Like the Crafton station, the Ingram station on the West Busway is almost exactly where the old commuter-rail station used to be.
The busways in Pittsburgh are extraordinary accomplishments that we seldom appreciate. They are true metro lines for buses, making it possible for commuters to rocket through crowded urban neighborhoods at expressway speeds. Father Pitt always thinks rail transit would be better, but Pittsburgh stands out both as the inventor of “bus rapid transit” and as one of the few cities where “bus rapid transit” was done right.
Most Pittsburghers probably don’t think of the busways as very interesting phenomena, so give old Pa Pitt a few moments of your time and he will try to make even a busway interesting.
First of all, Pittsburgh is one of the very few cities that did “bus rapid transit” routes as real metro lines for buses. The three busways—South, East, and West—don’t mix with street traffic or even have at-grade intersections.
Second, although the busways as busways are products of the late twentieth century, they all have roots much earlier. We started building the West Busway in 1851. It is a curious fact of our busways that they are almost one-to-one replacements for the old commuter-rail routes that started working in the middle 1800s. Even the stations are mostly in the same places; the Crafton busway station is just a few yards from where the railroad station used to be.
Part of the West Busway is a subway tunnel between Sheraden and Ingram. Construction on the Cork Run Tunnel began in 1851; after many interruptions; it was finally finished in 1865.
So if you ride the West Busway today, you are riding 174 years of history. Take time to think about that the next time you have to get somewhere, and you may conclude that even busways can be interesting as well as useful.
The West Busway crossing Crennell Avenue at the Crafton station. Camera: Olympus E-20N.Comments
