Father Pitt

The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, which in the Pittsburgh Metro scheme almost but not quite adopted by the Port Authority would be the Purple Line, is an almost unique phenomenon in “bus rapid transit”: real rapid transit, but with buses. Unlike the half-baked busways in other cities, Pittsburgh’s busways are true metro lines, with no at-grade crossings or mixing with street traffic. Cheery signs like the one above were put up all over the neighborhoods the busway serves when it first opened in 1983; many of them are still there, though they do not seem to be maintained or replaced. Below, we see the real secret of this busway’s success: it follows the railroad through a deep hollow in the middle of the city, giving it a subway-like grade separation without the expense of digging tunnels.