Background
Our partners include:
Port Authority of Allegheny County
Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission
Heritage WorkLink was created to assist the geographically isolated communities of the Mon Valley. Our goal is to help people to obtain and keep employment by reducing economic and geographic barriers. Some of the areas we serve have such narrow streets, steep hills, and tight turns that they aren’t accessible to buses, and many of our riders do not own cars. For example, Heritage WorkLink serves the Prospect Terrace community in East Pittsburgh where the nearest Port Authority of Allegheny County stop is a 1/4 of a mile walk from the bottom of 204 steps that are unlit, narrow, uneven, and broken. Imagine this commute with baggage or children in tow. It creates a very real barrier to finding and keeping a job or even accessing social services to become job ready. Many of the Mon Valley neighborhoods have similar transportation issues.
The Mon Valley is home to 10 of the 15 poorest communities in Allegheny County (2000 Census). The widespread economic distress in the entire valley means that residents must travel further for good jobs and have very little access to the extensive social services in their communities. In the current economy, low-income residents of the Mon Valley are quickly losing what little access they have to basic services. Without these services they will be forced to lose their jobs, move, or plunge their families into even deeper economic distress. In designing and running the transportation service, Heritage WorkLink staff realizes the need to address education and human service support systems that complement individuals’ ability to enter and be retained in the workforce. Job readiness can be just as necessary to finding a job as job availability. Heritage WorkLink plays a critical role in connecting community development, economic development, and human services programs to transportation — it connects the dots to create more sustainable families within the communities we serve.
Heritage WorkLink is funded through the Accessible Transportation and Workforce Interagency Cooperative.
Angela Brown
“I will be honest with you, if it weren’t for the WorkLink, I do not know how I would get back home at the end of the day.” For Angela Brown, a rider since 2008, Heritage WorkLink is a lifeline in the community. She uses the van to get from Clairton to McKeesport and to connect to Port Authority routes. Angela provides in home care for people in the Mon Valley region. WorkLink helps her to get to her client’s houses. If WorkLink did not exist Angela would have no alternative besides walking or taking an expensive jitney service.
She has seen the huge positive impact that Heritage WorkLink has had on the community. From the beginning she noticed how many people of different race, gender and age depend on Heritage WorkLink. She depends on the service to get her to work and back home, because without it she would have no other way.
