When told that the Port Authority has proposed a cut in service frequency to the 61C, Derek Gordon, who works for the Steelers, said: “This is my only way to work!” He has a flex schedule, and service frequency is important for being able to plan his commute from day to day.

Along with our partner Just Harvest in this campaign for equitable access to jobs, food, healthcare, and other critical needs, we want to share your stories of how 61ABC buses are important to you.

Please tweet @JustHarvest or @Pgh4PubTransit or share your photos and comments with us on Facebook. And you can help start building solidarity between all your stories with the hashtags #WhoseBRT #OURpublictransit.

And please pass the word on about the rally and press conference this coming Friday, January 26th, at 8:45am at the corner of Wood St. and 6th Ave! The Port Authority board meeting will start at 9:30am at 345 6th Ave and many riders, drivers, small business owners, social service organizations, and many, many more will be speaking out together!

Infographic credit: Christina Castillo

Over the past several months, Pittsburghers for Public Transit has been working with residents in the Mon Valley to make sure the 61 A, B, and C buses don’t get cut in frequency and that any transit improvement is an improvement for all!

A couple of really awesome Braddock residents organized an event at the Braddock Library where over a hundred folks gathered to sign postcards to send to the Port Authority about how important the 61ABC buses are to access all their basic needs. We’re working with many allies across the Mon Valley to remind the Port Authority that equity is one of their own three main criteria for making service decisions.

On Wednesday, November 29, dozens of climate and grassroots community activists testified at Pittsburgh City Council chambers about Pittsburgh’s proposed Climate Action Plan. PPT issued the following call to our elected officials:

The Pittsburgh climate action plan has positive, attainable goals for public transit in our region, and highlights the importance of public transit in building a sustainable future. Pittsburghers for Public Transit celebrates the intention to have the amenities and efficiency of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, to move to an all-electric bus fleet, and to double transit ridership by 2030. And we are glad to see that the Port Authority is taking initial steps towards greening their fleet, even if the full BRT project is not realized.  However, we are deeply troubled by the city’s plan for implementation of the BRT, which actually threatens existing transit ridership in the Mon Valley. The riders of the 61 A,B and C are facing a 45% cut in the frequency of their service, and are facing the additional financial and physical burden of mandatory transfers in Oakland to complete their rides to downtown. Riders in Braddock, Duquesne and McKeesport often have no other transit options, and many are the service workers that are the economic underpinning of our major city employers. We are urging the city council not to foolishly implement one goal of the climate action plan—the BRT—at the expense of another—ie. the maintenance and growth of our current transit ridership. Many of the transit efficiency components of this BRT project like bus-only lanes, signal prioritization and jump lanes for buses are relatively inexpensive but very effective, and should be considered in other routes in our system as well.

As recently as this past September, state legislators tried to cannibalize our state transit funding under Act 89 to cover the PA budget shortfall. Act 89 is also set to expire in 2022.  We ask the city council to insist on truly long-term dedicated funding for transit at a state and regional level, so that riders can purchase homes, plan their bus routes and build their lives around these lifelines without worrying that they will abruptly be taken away. Stable, dedicated transit funding is THE recipe for doubling transit ridership, so that “climate action” is not merely a slogan, but actually a plan.

PPT submitted an open letter highlighting our transit priorities, published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 11/26. Writing credit is largely due to PPT Board Member Dean Mougianis:

“The Port Authority has hired a new CEO, and Pittsburghers for Public Transit would like to warmly welcome Katharine Kelleman to this region (Nov. 9, “Port Authority Hires Public Transit ‘Superstar.’”)

As an organization that works closely with riders, drivers and residents, PPT would have preferred a more transparent hiring process. The Port Authority, as a public institution, has a responsibility to solicit public input in decisions as important as selecting a new CEO. But that’s a bus that’s left the stop and none of the new CEO’s doing.

As her tenure begins, here are some of PPT’s major concerns:

The Port Authority’s plans to enforce a new fare policy on the T with armed police officers is a waste of resources and needlessly risky. Other more benign but still effective ways exist to ensure that fares are collected.

The proposed BRT system connecting Downtown with Oakland and other neighborhoods could provide marginal speedups to Pittsburgh’s busiest transit corridor. However, the current plan will reduce service to many Mon Valley communities that need service the most. Let’s address the county’s pressing transportation needs first, and remember that none of our communities are expendable.

New technologies, including autonomous vehicles, could offer many benefits for transit riders. These innovations — in fact, any Port Authority investments — should not come at the expense of transit workers and their livelihoods. As we look ahead, we must ensure that workers are never simply cast aside.

The Port Authority, from all appearances, has hired an energetic, community-minded and forward-thinking CEO. We expect that those qualities will be applied to helping all transit stakeholders build a better future for all of us.”

LAURA WIENS
Director
Pittsburghers for PublicTransit
Garfield

Image of Commuters on the T: Photo Credit Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Public School board joins the Coalition against Policing on the T to endorse a civil fare checking process, with civilian fare ambassadors. Our gratitude is extended to Moira Kaleida, school board representative of Brookline and Beechview, for drafting the powerful letter, to which all board members signed on. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on their views, directed to the Port Authority:

“The board of Pittsburgh Public Schools is the latest group to oppose Port Authority’s controversial plan to have armed police check fares on light-rail vehicles.

In a Nov. 17 letter to incoming authority CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman, the nine school directors echoed concerns from earlier this year that the idea could lead to deportations and confrontations between officers and immigrant students who may have language difficulties. Nearly 3,800 public, charter and private school students in Pittsburgh take public transit.

‘We have immigrant and refugees from all over the world who now call Pittsburgh their home. Using the current proposed system, PAT would essentially be creating a fare-evasion to deportation pipeline,’ the letter said.

‘Many of our students experience trauma on a daily basis, have had negative interactions with policeor simply cannot understand what is being said to them. Having someone who holds a gun confront a young person can be scary and may escalate the situation.'”

—-

Also, notably, incoming Port Authority CEO Kelleman is quoted saying that she was asked about her position on this policy as part of her job interview process:

“I would be shocked to find out that the Port Authority board is really focused on the law enforcement criminal aspects. That’s not our jam,” she said in an interview.

“It should be the goal for any transit entity to remove as many barriers as possible to use the service … If fare enforcement turns into a barrier, what have we accomplished?”

—

Find the whole article here.

(Photo by Margaret Krauss, WESA News)

Great turnout at the URA Lexington Park community meeting! Thanks to all the North Point Breeze, Homewood and PPT members that turned out to support affordable housing on the site. We will continue to advocate for community members to have a seat at the URA table to decide on the conditions set in the Request for Proposals (RFP) for developers, and to choose the developer for the site.

From WESA’s Report: Homewood, Point Breeze North Residents Push for Greater Involvement in Future Development: “For too long, development has driven poor people out of neighborhoods, said Mel Packer of Pittsburghers for Public Transit.

‘We have destroyed affordable housing,’ he said. ‘We have the chance here to develop a model community of mixed housing.’ ”

We know that transit assets like the MLK East Busway are often the first sites of displacement and gentrification in cities, and that the housing costs along the stops of the East Busway have been escalating in recent years. Rising housing and rental costs mean that low income transit riders that depend on public transit to get to jobs, food, childcare, family, and places of worship are being pushed out to affordable housing in the county, often to places that have little to no access to transit.

We want to ensure that people that depend on our buses, and particularly long term residents, are able to stay in their communities and near good bus lines as development happens. The URA is going to hold a community meeting on Thursday Nov 2nd at Construction Junction (214 N Lexington St Pittsburgh, 15208) to talk about the future of the Lexington Industrial Park site. It is 16 acres of prime land that is adjacent to the Homewood Ave busway stop. This is an opportunity to begin to address the crisis of affordable housing in the city, by building affordable units that allow residents to live, work and play in the community without needing a car to get around. It is also critical that this site not be full of market rate apartments that would sharply drive up the cost of rentals and homeowner taxes for adjacent businesses, tenants, and homeowners.

In 2014, the URA did a community study of development around the Homewood Ave station  in collaboration with PCRG. These were the guiding principles for equitable development that emerged through that community survey:

• The community should be involved from the beginning and throughout the process

• People who live in the community should get to stay there

• Development should create a strong and durable community that attracts and welcomes new residents

• Publicly-held land should benefit and support the economic stability of the neighborhood / public first

• Local business owners should have the opportunity to grow their businesses and new businesses in the community should be supported

• Transit should get people to jobs, education, goods and other opportunities

• Policies that support these principles should be permanent and not tied to a specific project or administration

We are calling on the URA to adhere to these principles, and to specifically include mixed income housing as part of this Request for Proposals (RFP) that it will put out for developers.

PPT has put forward the following proposal for the site, and we are encouraging residents to support this model:

Why have moderate density affordable housing on the site?

-To maintain diversity in the neighborhood of both income and race

-To begin to address the affordable housing unit shortage of 20,000 units in this city

-So that people that rely on public transit have good access to our best transit assets, and to incentivize more people to use alternative modes of transit to cars

-So that neighboring businesses like the East End Co-Op, the Construction Junction and subsidiary renters, and other smaller organizations are not priced out.

-So that neighbors that are tenants aren’t forced to leave because of rising rents, and homeowners on a fixed income not be priced out because of rising taxes.

What is a reasonable, positive and achievable proposal on the site?

How do we help ensure extended affordability?

1. The URA could have a ground lease on the site, with affordability provisions, and lease to a developer who would comply with these conditions OR

2. If a non-profit developer were to develop the site, after the 15 year tax credit period ran out, they could have the right of first refusal to buy the site from the investors, to continue to maintain affordability

3. Talk to the URA about how tenants could have equity on the site, potentially by having the residents be offered an affordable buyout option after the 15 year tax credit ran out, to turn into a cooperative ownership structure.

Some Developers that do Attractive, Responsible Affordable Housing in the City include:

Action Housing

Trek Development

Telesis Corp.

Complementary Uses?

It would be good to have ground level retail that supports local jobs and supports local needs.

Organizer Krystle Knight from the Thomas Merton Center shares survey responses from Latinx transit riders, who would be reluctant to use the T if Port Authority police were checking fares, and if public transit was serving as an immigration checkpoint.