Pittsburgh makes a top 15 commute city list... (Sharpsburg, Homestead: real estate, homes)

[Tiger Beer]

15 Cities for People Who Hate Driving and Long Commutes - Yahoo! Real Estate

Couple of the things it says:

• Daily ridership of 240,000 on its buses and light rail.
  
• One of the largest bus rapid transit systems in the country.
  
• Has three bus-only highways.
  
• Its light rail system has the 16th-most passenger miles traveled of any light rail in the country.

[Geeo]

Good article. Pittsburghers do take advantage of public transportation, which is very good in the city and first-ring suburbs. The T and busways make for a quick commute, and there is frequent service in the neighborhoods, especially during rush hours. It's much easier to board a bus or rail car and be able to read instead of sitting in traffic. Even though the commute may be a little longer, you get the sense of having more time rather than sitting at red lights or in crawling traffic. And it saves wear and tear on your car, which translates into $$$.

[bradjl2009]

Originally Posted by Geeo

Good article. Pittsburghers do take advantage of public transportation, which is very good in the city and first-ring suburbs. The T and busways make for a quick commute, and there is frequent service in the neighborhoods, especially during rush hours. It's much easier to board a bus or rail car and be able to read instead of sitting in traffic. Even though the commute may be a little longer, you get the sense of having more time rather than sitting at red lights or in crawling traffic. And it saves wear and tear on your car, which translates into $$$.

I do agree with you that there is a lot of service in the city, first ring suburbs, river towns (Sharpsburg, Homestead, etc), and the major malls, but the problem is for many people outside of using it for work, bus service is intolerably slow and annoying because of slow bus drivers, unruly impolite passengers, and one bus stop every 50 ft. These three things are more than enough to make many people choose to drive to places who even live along a bus line other than work.

[Geeo]

I agree that there are far too many bus stops. Their new transit plan that begins in March will cut the number of stops by a third, I believe. I think there are 17,000 stops now. It's a legacy of adding stops over the years and it's gotten unmanageable. It should help speed service. But there's not a lot one can do when the bus has to move with the flow of congested traffic, unless there is a bus lane or busway it can use.

[BrianTH]

I'd agree our public transit system is much more optimized for rush-hour commuters than for other purposes, which makes sense if you are dealing with severe resource limitations but can be frustrating. Hopefully the new transit development plan will be well-implemented and improve things a bit, but really we are going to need serious capital investment to significantly upgrade our public transit.

[szug-bot]

is the Freakstown Bus still famous for its angry, mean, riders?