The University Line will not have dedicated lanes along the entire route, and initial plans to branch out even further were cut because of the cost. “This gives us a more equitable way of sharing the benefits of rapid transit to more of the community,” he said.īut when it comes to transit in the U.S., compromises are inevitable. A light rail option, Huffaker said, would not have gone into more distant neighborhoods. ![]() The choice wasn’t just about the price tag. has just become an option that gets you probably 90 percent of the benefit, at a tenth of the cost.” Light rail was considered for the corridor, said Amy Silbermann, the deputy chief planning officer at Pittsburgh’s transit agency, but “B.R.T. The new project, called the University Line, will replace 19 bus routes on two parallel streets running from Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood to Downtown which move more people than any other form of transit in the city. line in hopes of bringing rapid, reliable service to the city’s busiest corridor. Now, with $150 million in grant money from the Federal Transit Administration, Pittsburgh is building a new B.R.T. “The population of people who take the bus here is very diverse,” Huffaker said. “You can think of it as this branching tree,” Spieler said.īefore the pandemic, Pittsburgh was one of only a few metro areas in the U.S. Buses can enter and exit the dedicated roads, avoiding traffic-choked areas and improving service times.Ī dozen routes from all over the city join up on the busway to downtown. These busways are completely separate from car traffic and mostly hidden away. ![]() In 1983, taking advantage of unused railroad tracks, Pittsburgh built the East Busway, a longer bus-only highway that travels through several neighborhoods before ending in the middle of downtown. The new line will create important connections to the south side of Richmond which, they say, has suffered from the effects of redlining and a lack of investment. Officials now plan to build another rapid line running north to south. A big marketing effort to reach “choice riders” - people who could easily take a car instead - helped draw more than 7,000 people per day to ride the Pulse, said Adrienne Torres, the chief of staff at Richmond’s transit agency, more than doubling the ridership of the bus route it replaced. The Pulse cost approximately $8.5 million per mile to build light rail systems often cost more than $100 million per mile. The design says: These are not your typical buses. The stations were designed to blend into Richmond’s architecture. The Pulse buses are bright blue and green and run in the middle of the street on red lanes. Riders see real-time information at bus stops. Level boarding makes getting on easier, faster and more accessible. There are dedicated lanes in sections of the corridor, and buses receive signal priority at traffic lights. Funded in part by a federal grant, the Pulse incorporates many of the core components of B.R.T. In 2018, the route along Richmond’s busiest corridor was replaced with the Pulse bus. The most popular bus in Richmond was the 6, which ran through downtown and shared a six-lane roadway with cars. ![]() has already invested hundreds of billions of dollars in: roads. Improving bus systems also allows cities to take advantage of infrastructure the U.S. But rail projects are less flexible, can cost billions of dollars and may take decades to complete. There has been a bias, she said, toward heavy infrastructure projects that are seen as a spur to development. Light rail is sexy, streetcars are sexy,” said Ms. “For so many people, buses are just not sexy. Routes are unclear and buses typically arrive so infrequently that it is impossible to plan a trip that relies on them.ĭespite these disadvantages, buses are the most widely used form of transit in the United States, accounting for nearly half of all transit trips. In the U.S., buses often drive in traffic, where they are stopped by the same signals as cars, which practically eliminates their advantage over driving.īus stops can be hard to find - sometimes, they are nothing more than a signpost on the side of the road. The stigma against buses exists for good reason: They have not been set up for success.
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