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The Market-Frankford analogy really isn't applicable.
In this case, the reason you don't need a single line between East Liberty and Downtown via Oakland isn't that there is little demand for an East Liberty to Downtown line, as is the case with the endpoints of the Market-Frankford line. The reason you don't need such a line is that a direct connection between the end points already exists, the East Busway. And that choice of endpoints in the Philly system was more or less arbitrary. Note that you can't go straight from Frankford to AT&T, or straight from Fern Rock to 69th Street, or so on. Once you have more than one line radiating from a common center, some pairs of endpoints might be on the same line, but others will not. So you can't just arbitrarily insist that all endpoints directly connect.
I don't really know Philly well enough to try to draw a proper analogy, but here is one from DC (which I do know). If you want to go from to Metro Center to L'Enfant Plaza via Gallery Place, you would have to change lines. But who cares? You can instead go straight to L'Enfant Plaza from Metro Center. And you can go straight from Gallery Place to L'Enfant Plaza, and you can go straight from Metro Center to Gallery Place. So all three points of the triangle have direct connections, and the fact that you can't go from one point to another point VIA a third point without a direct connection doesn't really make any difference.
Now it is possible that for some practical reason it will be more efficient to run one line from East Liberty to Downtown via Oakland, even though you already have a direct East Liberty to Downtown line. But that certainly isn't necessarily the case, so there is no particular reason to insist on it. In other words, if it happens to be the case as you plot out a comprehensive Oakland-centric system, you end up with a single line from Downtown to East Liberty via Oakland, so be it. But if that happens not to be the line plan you come up with, that should be fine too.
Brian - I think where we come apart on this is....You're still focusing on Downtown being the Center this is NOT about servicing Downtown...Its about Rapid Transit to Oakland...Oakland is the Center in the whole argument....and Oakland 2 largest Feeding paths via transit comes from Downtown and the East End...
The reason I chose East Liberty as the designation for the East End terminus is because of East Liberty's strong potential to become Oakland 2 or the "Oakland Counterpart" for businesses that need quick close Oakland access...
Not to mention with East Liberty being the East End Terminus....you could have tons of Mods of transportation terminating in East Liberty (which its perfect for) and people transferring to the Rapid Transit...The EBO cannot possibly handle the same transferring loads that a dedicated rapid rail line could...Hell the EBO is crushed after leaving Swissvale and Wilkinsburg.....
Also you have to look at what would best serve as an East End terminal and very few neighborhoods would fit the bill...East Liberty and Wilkinsburg are the best two and both have Busway access already...
You say well we have to look at cost.... so the cost of running 2 lines that would need however many more train operators and such would be more cost efficient than a single line serving both points??
there probably is no better analagy than downtown philly and univ city. you don't absolutely have to have both connected but if it's feasible, it's likely preferrable...rather than have less service on two branches, more service on one branch. if it's the T, then a simple extension to manchester connects manchester to downtown AND Oakland, thus increasing the odds of that extension making financial sense.
Brian - I think where we come apart on this is....You're still focusing on Downtown being the Center this is NOT about servicing Downtown...Its about Rapid Transit to Oakland...Oakland is the Center in the whole argument....
Those are my lines! But the point then becomes that any of the other directions feeding into Oakland don't necessarily have to connect to each other via those connections into Oakland, and that is particularly true when those two points already happen to have a direct rapid connection. In other words, if Downtown isn't special anymore, why are you so insistent on the East Liberty line into Oakland than continuing on into Downtown, as opposed to somewhere else? More on this below . . .
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and Oakland 2 largest Feeding paths via transit comes from Downtown and the East End...
Currently, yes, but part of my point is it doesn't necessarily have to work that way. Topography has limited the routes into Oakland, but if you can overcome those limitations you can design a very different system. Doing so would shake up the conventional sense of how people can flow around the central portion of Pittsburgh, but given the capacity constraints we are already hitting on the conventional paths, opening up new paths would be well worth doing.
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The reason I chose East Liberty as the designation for the East End terminus is because of East Liberty's strong potential to become Oakland 2 or the "Oakland Counterpart" for businesses that need quick close Oakland access...
So again I would note that you don't necessarily have to limit your Oakland-centric system to just Downtown and the East End. And on top of that, why just one East End terminus? Why are you planning for just Oakland 2, and not Oaklands 2-6?
Recall that back in the day, there were streetcars radiating out all over the East End (and beyond). To this day, there are still buses doing the same. Forcing yourself to choose a single East End terminus may make sense in a world where rapid transit technologies are incredibly expensive. But what if they weren't?
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Not to mention with East Liberty being the East End Terminus....you could have tons of Mods of transportation terminating in East Liberty (which its perfect for) and people transferring to the Rapid Transit...
As an aside, I'm not sure why East Liberty is a perfect collection point in your view, considering particularly that it isn't particularly near any highways. Again, more on this below.
But in any event, you are still thinking in terms of a very limited Oakland-centric system. What if you could have a lot of lines, not just one? In that case, you wouldn't need to pick a single collection point.
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The EBO cannot possibly handle the same transferring loads that a dedicated rapid rail line could...Hell the EBO is crushed after leaving Swissvale and Wilkinsburg.....
You are talking about the buses, I presume. That is different from the capacity of the infrastructure itself. The East Busway is nowhere near capacity, and the Neville Ramp even farther. Opening up more capacity is just a matter of scheduling more service.
But again, all this would be largely moot if you didn't need to restrict your system to a single collection point.
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Also you have to look at what would best serve as an East End terminal and very few neighborhoods would fit the bill...East Liberty and Wilkinsburg are the best two and both have Busway access already...
So by this point I think I have made it clear that I reject the premise that you need to be looking at a single East End terminus. But even if you were, I think you would have to go for Wilkinsburg--bus service within the East End to Oakland may not be ideal, but it is still workable. The most pressing need in that direction is to provide a bypass for people on the other side of the Squirrel Hill tunnel. So if you had to pick a single terminus, something right on the other side of the tunnel would be the logical first choice, which would probably mean Wilkinsburg.
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You say well we have to look at cost.... so the cost of running 2 lines that would need however many more train operators and such would be more cost efficient than a single line serving both points??
Who says we are limited to trains?
For example, maybe we are talking about a subway from Oakland to Downtown and BRT from Oakland to East Liberty (with the BRT line eventually being electrified, and maybe even automated), versus a subway all the way from Downtown to East Liberty. In that case, it could well be that the full costs (including both capital and operating costs) for the former plan over its expected lifespan would be much lower. Yes, the operating costs for the latter might be lower, but not necessarily enough to catch up with the much higher capital costs.
Moreover, again, maybe we are looking at more than one line passing through Oakland. Holding aside technology, suppose the Downtown line via Oakland went to Wilkinsburg, and the East Liberty line via Oakland went to the South Side. What's wrong with that? Generally, once you have more than just two planned endpoints, it no longer makes sense to insist that any two of those endpoints be directly connected, and particularly not when they are already directly connected as it is.
In fact, we could put this same point into an East Liberty-centric sort of view. We're both offering a line from East Liberty to Oakland. But I'm offering the possibility that from there, the line may go to the South Side, or the North Side, or the South Hills, or so on. You are insisting it must go to Downtown. From an East Liberty-centric view, which is better--insisting on a redundant further connection to Downtown, or opening up the possibility of a brand new destination?
Again, once you truly abandon the idea that all roads must lead to Downtown, the possibilities start becoming a little more clear.
there probably is no better analagy than downtown philly and univ city.
For any analogy to work, you actually need to have three points, A, B, and C. You can assume all three pair connections are valuable. You then further need to assume two of the points are already connected, lets say A and C. The question is then whether the lines from C to B and A to B should be operated as another single line parallel to the existing A to C line.
I don't know what in Philly has that setup (a triangle of destinations). But I do know you will find many, many situations like that where three, and not two, lines end up connecting the three end points.
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you don't absolutely have to have both connected but if it's feasible, it's likely preferrable...rather than have less service on two branches, more service on one branch.
In part this claim depends on what you mean by "feasible". If one plan would cost a lot more than an another, it still might be "feasible", but not preferable, insofar as spending a lot more on that plan may delay being able to serve other needs.
Moreover, I think you are again assuming we are limited to just two end points in any Oakland-centric system. If we have three or more, then it becomes not just a question of whether the line should be a through-line, but also which other endpoint it should go to. And again, in this case, a direct connection between the two proposed endpoints already exists, so it is plausible another endpoint destination would be more valuable.
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if it's the T, then a simple extension to manchester connects manchester to downtown AND Oakland, thus increasing the odds of that extension making financial sense.
I'm not sure what you are arguing for here in this context. As an aside, a T connection to Manchester may or may not terminate in Oakland--the T, of course, already has other lines.
But assuming for a moment it was an Oakland T line you were extending to Manchester--what does that have to do with the question of whether the connection between East Liberty and Oakland should be part of the same T line?
What you would have to be arguing is that a transferless connection from Manchester to EAST LIBERTY would be necessary for the T extension to Manchester for service to Downtown and Oakland to make sense. I don't think that is plausible on its face, and in any event the same argument could be made if the East Liberty line through Oakland terminated somewhere else. For example, imagine it terminated in the South Side. That could help make a further extension of that line into the South Hills more financially attractive.
In short, I think you are still thinking of the goal as a single line through Oakland. Reconceive the goal as a network of multiple lines centered on Oakland, and then it becomes less obvious that any given line should continue on to Downtown.
why a t extension to.manchester wouldnt be going to oakland is indeed a good question. as you stated in another thread, a north side extension only makes sense if its going to oakland.
You could take just a fraction of $3 billion and complete the West Busway into Downtown, giving you rapid transit all the way from the airport to Downtown that would be perfectly sufficient. And eventually you could also electrify the West Busway and use some sort of multi-mode hybrid trolley-buses for airport service, still staying way under $3 billion.
The basic problem with planning on using only rail for local transit in Pittsburgh is topography. The local topography often makes getting from Point A to Point B using rail very expensive even when as the crow flies A and B aren't that far apart. More generally, the local topography causes the good sites for land development to be scattered in non-linear patterns, and often limits the extent to which a given hypothetical rapid transit line could induce development along its route.
That doesn't mean rail has no place in Pittsburgh--some possible paths connect enough developable land, most notably along the river valleys, and I expect to see commuter rail along the valleys eventually. But I think Pittsburgh will have to embrace other technologies as well in order to deal with its topographic challenges.
I'd be fine with the state being less involved in local transportation funding--but only if the state generally invests less in transportation, cuts state taxes, lets localities do whatever transportation taxes and PPPs they want to do, and gives localities greater say over federal spending in their backyard. In other words, as long as the state is in the business of taxing and spending on transportation and also controls a lot of federal spending, the Pittsburgh Metro can and should demand its fair share of that spending.
Since Pittsburgh is a world class city , it would be in the best interest of the city to have a direct Rail link with its CBD and Airport. Our New Underground Electrified 28 mile long Railway is costing between 6-9 billion to build and goes over a similar Terrain pattern of the CBD - Airport area. The Japanese can probably help you with your Future Railways , as they have numerous mountainous Railways.....
Since Pittsburgh is a world class city , it would be in the best interest of the city to have a direct Rail link with its CBD and Airport. Our New Underground Electrified 28 mile long Railway is costing between 6-9 billion to build and goes over a similar Terrain pattern of the CBD - Airport area. The Japanese can probably help you with your Future Railways , as they have numerous mountainous Railways.....
IF they use the T as envisioned, then it's even more important that it be extended to Oakland. I don't think the airport should be the priority though, Oakland should be the priority. If they can build an effective spine, then ridership projections on extensions will make more sense IMO.
why a t extension to.manchester wouldnt be going to oakland is indeed a good question. as you stated in another thread, a north side extension only makes sense if its going to oakland.
The problem is that I think there will be lots of pressure to keep North Shore trains servicing the South Hills. Of course if you open up an Oakland T line, you potentially could have both such lines operating on the new tracks into the North Shore, but I don't think Manchester will have the political juice to get such services scheduled just to make a T extension to Manchester viable.
So the order of operations basically has to be something like:
(a) A Downtown to Oakland extension of the T is created, on its own merits.
(b) Oakland to Downtown service is scheduled to the North Shore, sharing tracks with the South Hill service to the North Shore, on its own merits.
(c) A T extension to Manchester becomes viable, now that there is already Oakland service available on the North Shore.
Not an impossible sequence of events, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it unfolding any time soon.
Since Pittsburgh is a world class city , it would be in the best interest of the city to have a direct Rail link with its CBD and Airport. Our New Underground Electrified 28 mile long Railway is costing between 6-9 billion to build and goes over a similar Terrain pattern of the CBD - Airport area.
This may seem like a strange thing for an acknowledged Pittsburgh cheerleader to say, but Pittsburgh isn't really a "world class city" in the same sense as a New York, LA, Chicago, or even Philly, and shouldn't have such aspirations for the conceivable future. And this is a good demonstration of why we should avoid such aspirations--spending something like $6-9 billion on an airport rail service that we don't actually need would be a criminal waste of funding, since we could do so much more to actually improve local transportation with those same funds.
Consider that as of now, Pittsburgh has exactly one overseas air route, and that is on life support as it is (more or less literally--it is being subsidized by the local business community). Generally, the airport is actually doing fine in terms of supporting local demand--a few more direct West Coast flights would be nice, and of course more competition is always good, but I don't expect or hope for a radical increase in overall air service anytime soon.
But we do have other, pressing, transportation needs. Several of the key commuter routes into the central area are heavily congested and getting worse. Oakland has emerged as a critical second CBD, and yet it has no rapid transit whatsoever. There are several other notable gaps in our rapid transit system, and generally anything but radial service into and out of Downtown is pretty bad, and much of that radial service is overburdened as it serves to substitute for non-radial service (meaning people are going into Downtown not because that is their destination, but because that is the only viable route to get to their final destination on another radius).
I don't see the need for expanding our local road system significantly, but likely everywhere there are some serious deferred maintenance issues. Also, it would be money well spent to reconfigure some highways for land-use purposes (e.g., covering the highways along the Downtown riverbanks and eliminating the elevated highway structures that cut the North Side off from the North Shore).
And that is just local. We really need quality passenger rail service to Harrisburg to link up with the East Coast rail network, and if Ohio ever gets its act back together, we should be investing in passenger rail to Ohio and eventually a Chicago-hub network as well.
So basically, if you gave me $9 billion to spend, I wouldn't dream of spending that money on an unnecessary vanity project like airport rail. In fact if you gave me $30 billion to spend, I probably still wouldn't fund that project. $50-100 billion? OK, maybe, but barring a massive change in state and federal transportation policy, it will be a long time before we have accumulated that much capital to spend on transportation infrastructure in Southwest PA.
By the way, I'm still a Pittsburgh cheerleader. But as with so much involving Pittsburgh today, the point is that Pittsburgh should be investing in becoming an incredibly nice and prosperous version of a middle-size, service-center, regional capital city, not trying to recover its former global status. And we will still have plenty of opportunities to spend money on projects in furtherance of such a "right-sized", quality-over-quantity, vision--there is no need for us to go looking for ways to spend money on projects out of scale with our conceivable-future status.
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