Pittsburgh’s hidden T station is getting new life. Is there a future?

Maryn Formley’s niece called her in a panic on March 2. She was stuck in Downtown Pittsburgh, trying to get home from work on the bus, but a protest had created a detour that Saturday.

A seldom-used light-rail transit station in Pittsburgh saved the day.

Formley’s niece called from outside the Greyhound bus station on the edge of Downtown. Formley, who lives in Brookline, told her to walk to a nearby LRT station and take a train (the “T”) to Station Square, where she would pick her up.

While on the phone, her niece said she spotted a T train pulling up behind The Pennsylvanian, the building across from Greyhound.

Formley was surprised. That’s not where any current Downtown T stations are located. But she remembered that years ago, a T stop had been there.

“I told her, ‘They don’t use that anymore.’ But she spoke to the driver, and he said he was going to Station Square,” Formley recalled.

Her niece hopped on the T at what’s called “Penn Station” — a seldom-used light-rail stop alongside the East Busway stop and the Amtrak station. In just a few minutes, she rode the rail through Downtown, over the Panhandle Bridge and on to Station Square. Formley picked her up.

Direct transfer from the T to the busway ???? I wish this was a regular thing, not just a detour! pic.twitter.com/oQDmwkpF27

— Amy rides an ebike (@thewildamy) February 4, 2024

Formley’s niece took advantage of a recent quirk in Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s service.

The agency has started a $150 million reconstruction and upgrade project for its light-rail lines and stations. While work Downtown was being completed on some weekends and other low-service times over the past months, PRT ran light-rail cars to Penn Station from Steel Plaza. Riders could take a shuttle bus to and from Gateway Station.

For about seven weeks starting after the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home opener on April 5, Penn Station will be in constant use while construction work Downtown is completed.

The temporary service to Penn Station rekindles light-rail to northern Downtown for the first time since 2008, when the agency ran a few afternoon trips on weekdays, said PRT spokesman Adam Brandolph.

For PRT officials, the use of Penn Station helps the agency limit detours, but the change is not seen as permanent. For transit riders who spoke to TribLive, the new station has boosted their spirits — either for additional convenience, the novelty of a new trip, or the glint of hope for expanded transit service.

Penn Station history

Light-rail cars travel from Steel Plaza station, which is underground, along a tunnel up to Penn Station, which is aboveground.

This tunnel, completed in 1829, was originally part of the Pennsylvania Canal, which was the fastest way to travel across Pennsylvania before the Pennsylvania Railroad came along.

When most of the canal was replaced with the railroad between the 1860s and 1900s, the tunnel became part of the Pittsburgh & Steubenville Extension Railroad.

Eventually, Penn Station and the canal tunnel were included in the great debate about “Skybus” in the 1960s and 1970s, said Brandolph. Skybus was a proposed network of elevated, automated bus lines across Allegheny County using technology created by Westinghouse.

Skybus never came to fruition.

The East Busway, which opened in 1983, has a station right next to the Penn Station light-rail stop. Tracks were laid from Penn Station as part of the Red Line, which opened in 1987.

Brandolph said the original route to Penn Station began operating in 1983 when Port Authority (the former name of Pittsburgh Regional Transit) ran streetcars. Modern light-trail cars were introduced to the route in 1987.

For several years, the spur shuttled riders daily between the busway and Steel Plaza. It stopped in 1993, a casualty of budget cuts, Brandolph said.

After 1993, Brandolph said, the spur was used for a couple of trips on weekday afternoons. Those trips were also halted by 2008 after budget cuts.

The Penn Station spur was never notably efficient.

Brandolph said the spur has only one set of tracks because the tunnel runs between foundational pillars of the U.S. Steel Tower.

“Operators need to ‘switch ends.’ That means they literally walk from one of the light-rail car to the other to travel in the opposite direction after they arrive at the station,” he said.

In 2018, PRT made repairs to Penn Station, including new cement finish and tactile pavers, a public address visual messaging board and rail-specific technical upgrades.

That allowed Penn Station to see some new life, intermittently, for special events like the Pittsburgh Marathon and for emergencies, Brandolph said. He said these occasional rides have attracted some fans.

“A lot of transit fans go to Penn Station on Marathon day,” he said. “They enjoy seeing the multimodel aspect of that station since it connects with the busway and is very close to the Amtrak station.”

New fans

Penn Station has gotten even more use recently, thanks to construction projects. It is already building a fan base.

Several people told TribLive they have used the spur over the last couple of months.

Amy Zaiss of Beechview said the Penn Station spur has benefited her greatly. A regular Red Line rider, she doesn’t own a car. She has already taken advantage of the station’s seamless transfers to the busway and to Amtrak.

She recalled a trip where she took light-rail to Penn Station, then walked a few feet to the busway stop and caught a bus to East Liberty. The whole trip took about 25 minutes, she said, which is easily just as fast as driving between Beechview and East Liberty.

“In my experience, it is a really helpful transfer. I do go to the East End quite a bit,” said Zaiss, 37.

She said the ride up from Steel Plaza to Penn Station is pretty quick and has a great view of The Pennsylvanian, the Beaux Arts style building from 1900 that once housed the Pennsylvania Railroad headquarters. It’s now a mixed-use office and residential space.

Zaiss said she has observed some confused people when the train pulls up to Penn Station, but she hasn’t experienced any major inconveniences.

Allen Warren, a digital editor at WTAE, said he has used the spur twice since the fall. He liked Penn Station’s proximity to Amtrak.

“I used it about two weeks ago to take my sister to the Amtrak station,” he said. “It made things very easy to be able to take the T there.”

Julian Xie of Oakland was a bit surprised when he rode the T to the spur in February.

He was traveling to Mt. Lebanon to take singing lessons on a Sunday in early February. On his way home, the T continued to Penn Station instead of turning to Wood Street station, Xie’s stop.

Xie, 30, took his bike on the bus and light-rail, and so he rode his bike to Seventh Avenue to catch a bus back to Oakland, which he said didn’t bother him much.

“It was unexpected, but it didn’t add time to my journey,” Xie said. “In some ways, it was easier than other times.”

Xie said getting his bike up and down from Steel Plaza or Wood Street stations is difficult. Penn Station is at ground level, which makes it easy to exit with a bike.

He said he is mostly a bus rider, but bringing his bike on the T is much easier than putting it on the racks at the front of a bus.

Xie said he would love to see the Penn Station spur used regularly, especially if more bus routes used the busway. He said the transfer from busway directly to light-rail would make it easier for him and many others to get from the East End to the North Shore or South Hills.

He also said public transit access to the Amtrak station could be improved.

“Whichever is faster and more frequent in real life is what I would use,” Xie said.

Is there a future?

Brandolph said there are no immediate plans to continue regular use of Penn Station after Downtown light-rail construction is completed.

He said that before the pandemic, when overall transit ridership was higher, there were discussions to reopen Penn Station. But those talks have been tabled due to the extensive projects on the rail system over the next few years.

A proposal to run light-rail from Penn Station through Pittsburgh’s Allentown neighborhood to the South Hills Junction station was included in PRT’s long-range plan, a document that includes many ambitious proposals across the transit network.

Chris Sandvig, executive director of the transportation advocacy group Mobilify, said new life for the station could be warranted in the near future.

He said Amtrak is adding a second, daily passenger train trip between Pittsburgh and New York City and that could add demand for transfers to the region’s light-rail network. Pickups for Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses can cause traffic congestion; adding a light-rail station there could alleviate some of that.

“The opportunity is staring us in the face,” Sandvig said. “If we have this transfer point to get to rapid transit to points east and south, how much would that alleviate any worries about getting to Greyhound and Amtrak without a car?”

A light-rail stop at Penn Station could also align with PRT’s plan for a Downtown Transit Center, if the agency decided northern Downtown was a good fit, said Sandvig.

Beyond just reopening Penn Station permanently, extending light-rail from Penn Station due east has also been discussed.

According to a U.S. Department of Transportation report from October 1987, the busway was originally meant as an interim solution to provide high-capacity transit through that corridor. The report said that fixed-rail transit along the busway could be built at a later date.

Brandolph said there have been several proposals to extend the tracks beyond Penn Station, including adding light-rail tracks on top of the busway, or adding a third rail next to the freight rail tracks that run along the busway.

He said that could mean replacing the buses or running trains alongside them. There is also a proposal to extend tracks along the busway to 26th Street in the Strip District, and potentially run light-rail up the Allegheny Valley Railroad tracks through the Strip District, Lawrenceville, Oakmont, Verona, New Kensington and beyond.

All would require very large sums of money, and many would need to undergo extensive negotiations with private rail companies, which own the rail lines.

New routes or additions would have to compete with the documented success of the East Busway.

The busway that runs from Penn Station through the city’s East End and along to Wilkinsburg and Swissvale is the most used transit corridor in the PRT system. It averages about 9,400 riders a day, according to agency data. The agency’s three light-rail lines combined average about 9,900 daily riders.

Brandolph said the East Busway is also the most efficient line in the system and that running light rail along the spine would be more costly than buses. He added that the busway is also used daily by emergency vehicles, and has been used as a valuable staging area for parades and other events.