Group Gathers to Share Route 51 Bus Stop Dreams

It's not that the bus stops along Route 51 in Brentwood, Baldwin and Whitehall aren't functional. They're just not very good.

That is ... at least compared to what they could be.

Five students from the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture's Master of Urban Design program impressed an audience gathered at the Fairhaven United Methodist Church in Overbrook on Friday with their ideas for Route 51 bus stop improvements.

The biggest improvements? These wouldn't just be bus stops anymore; they'd be high-tech, self-sustaining "platforms" complete with bike racks, water fountains and solar panels to power LED lights, real-time bus schedules and even vending machines and cellphone charging stations.

And while the most practical idea offered by the students was using existing right-of-way space to add sidewalks near the stops—a big hit among locals attending the presentation—other ideas went as far as adjusting entire intersection alignments and developing residential and commercial properties around the would-be platforms.

The genesis of Friday's presentation was a conversation between the students' professor—Stefani Danes of Perkins Eastman architects—and Economic Development South (EDS) officials.

EDS, a nonprofit organization funded by local municipal governments and business owners in order to support the redevelopment interests of Brentwood, Baldwin and Whitehall boroughs and the Pittsburgh neighborhoods of Carrick and Overbrook, offered the Route 51 corridor (which touches all five neighborhoods) as an area of study for the students to work on for class credit.

And Friday's presentation—in front of an audience that included representatives from EDS and Port Authority of Allegheny County—served as the de facto outcome of that study.

"We're looking at comprehensive transit nodes along the entire corridor," said Stephanie Miller, manager of projects & initiatives at EDS. "We think there would be more ridership in this area if people could just access the bus stops."

And while Miller stressed that there is no funding yet in place to make Friday's presented ideas realities, she also stressed the importance of looking at big-picture, down-the-road possibilities like those conjured by the students in case funding ever does become available for them.

Resident Darlene Mead, who lives along the Pleasant Hills Borough portion of Grace Street near south Baldwin and uses the Route 51-Grace Street intersection to catch a bus to work most days, echoed Miller's comments about bus stop accessibility while also stressing the issue of safety.

The Route 51-Grace Street intersection was the site of a near-fatal pedestrian accident in February 2012, Mead pointed out, and in March 2012, a pedestrian was killed in an accident near the Route 51 cloverleaf, about two blocks south of Grace.

"Why does it take someone to get hit before something's done?" Mead said, referencing the installation of crosswalks at that intersection (and the nearby Route 51-Streets Run Road intersection) in August 2012.

But Mead said that there is still more to be done, particularly when it comes to lowering sidewalk levels for those with disabilities—she has one that makes it difficult to scale tall curbs, she said—and reducing the amount of wait time for pedestrians hoping to cross the busy state road.

"You couldn't get a wheelchair up those curbs," Mead said. "And if there's no cars hitting the sensor, you could be waiting there for 10 minutes to cross."

The students—Krutika Shah, Suzy Li, Ruchira Gaur, Ling Hong and Anshul Bhargava—proposed improvements (more like complete overhauls) for five specific bus stop areas along Route 51: Brentwood's Greenlee Road, Marylea Avenue/Delco Road, and Brownsville Road; Whitehall's Glen Elm/Beall drives; and Baldwin's Grace/Streets Run.

The students weren't necessarily given carte blanche for their ideas—they had to work with the existing spaces and work around or with existing structures—but they were not limited by budgets or bureaucracy.

For examples, most of the students proposed using empty spaces around their assigned locations as park-and-ride spots—enabling easier access and a larger, safer walking space—and some even proposed things like outdoor picnic areas, an outdoor movie screen and a water fountain, turning the South Hills into something more like South Side.

Port Authority oversees the bus stops that were studied by the Carnegie Mellon postgrads.

"Port Authority does a lot of work with CMU," said Wendy Stern, an assistant general manager for planning and development at the authority who as at Friday's presentation. "It's always enlightening to hear what the students' thoughts are."

Asked what would have to happen for some of the students' ideas to come to fruition, Stern said, "Money, obviously, is an issue with respect to Port Authority.

"Back in March of 2011, we cut about 15 percent of our service, so our highest priority right now, should money become available, is to restore some of the service that was cut. But, we recognize that we have to make the system very useful, convenient and friendly for customers, and it's these types of things (Friday's presented ideas) that help.

"Even though some of this might not be reachable at the moment, these are the kinds of things that could make our system more attractive, because not only do we want to accommodate our existing riders, but we want to create opportunities for new riders."

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