More on bus stops…

Chris Potter at the Pittsburgh City Paper does an excellent job summing up the trade-offs at stake in trying to redesign the Port Authority network, as one person’s improvement is often times another person’s inconvenience.

Posted by: Ken Zapinski

Speeding up the T

The T is just too slow, says former Pittsburgher Jefferson Provost, who recently emigrated to Seattle. In commenting on my post about Pittsburgh’s plethora of bus stops, he says that his nine-mile daily express bus ride to downtown is faster than his old five-mile commute on the T from Dormont to Dahntahn.

The Port Authority’s consultant agrees, and says the slow speed (almost 20% slower than the average of the comparison cities) contributes to the relatively low usage rate. One reason for the slow speed is the number of stops. The T has an average of 2.9 stops per mile, while the comparison group average is just 1.8 stops per mile (Figure 6-1).

There’s another contributor to the slow speed, one that I had never thought of…

Posted by: Ken Zapinski