Father Pitt

Click on the image for a PDF copy.

Update: The map above is Father Pitt’s latest map of Pittsburgh rapid transit. This article is kept here for historical reasons, but the map below is out of date.

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The new Transit Development Plan has changed [updated from “will change”] the names of the streetcar lines from route numbers to colors, which is so obviously sensible that Father Pitt wonders why no one thought of it before.

Here is Father Pitt’s revised map of Pittsburgh rapid transit, which takes the changes into account:

Once again, old Pa Pitt attempts to explain what he means by “rapid transit.” For Father Pitt, “rapid transit” is any form of mass transit that runs on its own dedicated track: in other words, what the Port Authority calls “fixed-guideway systems,” a lovely slice of terminology that would warm the cockles of a bureaucrat’s heart if there were any cockles in there. That includes trolleys or streetcars, the subway (which is just the streetcars running underground), and the inclines, all of which run on rails. It also includes the busways, which are completely grade-separated tracks that run like metro lines.

The HOV lanes on the Parkway North are included as “rapid bus” routes on the Port Authority’s new system map (available here in PDF format), but not here; see an explanation at the earlier version of this map.

So far we have what is, which old Pa Pitt is delighted to find is at least halfway to what ought to be. For the next step, Fathr Pitt will soon provide another map—one that shows how the Pittsburgh Metro ought to work.