Pittsburgh Regional Transit CEO Katharine Kelleman put the message out there for commuters regarding the Parkway East closure: “Don’t drive.”

I decided to take her up on it.

I soon learned I was hardly the only one.

Public transit sometimes gets a bad rap around here. I wanted to see and feel the experience for myself.

At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, I hopped in my vehicle and set out from my Forest Hills home, headed for the East Busway’s Swissvale Station. My eventual destination: the Trib’s Pittsburgh office at the D.L. Clark Building on the North Shore.

The Swissvale Station’s park-and-ride lot on Vernon Avenue has 163 spaces. I needed just one.

I pulled into the free lot. First section: full. Second section: full. I rounded the corner and found the last of two open spots. It was 8:46 a.m.

Score! I felt like I had cleared the first level of the Parkway East closure survival game. The commute was turning into a real-life Mario adventure — car to bus, bus to train, then on foot — all while trying to avoid the fire-breathing dragon known as the dreaded Parkway East.

I parked and headed to the benches to wait for a P-1 bus that would take me Downtown via the busway. I took a seat at 8:50 a.m. and finished listening in to our morning budget meeting on my phone.

Around me, commuters stared at their phones, sipped coffee and waited for the ride Downtown — a small glimpse of what could become a much bigger routine for drivers looking to avoid Parkway East headaches.

At 9:06 a.m., a bus pulled up. I paid the $2.75 fare using the PRT Ready 2 Ride app — extremely convenient — boarded and found a seat. Because the route starts at the Swissvale station, the bus was only about a quarter full when I boarded.

By the East Liberty Station, five stops later, the bus was standing-room only.

Inside, the bus felt clean, with blue-patterned seats, stainless steel poles and wide windows creating a comfortable commuter space. Passengers settled into rows of seats or held onto overhead straps.

I chatted with a woman who said the buses seemed a little more crowded than usual since the parkway closure began, but not uncomfortably so. So far, she said, the increase in riders hadn’t been too bad.

We entered Downtown Pittsburgh by Penn Station at 9:26 a.m. Twenty minutes of busway ride time. Pretty impressive.

Built along a former railroad corridor, the East Busway is separated from general traffic, allowing buses to bypass congested roadways and provide faster service. The stops are the only interruptions while zipping Downtown.

“It definitely creates a bus superhighway,” PRT spokesman Adam Brandolph told me. “The East Busway has long been a vital link to and from the eastern neighborhoods and suburbs. If you know, you know.”

Now I had to make my way to the North Shore. I exited the bus on Grant Street and walked about two blocks to the Steel Plaza station for the light rail system, or as you and I know it, the T.

It was 9:32 a.m. A train arrived at 9:39 a.m. Three stops later, I was at the North Side Station next to PNC Park.

I walked the rest of the way to my office, arriving at 9:52 a.m. (We keep long hours at newspapers, so I wouldn’t consider myself late for work. Plus, I already sat through one meeting.)

It was sweltering during the walk to the office — no fault of PRT’s, of course.

From my driveway to the office, the trip took about 1 hour and 22 minutes — including driving to Swissvale, finding a parking spot, waiting for the bus, walking and transferring to the T.

The commute home was much quicker — I happened to arrive at the T and bus stop just as the train and later the bus arrived. I got home in 50 minutes.

I quickly realized there was an art to navigating the system and shaving time off the commute. For example, I could have gotten off the bus near the Gateway T Station instead of Steel Plaza and cut out some walking and the transfer wait.

Like anything, the more you use it, the more you learn the shortcuts.

I also avoided the Parkway East, skipped the detour traffic and spent most of the trip reading emails and texts instead of staring at brake lights. A colleague, coincidentally, sat in detour traffic for about an hour and a half Thursday.

Next time, I’ll leave the house earlier in the morning.