Pittsburghers for Public Transit

Pittsburghers for Public Transit is a transit rider and worker-led organization. We are creating a better transit system for everybody, for our city and our region, by organizing together as poor and working-class people in a multi-racial movement for transit justice. The goals of Pittsburghers for Public Transit are: 1. To win tangible policy changes to materially improve people’s lives. 2. To develop a strong analysis of the broader political and economic systems that impact transit riders and workers. 3. To build power and community across race and class lines by organizing for visionary and achievable solutions. We believe that investing in public transit is essential to addressing our most pressing concerns around economic, environmental, and racial injustice. However, these investments must be thoughtful and conceived of through meaningful engagement with its primary constituents—the riders and transit operators. Process matters, because process informs outcomes, and transit planning from the top-down has long exacerbated existing inequalities. When we instead design a system that starts with transit riders and workers, we create outcomes that benefit everybody. Our lived experiences both using and running transit position us to best identify the problems and solutions that would meet our transportation needs. As an organization, PPT provides tools for us to collectively imagine and develop solutions to confront barriers, and then supports the organizing for these solutions.