Let’s Turn This Bus Around! Riders present #NotMyBRT Petition with a 500+ signatures to reverse the October 1 Service Changes and give us more transit, not less.

At the Friday, October 27th PRT Board Meeting, transit riders were back for the second time to demand that the October 1st service changes and the downward of trend of PRT’s service coverage and reliability MUST BE REVERSED! This time, riders held a press conference and presented the Board with a 500+ signature petition on a big, 8-foot wide, painted purple plywood cut-out of a bus! Riders then went inside to the Board and delivered an hour of public testimony detailing how cuts on the 61, 71, and nearly 40 other routes have been devastating for their access to healthcare, childcare, food and jobs. 

Beechview resident and fellow transit rider Laura Szanfranski told the board:

“I do not drive due to vision issues and ride public transportation regularly to get to and from work and medical appointments… In June of this year I received a life-saving kidney transplant along with 3 other procedures all in one very large surgery at UPMC Montefiore… What normally takes 15 to 20 minutes by car to get to UPMC Mercy or UPMC Montefiore now takes me well over an hour depending on the quality of service PRT is providing that day.” 

See Laura’s public comment along with others in the recording that PRT posted from the meeting.

The October 1st changes continue the downward trend of service reliability at PRT. PRT says that these cuts were made to create efficiencies that would allow service to be added to other lines, but that is not what is happening. Month after month in 2023, riders have experienced worse and worse service reliability. PRT’s Performance Metrics and System Data page shows that on-time bus arrivals have declined from approx 72% in January of 2023 to 64% in September of 2023. We’ll keep monitoring their website to see how these on-time performance numbers change for October 2023.

We need to keep the pressure on. Join PPT at our November Meeting to help riders design a campaign to build a transit service that meets all of our needs

See the news coverage from the #NotMyBRT petition delivery to the PRT Board

• “Bus riders present petition, demand Pittsburgh Regional Transit reverses route cuts” from Lonni Rivera at WPXI
• “Riders push back again against bus cuts in Oakland” from Ed Blazina at the Pittsburgh Union Progress