Nearly four years after Pittsburgh Regional Transit began revising its bus routes, the agency has a final plan ready for public hearings and board approval.

The plan calls for 14 new bus routes that include service between neighborhoods in some areas, extension of service from Pittsburgh International Airport to Shadyside, and an extension of service from the North Hills and South Hills directly to Oakland. Overall, the proposal would result in a reduction of six routes to 89, elimination of 20 routes, 56 routes with major changes, six with minor changes and 13 with no changes.

Emily Provonsha, PRT’s manager of service development, outlined the revised plan Thursday for the board’s planning and stakeholder relations committee. The committee recommended the full board approve taking the proposed changes to required public hearings when it meets next Friday.

The agency began a more robust effort called a bus line redesign in September 2023 that recommended dropping from 95 routes to 77 and adding 19 new routes. The goal was to expand the system’s coverage area; eliminate the need for riders to pass through Downtown Pittsburgh to transfer to another route to go to a neighboring community; and meet the changing needs of riders in the post-pandemic environment.

Those proposals met resistance because many communities would have lost all service. Before the agency could make the first round of revisions, it paused the route redesign effort for more than a year while it fought for additional state funding needed to sustain its current service.

The agency is still fighting that battle, but Gov. Josh Shapiro gave PRT and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority around Philadelphia a lifeline by allowing them to use capital funds to cover operating funds for two years while the state finds more money for public transit. That expires next year.

With the funding crisis averted for now, PRT revived its look at bus routes last year with a different focus now called a bus line refresh: growing ridership on its most popular routes by increasing service. The agency believes lawmakers will find that approach more palatable as they consider additional funding.

After taking comments from March to May on the revisions, Provonsha told the committee, planners made additional changes that are now ready for approval. She called the plan “a responsible approach to using PRT’s limited resources during this time of fiscal uncertainty.”

New service

Here are some of the key new routes PRT is proposing:

• The 71C Point Breeze, which had its route shortened to end in Oakland rather than Downtown, will become the 80X with a route that goes to Downtown via Uptown but ends sooner at Bakery Square at the other end. Route 88 will pick up the Penn Avenue area of Point Breeze.
• New service to Oakland from the South Hills on the 35- Bower Hill-Oakland and 45- Carrick-Oakland-East Liberty from Brownsville Road in Brentwood and from the North Hills on the 9-McCandless-Oakland via Millvale.
• The 28x to Pittsburgh International Airport would be extended to Shadyside via the East Busway but no longer serve Robinson Town Centre, which would be served by the new 25- Robinson.
• Instead of mini-bus service initially proposed between local communities, the agency will use smaller buses for new routes linking Highlands Mall and New Kensington via Natrona Heights, Brackenridge, Tarentum, Arnold and New Kensington; Homestead, McKeesport and North Versailles; and Penn Hills, Monroeville Mall, and the Boyce campus of Community College of Allegheny County.
• Service from hilltop communities in McKeesport to the McKeesport Transit Center for transfer to other routes.

Overall, the changes will increase the number of routes with service at least every 20 minutes from 11 to 19; at least every 30 minutes from 27 to 43; and provide seven-day service to many more communities, Provonsha said. She added that 99.4% of riders would continue to have service within a quarter-mile of what they have now, up from 99.2% under the previous proposal.

The plan eliminates widespread changes to the names of bus routes that had been part of the original proposal. Also, all buses would be able to pick up or drop off riders at each stop along the East and West busways, something that express bus routes do not do now.

Pittsburghers for Public Transit, which had serious problems with the first proposal and encouraged the agency to hold off changes until its funding problems are resolved, said it favors many of these changes.

Executive Director Laura Wiens said in an interview Thursday that all changes the agency makes should meet the goals of increasing ridership, improving reliability and growing rider satisfaction. The advocacy group still thinks implementation should wait until stable funding is available.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Silbermann said the agency hasn’t scheduled the plan for implementation yet but it likely would begin in late 2027. It could happen all at once or in phases, she said.

If the board approves public hearings on the proposal, that would open a window for public comment from Aug. 17 to Sept. 30. There would be a virtual information session on Aug. 18 followed by public hearings on Aug. 25 and Sept. 10.

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