East Liberty Transit Center
Team: Studio for Spatial Practice, The Design Alliance, Clear Story, CDM Smith, Sasaki, SAI
Client: Eastside Limited Partnership III
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Date : 2011 - 2016
Awards : Transportation Project of the Year, Engineers’ Society of Western PA
The East Liberty Transit Center project completely reconfigured an existing bus rapid-transit station on the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway. The project includes rebuilt bus platforms, a new pedestrian bridge and entry plaza, a bike parking facility, and close integration with adjacent mixed-use development. The existing station, opened in 1983, was surrounded by automobile-oriented infrastructure and dominated by an underutilized Busway access ramp. The new design converted the ramp into a new entry plaza with a landscaped path to the station platforms. The project also relocated and consolidated the station pedestrian bridges to create a unified station approach through the heart of the adjacent transit-oriented development (TOD), connecting East Liberty and Shadyside.
Design work included an initial TOD and Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) urban design study, followed by a conceptual design for the station and adjacent development, and finally, design architect services for the station reconstruction. The station project and adjacent development won a $15 million Federal Tiger IV grant in 2012. In the larger context of redeveloping East Liberty, the project successfully creates a new eastern gateway to the neighborhood and directly connects the Busway Station to the existing business district. These guiding design concepts were called for in multiple community plans dating back to the mid 1990s.
