This week, the nonprofit Heritage Community Initiatives celebrated a quarter-century of providing bus service for dozens of eastern Allegheny County communities — and now, its leadership is using a recently completed analysis to make the service better.
Heritage’s bus service currently consists of three main routes covering just over 81 miles, serving several municipalities in the Mon Valley, spanning from Swissvale, Liberty, Wilkins, Monroeville and many places in between. There are 81 stops, and the nonprofit has an annual budget of just over $1 million to operate the system, according to Heritage President and CEO Paula McWilliams.
Of that, 85% is funded through PennDOT, and the other 15% is funded through local sources. The county has funded that remaining gap in recent years, she said.
On Tuesday, Ms. McWilliams, with other Heritage officials and partners, announced service enhancements to the system, along with a recently formed partnership with Pittsburgh Transportation Group, a company that provides the buses and drivers to operate the system. Molly Allwein, vice president of transportation services for Heritage, said during a news conference that some of those enhancements include full service on weekdays, Wi-Fi on all buses, a new data collection system to learn more about ridership patterns, and an app for riders to track where buses are. Heritage officials have also been able to maintain a 25-cent fare for rides.
Along with all the service changes, Ms. McWilliams said that she and others are currently reviewing an analysis completed by Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Regional Transit, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and national consultants on Heritage’s bus system.
That analysis concluded that the nonprofit could do better to improve its brand recognition and that minor route changes and times might be in order — but Ms. McWilliams stressed any discussions of potential changes are preliminary.
She and others said it’s important to consider the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on transit and how people use it to get around. According to data provided by Heritage, there were 87,255 rides provided from July 2019 through June 2020. That dropped to 42,283 rides from July 2023 through June 2024, although officials anticipate that number to rise by roughly 8% in the next 12 months, through marketing and community outreach.
That drop in ridership mirrors a drop in the nonprofit’s financial performance as reported in its IRS 990 forms. It ended fiscal year 2020 with 87,255 rides and $400,000 in the black, but ended last year with a $248,000 loss.
Ms. McWilliams said the recent analysis showed that perhaps there might not be much change in fixed routes but an increased need for microtransit, or meeting people where they are.
“Do you do on-demand only service? Do you run a circulator only within a certain area, so analyzing how that service is delivered? …We are in the midst of [looking at] that right now,” she said.
Public transit is key to economic development, she said, and where companies decide to locate can determine how service might be impacted, at least broadly, she said.
There’s also the challenge of operating a transit system in a post-COVID world. Juan Hernandez, GM of the Pittsburgh Transportation Group — the contractor providing service on Heritage’s routes — said many bus drivers across the region decided to retire during the pandemic. Finding bus drivers with good backgrounds and the proper licensing is now a challenge, he said.
Ms. McWilliams echoed that, noting along with education and nutrition — two other major sectors that Heritage operates in — transportation is a compliance-heavy industry.
“I think we were a little bit spoiled before, and we didn’t even know, didn’t even realize it, as far as having operators and bringing them in whenever we needed them,” Mr. Hernandez said.
He and others said it’s also important to continue marketing Heritage’s new rider app, in order to make riding on the system easier to use.
Ultimately, larger economic forces — how many people return to the office versus working remotely, whether employers require it, and where businesses locate — will determine what changes to service might occur, Ms. McWilliams said.
But in a system where almost 80% of riders don’t have access to a car, figuring out how to improve that service is vital, she said.
“It’s important to always keep your eye on the ball for efficient and effective service, and service delivery,” Ms. McWilliams said.
View the full article at post-gazette.com.