Westmoreland County Transit will operate expanded service next week during the three days of the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh.
The authority’s plans include additional service on regular commuter routes that will operate later in the afternoon on April 22 and 23 and more late evening and early morning outbound trips back to Westmoreland County.
Additional service also will be added to provide more buses Saturday, the draft’s final day.
The full schedule can be found on the authority’s website.
“We’re really doing what we can and we can’t really put more out on the road. We wanted to have something available,” said authority Executive Director Alan Blahovec.
Service for the draft will mirror the authority’s regular routes. Four inbound and five outbound trips were added to the schedule for next Thursday and Friday.
The additional inbound trips to Pittsburgh are scheduled to leave from the New Stanton park-and-ride lot on Bair Boulevard at 1:45 p.m. 2:20 p.m., 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Those routes will travel into Greensburg to pick up riders at the Main Street parking lot and at the transit center behind the Bell garage before traveling down Route 30 to pick up riders at the Carpenter Lane park-and-ride lot in North Huntingdon.
Westmoreland transit authority buses will drop off riders at the end of the East Busway on Grant Street in Pittsburgh.
That is where all outbound riders will board for return trips to Westmoreland County.
Added trips out of the city begin at 8 p.m., resume at 10:30 p.m. and then operate hourly until 1:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The authority will augment its Saturday service to include three additional trips into the city starting at 8 a.m.; the last return bus is scheduled to depart Pittsburgh at 6:45 p.m.
While Pittsburgh Regional Transit received grant funding and donations to allow it to expand its service for the draft and offer free rides, Westmoreland transit received no additional allocations for its draft service.
Fares for Westmoreland riders to travel to Pittsburgh for the draft will remain unchanged from standard service — $6 per trip from New Stanton and Greensburg and $4 for riders who board buses in North Huntingdon.
Blahovec said the authority will schedule drivers for standby duty, if demand require additional buses to be deployed along the scheduled routes.
Organizers have encouraged the use of public transportation for those attending the three-day draft event. An estimated 500,000 people are expected to attend.
“There will either be no one using our service or people will be hanging out the windows. We just don’t know,” Blahovec said.
