University Line’s new Downtown Pittsburgh stations open

They aren’t quite finished, but five new bus stations for the University Line will open in Downtown Pittsburgh Sunday to replace a series of temporary stops on the system that opened last month and eventually will connect Oakland and the Golden Triangle with exclusive bus lanes.

Pittsburgh Regional Transit began using the bus lanes in Downtown last month before the stations were available. Now, riders can use the seating and shade provided by the shelters, but other amenities such as ticket vending machines and screens showing when the next buses will arrive aren’t finished yet.

When the University Line is finished, the $291 million Bus Rapid Transit system will have buses go inbound from Oakland on Fifth Avenue and outbound on Forbes Avenue. Four bus routes – 61A, B, C and 71B – will follow a loop through Downtown on Fifth to Liberty Avenue to Sixth Avenue and out on Forbes.

The new stations will be at Fifth and Ross Street, Fifth and William Penn Place, Fifth and Market Street, Sixth and Wood Street, and Steel Plaza at Sixth and Grant Street. The stations were surrounded with fences until early Sunday morning so riders wouldn’t think they already were open, and crews were scheduled to remove the fences before the start of service on Sunday morning.

The G2 route that serves the West Busway will use that loop, and stations from a different entry point and the P1 on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway also will use three of the stops.

CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman said the University Line is the culmination of more than 15 years of planning by the agency. Initially, it was going to require all riders to transfer in Oakland and eliminate some suburban service, but public protest led to revamping that approach shortly after Kelleman arrived in 2018 by ending the transfer requirement.

Currently, the agency is struggling to get additional state subsidy funds from the state – 35% service cuts are looming in February if that doesn’t happen – and Kelleman used the opening of the stations to highlight the benefits of public transit in remarks to the board of directors meeting on Friday.

“This is what … This is A TASTE of what we can accomplish when we invest in public transit,” she said.

In addition to the stations and exclusive lanes, the first phase of the project included the replacement of a series of traffic signals and revamping intersections in the Downtown business district.

By early next year, four of the new stations will have ticket-vending machines and arrival screens, Chief Development Officer Amy Silbermann said. The Ross site won’t sell tickets because it is expected to have mostly arriving passengers and few departures.

The second phase of the project, which includes 18 stations in Uptown and Oakland as well as new traffic lights, sidewalks and intersection improvements in both neighborhoods, began in January. The system is scheduled to be finished in 2027.

The goal is to provide more efficient, reliable service by eliminating the problem of buses getting stuck in rush-hour traffic that resulted in delays with buses being bunched together at one point and creating large gaps at other points in the schedule.