Pittsburgh is planning to make a major capital investment in Junction Hollow and Hazelwood. The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) will be implementing a $28 million infrastructure project to manage stormwater run-off and address chronic flooding in lower Greenfield.
The City would leverage the PWSA work to more cost effectively implement several transportation improvements. This includes bike trail and landscaping improvements. A tunnel for bicycles is planned to pass under the railroad tracks by Panther Hollow Lake. Improvements to access of the Eliza Furnace trailhead from junction hollow are also planned.
The most controversial part of the project is to build a trail for a privately operated electric shuttle through Junction Hollow to connect Hazelwood Green with Oakland. The City would leverage the PWSA work to build the 0.4 mile trail cost effectively at a cost of $450,000 to give the shuttle a dedicated right of way. The trail would only be 15 feet wide. This capital expenditure is extremely cost effective compared with other developments that have been evaluated to give transit a dedicated right of way. For example, the East Busway extension study estimated it would cost $549 million for a 2.9 mile extension of the East Busway along the right of way aside the former Pennsylvania railroad. (This may be an overestimate as it is significantly more than the cost per mile for interstate construction).
A greater public expense will be to reopen and improve a closed 0.6 mile portion of Sylvan Avenue at $\$$2.65 million. This avenue will be used by the shuttle, but will include dedicated space for pedestrians and cyclists, improving the transportation network for these users. The existing portion of Sylvan Avenue that will remain open to private motor vehicles will also receive $2.2 million of upgrades and is part of the shuttle’s planned route.
The private foundations that are developing Hazelwood Green would then operate a private shuttle on this trail that would be free and open to the public. The foundations would make a multiyear commitment to fund operations. A justification for the foundation funding would be that transit service would facilitate attracting corporations or other occupants to the Hazelwood Green site. The operations costs are estimated to cost the foundations $17 million for the first five years of operation in the study phase mobility plan report.
The area in Junction Hollow is valuable public park land, so a private operator should only be permitted to operate a shuttle through it if it is open to the public either free, or with fares comparable to what the Port Authority charges. This should be a condition for DOMI to provide an operating permit to any future operator.
Supporting infill development for Hazelwood Green is good for Pittsburgh’s tax base, and for providing jobs for Pittsburgh residents. Infill development is better for the environment and easier to serve with public transportation than suburban sprawl.
It is good that planners are considering transit early in the Hazelwood Green development. A previous large development in Pittsburgh, Summerset at Frick, planned their development in a way that made it difficult to serve with transit. This was bad for traffic, public safety, and the environment. It is important that the city does not make a similar mistake as it develops Hazelwood Green.
If designed well, transit through Junction Hollow could have very low operating costs because of the dedicated right of way. The P1 and P2 Port Authority buses that operate on the East Busway are able to leverage their right of way to have the lowest operating costs per passenger of any bus service in Allegheny County. According to the 2018 annual service report, the P1 and P2 had a cost per passenger of $\$$2.41 compared with $5.64 per passenger for bus passengers overall.
However, two aspects of the proposed design fail to leverage the advantages of having a dedicated right of way. The first is using shuttles rather than full size buses. The second is limiting the speed of the shuttles to 15 mph on the dedicated right of ways.
The East Busway buses are able to have low operating costs for two reasons. The cost of providing service scales with cost per vehicle hour rather than cost per operating mile. Therefore, the faster the vehicles can travel, the lower the cost per vehicle mile. The buses on the busway average 27 miles per hour including stops according to the published schedule. This compares with less than 10 mph for many buses travelling in mixed traffic.
Schenley Park already has roadways with faster vehicle speeds than 15 mph. Boulevard of the Allies has a 35 mph speed limit, but the road has a much higher design speed resulting in many vehicles speeding faster than 50 mph. This creates nuisance noise for hikers in Panther Hollow and potential safety risks, especially for pedestrians crossing at Hobart Street. If vehicle speed in the park is a concern this should be the focus rather than limiting the speed of electric transit vehicles, which are much quieter and safer than private motor cars.
The shuttles under consideration would only have a capacity for 6 or 9 people depending on which model ends up being selected. This compares with a capacity for 40 seated passengers in the 40 ft buses that make up the majority of the Port Authority’s bus fleet. In the shuttle fact sheet provided on October 14, it states the shuttle will run with 10 minute headways for six hours of the day, and 15 minute headways the rest of the day. This means there is only a total capacity of 456 people per day with a six person shuttle (76 daily shuttle trips with six people each).
The study phase report estimates an initial ridership demand of 1,244 passengers per day. This will rise as Hazelwood Green is developed. The Hazelwood Green Long Range Transportation Plan estimates that the site will eventually generate 61,000 daily person trips. At Pittsburgh’s current transit mode share of 17% this corresponds to 10,500 daily transit trips. This may be an underestimate given a focus on increasing transit’s mode share with the site’s transportation planning. Most of these travelers will use routes other than Hazelwood to Oakland, but there is likely to be a significant increase in transit demand.
If a 6 passenger shuttle is used with 15 minute off peak headways, a group of a dozen college students wanting to take the shuttle to enjoy the southside waterfront would be enough to cause a 45 minute wait for the next available shuttle. This low capacity is the biggest potential problem with the concept. If it is possible to use larger capacity shuttles it would make the service much more useful. If shuttles typically pass passengers waiting at bus stops because they are full, many potential passengers will be disinclined to use the service. If feasible, a 15 passenger shuttle would significantly increase the system capacity, but it may still be necessary to reduce the headways compared with what is proposed to meet demand. This would require additional operations subsidies from the foundations that could potentially be used more effectively by contracting the Port Authority to provide alternative transportation.
Unfortunately, the planned shuttle trail through Junction Hollow is not wide enough to accommodate the full size buses necessary for efficient service. If ridership demand materializes it may be possible to build bus rapid transit through the hollow by acquiring the right of way to one of the rail lines. Only one of the two rail lines (the one closest to Panther Hollow Lake) is currently in use. If the shuttle trail is developed in such a way that it facilitates construction of BRT through this corridor in the future, this would greatly increase the merits of the development.
There are slope stability issues on Sylvan Avenue that would prevent ever running full size buses on that right of way. If the shuttle service is ever replaced with bus rapid transit, Irvine/2nd Avenue would be used rather than Sylvan Avenue.
Pittsburghers for Public Transit (PPT) has proposed alternative expenditures for the available funding.
On my blog, I have previously written in favor of some of these types of infrastructure, including better traffic calming and street safety infrastructure, signal priority for transit, and better bus shelters. Ideally funding could be found for these improvements regardless of whether the shuttle is developed.
PPT also suggests expanding service of the 75 and 93 buses. This service expansion would provide similar travel times in-vehicle as the shuttle, with shorter travel times between some destination pairs and longer travel times for others. The service frequency would be slightly lower for the Port Authority service though, with approximately 12 minute peak headways and 40 minutes off-peak instead of 10 minutes peak/15 minutes off-peak for the shuttle. However, the vehicle capacity would be much greater, so there would be little risk of passengers unable to board because the vehicle is full. The operations cost of this expansion ($1.1 million/yr) would be considerably less than the operations subsidy the foundations are planning to contribute to the shuttle, although considerably more than the public funding for shuttle right-of-way capital costs. It would therefore be more cost effective to sustain this expansion with public money in the future if the foundations ever stop contributing to transit operating funds.
One potential problem with this approach is that the Port Authority’s garages are at capacity. Therefore, while off-peak service could easily be expanded with an increased operations subsidy, increasing peak service to Hazelwood may necessitate cuts elsewhere in the system. One possible solution may be to implement signal priority for transit buses throughout Allegheny County. The time saved at traffic lights would create spare transit capacity that could be used for a service expansion.
The shuttle service is probably a better municipal investment for the city of Pittsburgh if and only if the foundation’s $17 million of operations funding is contingent on building the shuttle infrastructure and cannot be repurposed to other transportation investments such as subsidizing a Port Authority service expansion.
Summary / Conclusion
- The shuttle service is the best plan on the merits only if it facilitates a more cost effective BRT corridor using standard size or articulated buses through Junction Hollow when the travel demand exists.
- If developing the shuttle does not make a future BRT system any cheaper or easier to develop, Pittsburghers for Public Transit’s suggested Port Authority service expansion, and other transportation improvements are marginally better if and only if the foundations are persuaded to reallocate the shuttle operating subsidy to the Port Authority, and the Port Authority has capacity to expand service.
- If the foundations are only willing to fund the operations of a shuttle, public money to support the shuttle’s right of way is better than a no build alternative.
