (like traffic light) communications technology would significantly improve safety with technology that is currently available. Reducing speed limits, installing protected bike/pedestrian infrastructure and getting more people on buses are proven ways to reduce pedestrian and driver fatalities.
Impacts on Privacy
Passenger routing and destination data can not only be compromised but also sold and hacked, which raises serious questions around user privacy, data ownership and safety.
Find PPT’s complete AV literature review paper at
