Pittsburgh Regional Transit expects to begin final design soon for relocation of the Wilkinsburg Station on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway in 2025.
Moira Egler, project manager for transit-oriented communities, told the agency’s Planning and Stakeholder Relations Committee Thursday that planners have worked with residents in Wilkinsburg and Pittsburgh’s nearby Brushton neighborhood to design new stations in each neighborhood. Wilkinsburg’s station will be shifted more toward the borough’s Penn Avenue business district, and a new station will be built at Brushton and North Braddock avenues.
The agency has the $7.8 million it needs to proceed with final design and construction at Wilkinsburg, but funding is still pending for the Brushton project, Egler sad.
Right now, Wilkinsburg Station takes up a large piece of property and boards passengers near North Avenue. Egler said that site was designed primarily for park-and-ride passengers, but only about 55% of the spaces are used regularly.
The new boarding area, developed in conjunction with the borough and riders, will be “more pedestrian focused,” Egler said, by moving it closer to Penn Avenue. It will have two boarding platforms, one for busway-only buses and the other for suburban routes that pick up and drop off passengers at the station.
There will be elevators to help riders get from street level to the boarding platforms.
The current boarding area will be changed into a layover site for up to 15 buses, including charging facilities for electric buses that will be part of the Bus Rapid Transit system that will begin construction later this year.
Once the station is built, the site will have three parcels of land available for transit-oriented development. Developers will be asked for proposals, but the projects could include small apartment buildings with shops on the first floors.
The agency presented the community with two options and riders strongly favored this concept, Egler said.
Funding for the project includes a $5.4 million federal grant to mitigate pollution, a $2.1 million state grant and $257,000 from Allegheny County.
Relocating the Wilkinsburg Station gives the agency the opportunity to add another station at Brushton Avenue, which is adjacent to the Wilkinsburg site now but far enough away to have its own stop when Wilkinsburg is moved.
The proposal includes a walking trail from the Wilkinsburg parking area to the Brushton station. With no funding identified or projected cost yet, that is a long-range project.
After it is finished, the agency could consider a pedestrian bridge above the busway and railroad tracks to improve access to the stop.
The stations are part of the agency’s Build on the East Busway initiative, which proposed adding stations at several sites. Another one is under preliminary development at Centre Avenue and Baum Boulevard in Shadyside but the agency is rethinking a station in Larimer near Bakery Square because of limited property there, spokesman Adam Brandolph said.
Ed covers transportation at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at eblazina@unionprogress.com.