Just sticking up for my city of birth here... there's actually pretty good public transportation -- especially compared with Cleveland. The problem is, you were in pretty much the two parts of town where PT is absent -- the East side and the West side. Pittsburgh is aligned much more strongly on the North/South boundary, and the South Hills have a pretty extensive trolley system, the North Hills has a pretty extensive Express Bus system, and downtown has a pretty good peppering of both above and below-ground transportation.

However, if you're travelling East/West, you're pretty much in the minority, even today. When PT was being installed, the only things up and down the river E/W were Industrial sites, and all the people lived on the N/S axis.