HUGE CITY BUDGET VICTORY! Transit rider organizing wins the first-ever city budget line item for transit amenities! Get ready for more bus shelter and benches in 2025!
The PPT Organizing Committee set it’s sights on bus shelters this year. Members voted to include it in our annual strategic plan and after a year of orgnizing we won the first line-item for transit amenities in city history!
In an 11th-hr call to action, more than 100 residents emailed their City Council Member and asked them to support Council Member Barb Warwicks budget amendment to allocate $100k+ to transit amenities! But this was just the end of a long organizing story. Read the full story below, but first, send your Pittsburgh City Councilperson a thank you!
City of Pittsburgh Complete Streets Advisory Group
In late 2023 some members of PPT Organizing Committee became part of City’s Complete Streets Advisory Group. This sparked conversation about bus rider infrastructure and how we can affect change in that realm.
PPT Research Committee built our map to give us perspective.
The PPT Research Committee got to work analyzing what stops had shelters and what stops didn’t. PPT Super star member Abishek created an AMAZING map that shows all the bus stops in the city that have more than 30 boardings, but no shelter! PPT uplifted the fact that there are more than 25 “Orphaned Bus Shelters” in the city (these are shelter in locations that were once bus stops, but now stand with no purpose). We saw that with some organizing, reinstalling these shelters at high rider bus stops would be an easy win.
Bus Stop Audits & working with DOMI & PRT
As PPT members advocated at the Complete Streets Advisory Committee, PPT’s Organizing Committee began to comb through the City’s shelter agreement with the advertising company Gateway that manages the shelters. We became experts on the contract and started meeting with DOMI about what could be done to add more shelters.
It became clear that bus rider safety and amenities were important to them too, but they are underfunded and understaffed. PPT’s organizing committee created a checklist and began auditing high-ridership bus stops to gather information, and audit the sidewalks and surrounding areas. This work helped DOMI determine if it would be able to install shelters at those locations without having to do any major construction.
Throughout 2024, the PPT Organizing Committee held 10 bus stop audits ALL ACROSS THE CITY & identified a long list of stops where shelters could be placed.
Advocating for transit in the City Budget
Because of this work together (and unbeknownst to PPT) DOMI put in a bus stop amenities funding request in the 2025 Pittsburgh Capital Budget. This was the first time they had ever requested funding for bus stops. It was denied, but we didn’t stop there.
PPTs Organizing Committee members of CSAG, along with allies in CSAG (Eric Bikepgh, among others), partook in the drafting of a letter to City Council and Mayor to impress upon them the importance of mobility and infrastructure in budget
In a last-minute attempt to get this money back in the budget, City Councilperson (and rockstar PPT Member!) Barb Warwick proposed an amendment to include transit amenities. PPT Members snapped into action, and in just 12 hours, more than 100 people reached out to their city councilperson and asked them to support the amendment. Our support spans across the city, and every single councilperson received letters that this was an important amendment.
Was this final letter campaign a slam dunk that helped to pass the amendment? We’d like to think so 😉. But really, this win comes from years of organizing to say that the city has a role to play in improving transit.
BIG THANKS to so many people who made this win possible. Now lets get ready to organize in 2025 to win more!
There’s a long list of PPT members and supporters who we want to give a special thanks to!
- Big thanks to PPT Members! Peter Gustafson for becoming an expert of the City’s bus shelter contract and creating a checklist to guide our shelter audits. Abhishek Viswanathan for making the map of high ridership stops without shelters. All of the PPT members who joined us on Audits and send letters to their city councilpeople~
- Big thanks to Pittsbugh City Councilor (AND PPT MEMBER!) Barb Warwick’s office – in particular Clara Weibel – for pouring through all of the legalese with us.
- Big thanks to
- Big thanks to Seth at BikePGH for teaching Cheryl and Nicole how to host a walk audit. And to Eric for helping draft a letter from the Complete Streets Advisory Committee.
- Big thanks to DOMI and PRT. Shoutout to DOMI staff Eric and Rylan for joining us on bus stop audits. And shoutout to Darcy at PRT for helping us get a first look at their shelter map.