COMMUNITY PARTNERS • Allegheny Conference on Community Development • Allegheny County Department of Economic Development What Happens Next? • Allegheny County Transportation Action Partnership A series of community meetings will be held during the last week • Allegheny County Transit Council of September and first two weeks of October. These meetings • Bike Pittsburgh will include a detailed discussion of the refined alternatives with • Carnegie Mellon University particular attention to stations and street configurations. See the • Carlow University • City of Pittsburgh Dept. of City Planning front page for more information. • Duquesne University Using public and stakeholder input from these meetings, the • Local Government Academy • Hill District Community project team will rate and further refine the options using the Development Corporation evaluation measures. With greater detail on street configura- • NAIOP, Pittsburgh Chapter tions, bus stop/station locations and types, vehicle types and • Oakland Planning & service plans, the project team will compare the alternatives. The Development Corporation alternatives will then undergo a second-level screening process • Oakland Transportation Management Association that will take into consideration environmental, community and • Oakland Task Force traffic impacts as well as ridership projections, cost estimates and • PA Department of Transportation cost-effectiveness calculations. The cost information will also be • Pittsburgh Community used to develop financial plans. Reinvestment Group • Pittsburgh Downtown By spring 2013, the final milestone in the planning process will Neighborhood Association occur with the selection of a Community Preferred Alternative. • Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership Based on the results of a second screening, evaluation measures • Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network • Pittsburgh Parking Authority and public/stakeholder input, the project team will determine • Pittsburgh Partnership for the configuration that best addresses the needs of the Down- Neighborhood Development town-Oakland-East End Corridor. Documentation describing the • Pittsburgh Penguins Community Preferred Alternative and the rationale for its selec- • Pittsburgh Sports & Exhibition Authority tion can then be submitted to the Federal Transit Administration • Pittsburgh United • Port Authority of Allegheny County for approval to advance the project into the engineering and • Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission design phases. • Sustainable Pittsburgh • University of Pittsburgh For more information, go to GetTherePgh.org or call 412.258.6643. • UPMC • Uptown Partners of Pittsburgh • Urban Land Institute Downtown-Oakland-East End Bus Rapid Transit his newsletter begins with three sce- narios for you to imagine Bus Rapid COMMUNITY TTransit (BRT) in your life. A more vivid MEETINGS demonstration of these scenarios will be shown at four public meetings through a visualization of BRT in the Downtown- Oakland Oakland-East End Corridor. This visual- Thursday, September 27 ization includes real footage dramatization 6:00 – 8:00 pm of these scenarios with animation ex- University of Pittsburgh Alumni Hall, First Floor Ballroom plaining how BRT can provide better bus 4227 Fifth Avenue, Oakland service, even in heavy traffic. Hosted by Oakland Planning & Development Corp. The meetings will also feature a BRT & Oakland Transportation Management Assoc. simulation, an interactive computer tool to illustrate station types and amenities East End as well as options for placing bus lanes, Monday, October 1 auto lanes, bike lanes and parking along 5:30 – 7:30 pm sample street segments. The simulation Carnegie Library – East Liberty will allow meeting participants to explore (across from the East Liberty Presbyterian Church) different scenarios for stations and streets, 130 South Whitfield St., East Liberty and record which options they prefer. Hosted by East Liberty Development, Inc. Uptown Hill District Thursday, October 4 Hill District Community Meeting 6:00 – 8:00 pm Thursday, October 11 UPMC Mercy Hospital 5:30 – 7:30 pm Sr. Ferdinand Clark Auditorium Elsie H. Hillman Auditorium at Kaufmann Center 1400 Locust Street, Uptown (next to the Hill House) Hosted by Uptown Partners 1825 Centre Avenue, Hill District Can’t attend? Information on alternatives, the BRT visualization & simulation plus a comment form, is available at GetTherePgh.org. Imagine Bus Rapid Transit Imagine you’re a nurse at one of Oakland’s hospitals. It’s 3:00 pm. You just finished your shift and made plans to see your friends after work. Oakland’s streets begin to fill with cars and you don’t want to be stuck in traffic when you could be with your friends instead. With the money you saved on parking and gas through commuting on the fast and reliable BRT, you can go shop- ping and treat your friends to an early din- ner in Uptown. You head to the BRT station, where you check the real-time display. Your bus will be there soon, so you text your friends that you’ll see them in a few minutes. You get there with time to spare as your bus zips past congestion in a dedicated bus lane. Imagine finishing up a long day at the of- fice in Downtown Pittsburgh. You rush out to the BRT station. The station is easy to spot, well-lit and marked with “BRT” in big letters. It’s already 7:16 pm and your spouse has just sent you a text – “please don’t be late for dinner.” You pull up the BRT app on your smartphone. The next bus leaves at 7:17! You dash to the station – there’s no mistaking it for a regular bus stop – just in time to catch the bus. 7:17 on the dot. As you settle into your seat, you text back – “no problem, honey.” Imagine that you and your spouse have recently retired. You’ve moved into an Uptown loft to enjoy all the city has to offer – including convenient access to Bus Rapid Transit. You want to enjoy a night on the town to celebrate your 40th wedding anniver- sary, but don’t want to worry about parking. Luckily, the BRT station is just steps from your apartment. At the station, you buy two tickets from the vending machine and then have a seat on the bench. Only a few min- utes pass and the bus arrives at the station. You’re in Downtown before you know it; queue jump lanes enable your bus to bypass auto traffic. You get off just a couple of blocks from the O’Reilly Theater, where you’ll be seeing an August Wilson play. The Region’s Core Transforming Neighborhoods The Downtown–Oakland–East End Corridor includes Southwestern Pennsylvania’s top two activity centers and some of Pittsburgh’s most distinc- tive neighborhoods. These neighbor- hoods have many qualities which make them great places to work and live as well as to attend universities, visit mu- seums, libraries and other cultural and entertainment facilities and to receive medical services. The combination of tree-lined streets, small green spaces and architecturally distinctive and historic buildings provide these neigh- Currently, local roadways are frequently borhoods with a high aesthetic appeal, congested and the transit system is often further enhancing their attractiveness hard-pressed to meet demand. The in- to residents, workers, students and tense level of development in Downtown visitors. Pittsburgh and Oakland limits the amount of land available for parking which results Vibrant & Growing in high parking rates. Transit already serves nearly 68,000 trips per day in the Nevertheless, even with all of their Corridor, accounting for nearly a third of current assets, additional improve- the total Port Authority ridership and 25% ments are being planned for these - 30% of the total trips in the Corridor. neighborhoods. Major new development is envisioned for the Corridor. This includes new offices to be built for both BRT is a Solution institutional uses (university and med- BRT will provide faster, more reliable and ical) and private companies desiring more evenly-spaced transit service within convenient access to research facilities the Corridor, attracting more riders, re- in Oakland and the professional ser- ducing the number of automobile trips and vices in Downtown. Additionally, new attracting new economic growth. The BRT condominiums, apartments and town Corridor is being designed with a “com- homes as well as new hotels, restau- plete streets” approach, which will serve rants and retail development is also all modes of transportation – including expected to take place in the Corridor pedestrians and bicycles. BRT will tie the to serve the needs of the residential and Corridor together, supporting Oakland’s office population and the needs of the role as an economic center, spurring new surrounding neighborhoods. development in Uptown, and enhancing opportunities in adjacent neighborhoods New Challenges such as the Hill District, Bloomfield, Shadyside, Friendship, East Liberty and In order to improve the quality of life Squirrel Hill. With unique branding and within these neighborhoods as well as high-quality transit service, BRT will ensure that new development does not transform our city and our region! overwhelm the Corridor’s neighborhoods with more traffic, transit service to and within the Corridor must be improved. We Have Options! n early 2012, a set of alternatives were These alignments will be modified based on developed for the Hill District, Uptown, input from the community. Parking, bicycle IOakland and other East End neighbor- and transit all need to be balanced in the hoods. These include various routings in limited street width. neighborhoods, one- and two-way street operation and even use of the Martin Uptown Luther King Jr., East Busway. Various In the Uptown area, BRT options are pro- placement options for exclusive bus lanes, posed along Fifth Avenue. Exclusive bus bike lanes and auto traffic lanes along lanes would be established in both direc- Fifth and Forbes Avenue are also included tions on Fifth Avenue, with a single travel in the set of alternatives. lane remaining for westbound auto traffic. On Forbes Avenue, a single eastbound lane will be provided for eastbound automobile traffic and a two-way bicycle path separated from the travel lanes.