In February 2022, Pittsburgh’s Mon-Oakland Connector Project—an autonomous shuttle proposal that would have spent $23 million of taxpayer dollars—finally died. Cause of death? Years of organizing by the advocacy group Pittsburghers for Public Transit that called attention to the fact that the project did little to serve the actual mobility needs of Pittsburgh residents. PPT is a grassroots organization of transit riders, workers, and residents who defend and expand public transit. In this episode, I spoke with the organization’s executive director, Laura Chu Wiens, about how PPT and allied groups successfully fought against the Mon-Oakland Connector and shifted public funds towards community-led solutions. Laura also shares her thoughts about how governmental agencies can build trust with and listen to communities. “If the city was taking the time to finally address mobility needs, why wouldn’t it be that they would’ve started with the things that would be so impactful and so obviously needed rather than investing in this tech-based solution.” - Laura Chu Wiens
In February 2022, Pittsburgh’s Mon-Oakland Connector Project—an autonomous shuttle proposal that would have spent $23 million of taxpayer dollars—finally died. Cause of death? Years of organizing by the advocacy group Pittsburghers for Public Transit that called attention to the fact that the project did little to serve the actual mobility needs of Pittsburgh residents.
PPT is a grassroots organization of transit riders, workers, and residents who defend and expand public transit. In this episode, I spoke with the organization’s executive director, Laura Chu Wiens, about how PPT and allied groups successfully fought against the Mon-Oakland Connector and shifted public funds towards community-led solutions. Laura also shares her thoughts about how governmental agencies can build trust with and listen to communities.
"If the city was taking the time to finally address mobility needs, why wouldn’t it be that they would’ve started with the things that would be so impactful and so obviously needed rather than investing in this tech-based solution.” - Laura Chu Wiens
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Hosted by Kapish Singla
Edited by Ali Lemer and Kapish Singla
Produced by TransitCenter
Music: “Comma” - Blue Dot Sessions
Disclaimer: Political views raised by guests on the podcast do not reflect the views of TransitCenter.
Kapish From TransitCenter I'm Kapish Singla. This is High Frequency. We're so glad to be back with you for season three of High Frequency. This season, we're featuring stories of advocates who have shifted the transit agenda in their cities towards projects that better reflect rider priorities. Pittsburgh, like many other cities throughout the mid 2010s, has worked to brand itself as a quote smart city. For transportation projects, this has meant that the city spent political capital on the Mon-Oakland Connector, an autonomous shuttle that would have ferried white collar workers between tech and research hubs in the city. But allocating taxpayer dollars to untested technologies like A/V shuttles does little to serve the mobility needs of communities today. The advocacy group Pittsburghers for Public Transit has been organizing against the Mon-Oakland Connector and for the types of transit improvements that Pittsburghers actually want: better sidewalks and more frequent bus service. By working with riders and allied groups to create an alternative community vision to the shuttle, PPT has successfully influenced Pittsburgh's mobility agenda and changed how the city engages with communities. To talk about how to build strong, effective coalitions and advocate for more equitable uses of public money, I spoke with the organization's director, Laura Chu Wiens.
Kapish Laura, I wanted you to get us started by telling us about the Mon-Oakland Connector project.
Laura The Mon-Oakland Connector project was fundamentally a project to build a $23 million road that was going to go through one of our largest public parks to connect the university system, Carnegie Mellon, with a large foundation owned former mill site called Hazelwood Green to help spur development on that site and to run autonomous shuttles between the universities and that development site.
Kapish And what was the reaction from local community members?
Laura Residents were really concerned in the corridor because they knew that they would become part of a roadway for these shuttles. But also in the path of further development and encroachment by these universities as they're looking for ways to expand their student footprint. Before the Mon Oakland Connector Project was proposed, the Hazelwood community had been abundantly clear about the mobility needs that they wanted to see served, and they had done that through service requests to our transit agency, through infrastructure requests to our city. And we've seen issues with broken sidewalks, with the lack of available bus shelters. Wheelchair users had to ride in the streets, and the city was proposing to build a $23 million road through a park to serve, frankly, the largest and most wealthy institutions in Pittsburgh, which are both the foundations and the universities. If the city was taking the time to finally address their mobility needs, why wouldn't it be that they would have started with the things that would be so impactful rather than investing in this tech based solution?
Kapish What are some of the solutions that community members proposed and why were they better than them on Oakland Connector?
Laura Working with residents, we developed what we called "Our Money. Our Solutions," which was this alternative plan, like what, the $23 million that would go to this roadway could be used to serve. Instead, looking at the proposed solutions brought forward by the community, which included extending one bus line, adding weekend service to another against the proposal to have the shuttle service. And by every metric: number of riders served by speed and efficiency, that community led solutions outperformed the shuttle. These shuttles, which were little toasters that we're going to serve something between 9 and 11 riders in one vehicle couldn't accommodate anywhere near the level of commuter traffic that this development site was anticipating seeing. And so it was a project that taxpayers would be investing $23 million in, which is the largest single infrastructure project the city was going to pay for that would almost immediately become obsolete.
Kapish Can you expand on how the community led solutions performed better on key metrics?
Laura One of the major gaps in access to food and grocery stores was the fact that a key bus line didn't run on weekends. So by having the service extend into the weekend, that would exponentially improve people's access to fresh food. It turns out, too, that people don't just want to go to the back side of a university. Like not everybody works there. Not everybody goes to one of the most prestigious universities in the country. There are many educational institutions that people could conceivably work at, but also several of the premier hospitals in the region. And so access to health care, also access to health care jobs was high on people's priority lists. You know, buses are great because they stop in many places and they serve many different kinds of needs all along the route.
Kapish What was the city's reaction to this campaign?
Laura For us, the point has never been just about saying no. And I think this is what the city and the developers and the universities always wanted to portray us and the resident opposition as is that we don't want nice things, we're anti-progress. And that's not true at all. We're saying the city can't come to us with a solution fully formed for a problem that nobody articulated. So our goal with the Our Money. Our Solutions. proposal was to reallocate that 23 million towards the basic needs that the residents have expressed wanting funded.
Kapish And how did PPT carry out the Our Money. Our Solutions. Campaign?
LauraThe residents came up with all of the strategies for pushing the city leadership and pushing the developers and the foundations. And so that included things like turning out in force to public meetings, doing marches, budget testimony to really talk about reallocating the money towards basic needs. We engaged the mayoral primary candidates, and that ended up being sort of the linchpin for this project, was really pushing them to take a stand on the issue. And one of the mayoral candidates that stood with us and really opposed this particular project and said, you know, transportation should remain public and it should be equitable, was the one who won and ultimately stopped the project.
Kapish What was significant about the 2021 Pittsburgh mayoral race, and how did the Mon-Oakland figure into the campaign?
LauraWe had a primary race that was an enormous upset. A Black state representative ran against our sitting mayor and won. He is our first Black mayor. He made it clear that he didn't support privatized mobility that would be competitive to public transit. It was one of the first major decisions that this administration has taken was to was to stop the project. One of the things that was interesting in the final meeting when the mayor just came to say that the project was dead and hear from residents, was how little the Mon-Oakland Connector was the point. All the residents really needed and wanted to do was to say for how long they have been left behind, and all the ways in which that neglect and inattention has caused pain and harm. And some of it was about mobility. But there are a lot of other things that folks hadn't been heard on and felt like they had been relegated to sort of a second-class status to this behemoth of a development site that was adjacent to them.
Kapish Laura, you were appointed to Mayor Gainey's Transition Committee on Infrastructure Environment. What have you been up to in that capacity?
LauraIn advance of joining the transition committee and maybe the impetus for getting seated... Pittsburghers for Public Transit worked closely with tenant organizations, you know, housing justice organizations, disability justice organizations to put forward some actionable, immediate policy demands. So we called it the "Pittsburgh 100 Day Policy Platform," really thinking about the zoning and land use investments that would allow people to live close to quality transit because our bus way is not moving anywhere. But people are transit riders are they're getting pushed away from that incredible asset every day, particularly Black riders. And so we need to have policies that really discourage the build out of parking, that encourage affordable housing, that encourage density.
Kapish What's at stake if the policy platforms aren't adopted?
Laura I was gonna say apocalypse because.... Well, just because if we don't get some mode shift goals met, then we're going to have a really hard time addressing climate change. I think that what's at stake, too, is trust, right? That the belief that governments can serve people, that that public money can be used for public good, and that we're not too deferent to private corporations, private institutions. And I think this is going to be a really hard agenda to buck because they're very powerful and they're very wealthy. But I do think that there is will, and I think that there is a huge amount of community that's ready to fight for it.
Kapish How do you think the new administration can foster that trust?
Laura So it's not really just like a kumbaya sort of thing. I think the healing looks like actually putting money and seeing shovels going, concrete being poured and bus shelters being relocated. I mean, I think that builds the trust and that it's an iterative process, right? We put forward a plan, the Our money, Our solutions plan. We put that together before the pandemic. So maybe now there needs to be some further conversation about where the investment should go now that people's commuting patterns have changed, now that grocery stores have closed and other destinations have opened. And I think a commitment to to that ongoing dialogue is just as important as putting the money and putting the work in to making projects happen.
Kapish Finally Laura, do you have advice for other transit advocates on how to steer a city or transit agency towards more impactful mobility projects?
Laura We have to organize, right? Like we actually have to be talking to the people that we are claiming to represent and we have to be organizing with them at the fore. And we have both led with the stories of riders, but also the real intelligence and policy chops that exist within our community to actually develop solutions that work.
Kapish Laura and I recorded this conversation in April. Since our conversation, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey released his transition plan, which largely aligned with the 100 Day Transit Platform that PPT and allied groups released back in December. Pittsburghers will continue to organize to ensure that these plans become actual projects. That's all for today's episode. I'm your host, Kapish Singla. This episode was edited by Ali Lemer and Kapish Singla. High Frequency is a TransitCenter production. For more information, please visit us at TransitCenter.org