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Don't let that sour you on checking out Ben Avon moving forward, that Tudor style and other, statelier brick and mortar constructions are actually going to be more prevalent in that neighborhood than the other. Just happened to be the first one I found with a nice, big yard.
Very few of these smaller cities mentioned are really all that transit friendly. To live completely without a private vehicle, the transit must be excellent. This is something I know about because I haven't owned a car in over 20 years. I live 4 miles from downtown Boston in Everett, a very diverse working class city just northwest of the city. Compared to the popular Cambridge/Boston neighborhoods, rents are fairly reasonable here. Five different bus lines are close by, each one taking you to a mass transit station, from where you can get anywhere around Boston fairly quickly. And Boston itself is a walker's paradise. Most people take mass transit here, not just the poor. We also have the cold weather you like. 140 inches of snow last year. It can get hot in the summer but seldom for long stretches at a time. And of course, Boston has a lot more going on than those smaller cities, plus it's very safe for a big city. And yes, there are areas close to transit stations with yards. I guess it all comes down to money. It costs more to live here, but I'm not rich, and I survive ok. I think the higher rents are worth the access to great transit and cool places that can be reached rather easily without a car. You get what you pay for.
I'd love to live in Boston, but there's no way, with my wife's house/yard requirements and our budget. Maybe one day she'll get tired of yard work.
Pittsburgh has bus only lanes like the line on Euclid avenue with dedicated lanes and timed signals. Pittsburgh's East Busway is essentially a rapid line (buses go 55 mph and cuts through the densest part of the city). It also has its own ROW and no other vehicles use it.
Pittsburgh should have extended the T LRT onto the MLK East Busway route: the LRT has a (now inactive) subway branch to Penn Station where the busway begins. The right-of-way is there as well as the passenger density. While the buses are cool, the trains would have much higher load and performance abilities and would connect directly into subway through to Northside or Station Square and the South Hills LRT routes. So the MLK is a nice BRT, but it should have been rail. Unfortunately Pittsburgh decided to go on the cheap.
Pittsburgh should have extended the T LRT onto the MLK East Busway route: the LRT has a (now inactive) subway branch to Penn Station where the busway begins. The right-of-way is there as well as the passenger density. While the buses are cool, the trains would have much higher load and performance abilities and would connect directly into subway through to Northside or Station Square and the South Hills LRT routes. So the MLK is a nice BRT, but it should have been rail. Unfortunately Pittsburgh decided to go on the cheap.
There were solid reasons this wasn't done.
First, the lines that they paved over when the East Busway was built were heavy gauge rail lines, as it was an old freight line. The T, in contrast, used the last remaining streetcar line as a base, which means it's narrow gauge. Hence the existing rail lines would have to be ripped up and replaced. IIRC the T uses a gauge right now which isn't used anywhere else in the country any longer, so "upgrading" more areas to this line wouldn't be that sensible.
Regardless, even if you did extend the T through the East Busway corridor, there's a further problem. The top speed for the T is slower than the buses, which makes it a lousy investment
Finally, with the East Busway gone, suburban routes which use the busway as an express route to get to the suburbs could no longer do so. You'd need to build dedicated intermodal transit stations at the outer T stops where people could transfer to local buses, which would take further invested capital, as well.
There would be one, and only one, benefit - that you could stay on the T from the South Hills to the East End. But cross-town commutes are pretty rare - most people are trying to get Downtown (or to Oakland) so the number of people who would benefit from this is pretty small.
Someone earlier cited Philadelphia's northwest section, including Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill being highly attractive large-home, old-line residential areas served by good mass transit: in this case, regional (commuter) rail lines...
There is a very similar area in Cleveland's close in suburban Heights area to the East, with Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, University Heights and Beachwood. All have great housing (especially Shaker and lower Cleveland Hts, which is walkable to RTA's Green Line LRT) and are very cheap compared to comparable areas (like Mt. Airy/Chestnut Hill) in Eastern cities. RTA's Blue and Green LRT lines are within walking distance of most of these areas or short drives -- Cleveland's rail system offers among the most free parking at rail stations than any U.S. city.
The Heights area, although not quite as old as Philly's NW are, looks and feels very similar; it just happens to be suburban an not within the City of Cleveland -- save the corner surrounding Shaker Square where there are some nice homes and upscale apartments and condos.
Someone earlier cited Philadelphia's northwest section, including Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill being highly attractive large-home, old-line residential areas served by good mass transit: in this case, regional (commuter) rail lines...
There is a very similar area in Cleveland's close in suburban Heights area to the East, with Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights, University Heights and Beachwood. All have great housing (especially Shaker and lower Cleveland Hts, which is walkable to RTA's Green Line LRT) and are very cheap compared to comparable areas (like Mt. Airy/Chestnut Hill) in Eastern cities. RTA's Blue and Green LRT lines are within walking distance of most of these areas or short drives -- Cleveland's rail system offers among the most free parking at rail stations than any U.S. city.
The Heights area, although not quite as old as Philly's NW are, looks and feels very similar; it just happens to be suburban an not within the City of Cleveland -- save the corner surrounding Shaker Square where there are some nice homes and upscale apartments and condos.
The minute before I came to read your post I was discovering Shaker Heights and looking at houses there. Yes, I like that area very much, thanks!
First, the lines that they paved over when the East Busway was built were heavy gauge rail lines, as it was an old freight line. The T, in contrast, used the last remaining streetcar line as a base, which means it's narrow gauge. Hence the existing rail lines would have to be ripped up and replaced. IIRC the T uses a gauge right now which isn't used anywhere else in the country any longer, so "upgrading" more areas to this line wouldn't be that sensible.
Regardless, even if you did extend the T through the East Busway corridor, there's a further problem. The top speed for the T is slower than the buses, which makes it a lousy investment
Finally, with the East Busway gone, suburban routes which use the busway as an express route to get to the suburbs could no longer do so. You'd need to build dedicated intermodal transit stations at the outer T stops where people could transfer to local buses, which would take further invested capital, as well.
There would be one, and only one, benefit - that you could stay on the T from the South Hills to the East End. But cross-town commutes are pretty rare - most people are trying to get Downtown (or to Oakland) so the number of people who would benefit from this is pretty small.
- I didn't mean for T trains to run on existing tracks, but to rebuild their own along the RR ROW.
- I don't know how the speed could be slower. PAT could buy trains that could run up to 100 mph if they wanted to (more likely the top speed would be around 70mph, which easily would match the top speed of a bus). But buses likely would never travel this fast on a windy, twisty 2-lane roadway where as trains, over fixed rails, can navigate this route at much higher speeds than buses over the existing roadway. Moreover multiple-unit rail cars, either individually or in trains, accelerate and decelerate much quicker than any internal-combustion engine vehicle; not to mention the fact that an individual train car can hold considerably more people than even accordion buses, not to doubly mention that LRT trains can be coupled up to 4-car units, although PAT would likely run them in pairs, which would more than handle the projected heavy ridership in this corridor with proper frequency.
-- With the higher capacity and speed abilities of rail cars, passenger transfer to feeder buses is not so much a problem. In larger cities like with great transit like NYC, Chicago, DC and Boston, it's a way of life and considered advantageous. Also parking lots could be established at outer T stations to allow commuters to self-feed. Btw the capacity/speed features of trains attract higher rates and higher densities of TOD near their station stops.
-- As for your concession on the (as you see it) lone benefit of rail, you didn't go far enough. The LRTs would access the Golden Triangle (aka downtown Pittsburgh) quicker (as PAT trains already do) than buses coming off the MLK and onto narrow, often-clogged city streets. Riders from Shadyside/E. Liberty, Wilkinsburg, Bloomfield, Homewood and even the Strip District could hop on trains for the theatre district, Station Square, the casino and the ball parks (and the near North Side area) as well as various points in the South Hills, like downtown Mt. Lebanon and South Hills Village mall, etc...
I mean, I agree with you that the MLK is a very nice, very fast BRT system, and if Pittsburgh didn't already have a working LRT and complete, thru downtown, I'd be all for it... problem is, it does.
The minute before I came to read your post I was discovering Shaker Heights and looking at houses there. Yes, I like that area very much, thanks!
Great... and note that trains get you to/from downtown in under 27 minutes, from the ends of both rail lines, at most times during the day -- even faster at night.
The Edgewater neighborhood of Cleveland and the suburb of Lakewood would be other areas to consider in Greater Cleveland.
Cleveland has some dangerous neighborhoods, and some relatively safe neighborhoods. Edgewater is among the more safe, and borders Edgewater Park.
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