Jim Swindal has been riding Pittsburgh’s light rail system for nearly 20 years, and in that time he got used to seeing familiar faces on his daily commute from Mt. Lebanon to Downtown Pittsburgh.
Instead of the usual crowd and train cars brimming with passengers, he now often looks at empty seats and barren parking lots. There’s “no question” that things have changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, especially at the Castle Shannon station’s parking lot near where he lives.
“You go by there, you think it must be a weekend. No, it’s a weekday,” Mr. Swindal said, a reflection of the “profoundly lower” number of people who he said now take the T each day.
Many Pittsburgh-area residents have stopped taking public transit during the week — as of the end of June, average weekday ridership is down by half this year across the Pittsburgh Regional Transit system, compared with the three years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
A Post-Gazette analysis of ridership figures shows diverging trends across the system — the pandemic transition for many to remote work has depleted ridership, even as those who must work in person or don’t own cars continue to rely on public transit.
With steady levels of remote work, PRT’s “flyer” express buses and three light rail routes have experienced some of the largest drops in weekday ridership across the system, down about 64% and 76%, respectively. These routes typically service more upscale communities, and residents do not have jobs that require an in-person presence, unlike service work.
The Y1 Large Flyer, which runs along Route 51 from towns like Jefferson Hills and Brentwood toward Downtown Pittsburgh, has seen about an average of 13% of its pre-pandemic weekday ridership. The P13 Mount Royal Flyer to Etna, Shaler and Ross has seen an average weekday ridership of about 300 before the pandemic drop this year to just 54 — about enough to fill one standard 40-foot bus.
Mary Beth Ryabik said the number of people riding light rail seems to change depending on the day. Since moving earlier this year to the Pittsburgh area, she mostly telecommutes and rides the Silver Line one day a week.
“Sometimes it’s pretty full and then other times it’s sparse. It just kind of varies,” she said.
Companies are adopting varied remote work policies, with some thinking about whether it’s worth it to bring workers back to the office full time. Highwoods Properties, the North Carolina company that owns PPG Place and EQT Plaza, announced this month it intends to sell the buildings and leave the Pittsburgh market. A report released this month from Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory firm, said the vacancy rate for the overall Pittsburgh office market stands at 22.1%, up significantly from past years
PRT officials have said they are trying to adapt to these upheavals, and CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman said last October that “the ridership world we had on March 13, 2020, is not coming back.”
The system has historically been structured around 9-to-5 commuters traveling to Downtown and Oakland, according to Ellie Newman, PRT’s section manager for service development. She said that’s also “the main thing that we haven’t seen return.”
But Ms. Newman noted that weekend ridership is making a better recovery than the work week. The Post-Gazette analysis found that average Saturday ridership is only down about 35% compared with before the pandemic, 16 points better than the 51% drop seen during the week.
“We’ve seen strong weekend ridership, we’ve seen strong mid-day ridership, fairly strong late-night ridership,” Ms. Newman said. “But we haven’t really seen that peak demand come back anywhere near what we were seeing.”
But tens of thousands of riders — many of whom don’t own cars and work service jobs they can’t do from home — still flock to the PRT system every day, with buses and trains providing a critical service.
Teaira Collins said she commonly takes the 93, which goes from Lawrenceville through Oakland to Hazelwood, to visit her family, get to appointments and go shopping. The Post-Gazette analysis found the route has retained about 80% of its pre-pandemic ridership, more than most routes, and an average of about 1,500 people take it during the week.
“That bus meant a lot to me and the people that live over there,” said Ms. Collins, of the Hill District.
Ms. Collins spearheaded a petition effort last fall to add weekend service, as she said no buses on Saturday and Sunday left some residents stranded without essential transportation.
The petition succeeded, and the 93 now runs about every 40 minutes over the weekend.
Ms. Collins said that while adding service on the 93 route was a step in the right direction, what she finds to be inconsistent service times and fewer buses out on the road impair residents' day-to-day schedules and is making public transit more inaccessible.
After 75 employees were fired and 15 retired due to PRT’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the agency said it had 48 fewer operators on the roads. PRT then reduced service by about 4% in June, which agency officials said was “a strong step to make sure our schedules are reliable for riders” and reduce missed trips.
“Everyone's being affected, but the people who have been affected the most are the people who live in low-income neighborhoods,” Ms. Collins said.
A redesign needed
Average weekday ridership on non-flyer bus routes like Ms. Collins’ is down about 45% compared with before the pandemic, performing stronger than the system as a whole, with some routes doing even better.
The 1 Freeport Road, which runs up the Allegheny River from Downtown to Tarentum, is only down about 18%. The 64 bus, which connects Lawrenceville through Squirrel Hill to the Waterfront shopping district in Homestead, has seen just a 22% decrease.
Dan Yablonsky — a spokesperson for Pittsburghers for Public Transit, a local public transit advocacy group — said public transit options should be redesigned for individuals who still rely on buses and trains to get around, like service workers who don’t have a remote option. He said PRT should consider cheaper fares and increased frequency for these riders.
“Our systems were planned around that idealized 9-to-5 worker, and the pandemic showed us that it wasn't sustainable, and it has left many outside of the ability to even access transit,” he said.
Ms. Newman said PRT is working to better serve people who “use the bus to connect to their whole life.” She said one example of this was increasing service from hourly to every half-hour on the 59 Mon Valley.
“We actually doubled frequency on that route and saw fairly high ridership,” she said. “We actually were able to stimulate ridership by adding that all-day, moderate frequency.”
PRT is working to target “people that depend on transit to access all areas of their life,” in part, with a renewed emphasis on service reliability. Ms. Newman said this includes making sure every scheduled bus is out on the road and runs on time, so that “when people do choose the bus, that it actually shows up when it’s supposed to show up.”
PRT will start a project later this summer to re-evaluate how buses flow through Downtown, in an effort to improve efficiency. It will also begin a full redesign of the bus network next year to try and best meet current rider demand.
“We’re going to be taking a much more systematic look at how we can adjust our service to meet the needs of where people are actually going and what times they’re trying to get there,” she said, “rather than what we used to do before this world got turned upside down.”
Jon Moss: jmoss@post-gazette.com; Twitter: @mossjon7; 412-263-1542. Nick Pasion: npasion@post-gazette.com; Twitter: @nicholaspasion.
First Published: July 31, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: July 31, 2022, 7:33 p.m.
