Central Connections
The central area is primarily the City of the Pittsburgh.
Overview
The goal of the NEXTransit Plan is an improved transit system, which will attract more riders, enhance mobility for Allegheny County residents, and support community development and redevelopment initiatives throughout the County. All projects are intended to build upon and improve our current transportation network to attract more riders, improve customer experience, enhance mobility, and support community development and redevelopment while promoting regional equity and accessibility.
The central is an area where the public communicated a great need for expanded and improved public transportation. It is imperative that our transit system keep pace with the growing need in those areas and provide efficient, safe and reliable public transit service.
Let’s talk projects in the central parts of Allegheny County!
We want to connect you to job centers, shopping destinations, residential areas, and schools. To do that we need to develop new or repurpose existing corridors as well as create connection points (hubs) to connect those corridors throughout the region.
For each project we’ve identified how it will change the rider experience, fulfill a transit value and/or meet our community’s current or future needs. When you see these icons, they are to let you know that this project addresses or advances these concerns or values.
Why these projects? Because they meet one of more of these criteria:
- Equity for At-Risk Populations - Areas where there are significant populations of people with higher need of public transit services, such as lower income communities, minority race or ethnicity communities, or older persons. For information on PAAC’s full equity analyses, click here .
- Population density and job density - Areas where lots of people and/or jobs are accessible by a single transit stop in a relatively short distance, making transit more easily used and more efficient.
- Trip Density - Areas that have high volumes of movement of people today, regardless of mode of transportation.
- Major Employment Centers - Areas with significant job clusters.
- Propensity - Areas where there is a high likelihood for a resident to actually take transit to take transit, based on several demographic indicators.
- Growth - Areas where where population has been increasing and/or new development is occurring or is anticipated to occur in the near future.
- Current Ridership - Areas where current PAAC ridership data supports change in infrastructure.
Look for these icons throughout, which indicate the presence of these criteria in a place or corridor.
Corridors
When we talk about corridors, we’re talking about the pathways, guideways, and streets that you use to travel from hub to hub. Corridor types could include:
- New Neighborhood Connections – Areas where the need to newly or differently connect two locations has been determined, but where an actual street, path, or other alignment between those two places is not yet known or obvious. These could be areas where, at lower volumes, a simple on street bus route is needed, or where, at higher volumes, infrastructure improvements are needed. This could be accommodated by many different transit modes depending on the volume, pathway, and topography of the areas to be connected.
- New High Capacity Transit (FG) – A new fixed guideway transit line (such as bus rapid transit [BRT]/busway, light rail, commuter rail, streetcar, or other mode on a dedicated corridor) or an extension of an existing rapid transit line (such as a busway or light rail line) which accommodates large numbers of riders.
- Street Upgrades (SU) – Improvements to existing streets to enhance the reliability, speed and appeal of bus service through installation of bus lanes, queue jumps, transit signal priority and enhanced bus shelters with amenities.
- Best Use Study – Evaluation of a currently underused or underutilized existing transit asset to determine how (or if) it should best be served by transit given cost-benefit analyses of operating service (including indirect benefits such as sustainability and equity).
For each corridor, we’ve identified how it will change the rider experience, fulfill a transit value and/or meet our community’s current or future needs.
Review the proposed corridors, and then complete the brief survey after the descriptions. We want to know your thoughts on each.
Corridors Survey
We want to hear your thoughts on these project. What projects are most important to you?
Connections
When we talk about connections, we are talking about transit hubs. Hubs are facilities that are designed to allow multiple transit routes to converge and provide a waiting area with amenities for transit riders. Hubs also include operating facilities such as layover locations for buses, and may include amenities for multimodal transportation connections such as bicycle facilities, microtransit options, trail connections, or parking.
For each hub, we’ve identified how it will change the rider experience, fulfill a transit value and/or meet our community’s current or future needs. In addition to hubs, we also have a few standalone projects (SA) which are areas identified as needing a connection between two routes or infrastructure upgrades have been identified and need to be put in place to improve mobility. There are also topography connectors (T) which is a method of connection in challenging topographic areas (gondolas, inclines/funiculars, elevators, etc.).
Review the proposed hubs, and then complete the brief survey after the descriptions. We want to know your thoughts on each.
Connections Survey
Anything Missing?
Tell us what we missed in the survey below.
Cityzen Poll
