Advocates for the Pittsburgh area’s Latino community want Pittsburgh Regional Transit to make service announcements on the T in both English and Spanish. Many Spanish speakers live in Beechview and rely on the train to get around, said Ricardo Villarreal, a board member for Pittsburghers for Public Transit who spoke with WESA as part of a conversation with the advocacy group Casa San José.
At a time when employers are struggling to find workers, Villarreal said, “We are a driving force for business,” in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. “Transit is so important for us because we are not in the position of buying cars or using Uber.”
Casa San José has asked PRT for language access changes before. But the group’s request has gained urgency since last winter, when a bridge outage created significant disruption on the T’s Red Line, which runs through Beechview.
PRT spokesperson Adam Brandolph said, “We are committed to ensuring that language is not a barrier to riding public transit.”
Its website, he said, is available in 133 languages, and “Some social media platforms we use to share important information about service are available in several different languages. Our customer service center has access to translation services.”
He added that the agency knows there is more to do and that officials are having internal discussions about how to reach people whose primary language is not English.
When pressed to explain the agency’s stance on bilingual announcements on the T, Brandolph said PRT is “looking into it,” but that officials wanted to craft a holistic approach that included other groups.
“Just because we are hearing from the Spanish-speaking community … that certainly doesn’t mean that we have to put them at the front of the list, so to speak.”
However, Brandolph acknowledged that Spanish speakers are the only group to approach the agency with the concern. And while he could not describe what language options the agency is considering, as those discussions are internal, he said PRT hopes to offer changes in 2023.
PRT frequently makes service announcements on Twitter, which can be translated into Spanish. But Laura Perkins, the emergency response organizer for Casa San José, said many of her constituents face technological barriers.
“When we talk about accessibility, and the folks that rely on public transit the most -- we need to provide services that are available to these folks,” she said.
Preliminary results from the 2020 Census — which by the U.S. Census Bureau’s own admission undercounted Latinos — found that while Hispanic populations in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County remain relatively small, they have grown by 67 percent and 87 percent, respectively.
While Casa San José would like to see a broad effort at inclusion, such as non-English language options at Connect Card machines, Perkins said they would like PRT to start with Spanish announcements on the T. The organization has offered to help translate and record messages, Perkins said.
