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The majority of Oakland’s transit routes run along Fifth Avenue’s two bi-directional bus lanes and Forbes Avenue. The Port Authority of Allegheny County (PAT) estimates that over 60,000 bus riders pass through Oakland on a given weekday, with 23,000 embarking or disembarking in Oakland. Seventy municipalities with 370,000 residents have direct bus service to Oakland.

A survey of 43,000 institutional employees by the Oakland Transportation Management Association (OTMA) found that 44 percent used public transit at least one day per week. With one full bus equivalent to 40 cars, transit is a key piece of infrastructure. Public transit is particularly important to low-income residents, young people, seniors and students, many of whom rely on public transportation in order to get to work or access services. Since the late 1990s, the full-time students, faculty and staff of Carnegie Mellon University and of the University of Pittsburgh can use their institutional ID cards as bus passes.

Over 50 percent of all trips between Oakland and Downtown occur by bus, making the Downtown-Oakland corridor one of the busiest transit corridors in the region. It is also one of the best served corridors with buses scheduled to run every two to three minutes during the weekday. However the lack of continuous, dedicated lanes and real-time arrival information makes it impossible for passengers to reliably know when a bus will arrive at a designated stop. Buses running at full capacity and unable to pick up additional passengers is another issue during rush hour for the 61 series bus line through Oakland, and is particularly arduous for bus riders during the cold winter months.

There have been several studies and proposals for Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Bus Rapid Transportation (BRT) service between Downtown and Oakland. Most recently, the Port Authority proposed a variation of BRT called Rapid Bus Service (RBS) in their 2009 Transit Development Plan (TDP).

The proposal would convert nine existing bus lines (28X Airport Flyer, 61A East Pittsburgh-Wilkinsburg, 61B Braddock-Swissvale, 61C-McKeesport-Homestead, 61D Summerset, 71A Negley and their variants) to Bus Rapid lines. With coordinated schedules and transit signal priority, these routes would provide rapid service between Oakland and Downtown every two minutes during peak periods and every four minutes during off-peak periods.

The seven proposed stops within the study area would be Fifth Avenue near Carlow University and Magee Hospital; Fifth Avenue near UPMC Montefiore; Fifth Avenue at the University of Pittsburgh Student Union/Cathedral of Learning; Craig Street at Forbes Avenue; Craig Street at Fifth Avenue; Craig Street at Centre Avenue; and Forbes Avenue near Morewood Avenue/Carnegie Mellon University.

The Port Authority’s 28X Airport Flyer route runs along the Fifth-Forbes Corridor. The average daily ridership is over 1,000 riders and at peak university travel times, inundating the route’s maximum bus capacity. In addition to the 28X and the 61 series, the Port Authority operates the 84A and 84B routes which provide local service within Oakland and adjacent neighborhoods. In 2004, ridership on the 84A averaged over 1,100 weekday riders and just under 1,400 weekend riders during the school year.