Parkway West WORST Congestion outside NY & LA (Pittsburgh, Scranton: townhome, school district)
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The 600 space parking lot at the Moon Park and Ride looked filled today. Most of those cars will be on the Parkway adding to the congestion soon.
That is great news. Imagine if people start moving back to the city? Less pollution, less stress for people commuting and a more practical way of life. This could be great!!! Sure there are growing pains, but lets face it, in a few more decades the shift will be in full swing. Why not get a jump on it now? They city might be booming!!! Thanks for the info, this is an interesting story and very exciting!
They're getting rid of the moon park n' ride? My goodness, that place is always packed according to my buddy. I don't think I can convince him to live in the city though. His wife's family lives there and they'd poop a brick if they moved to the city.
There's not enough Park and Ride lots anywhere in my opinion. The hilly terrain and lack of adequate parking is the major reason that MORE people don't use public transportation.
The cheapest and easiest solution to excessive traffic is one that any President of the US could start simply by jawboning: encourage businesses to let their employees work from home one or two days a week. This would also decrease demand for oil. Not a single one has ever done this.
Most people really didn't work in the city back in the day.
They weren't working at suburban office parks, but they were working at the major suburban industrial plants like the Duquesne Works, Nat'l Tube, Continental Can, Westinghouse Electric, Homestead Works, WABCO. They are all gone, or greatly reduced in size in our current era, but they did contribute a lot to traffic on the parkways as people made it to work.
By the 1950's and 1960's, most steelworkers were folks who commuted to Homestead from North Hills or to WABCO from West Deer. The day of Westinghouse Electric getting their staff from those who live in East Pittsburgh and nearby was long over.
My wife and many of her family members for several generations worked at the mills in the Mon Valley. They and most of their fellow mill workers mostly lived in West Mifflin, Homestead, Munhall, Whittaker, Turtle Creek, Duquesne, Clairton, McKeesport and surrounding communities. Some commuted down Route 51 from as far south as Uniontown. My father worked at the Homestead mill in the 1960's with mostly people from these towns. In the 50's and 60's, many of the millworkers walked to work.
The workers at WABCO were mainly from the Turtle Creek Valley. As they moved out of the valley, they went to places like Monroeville, Churchill, Wilkins, Penn Township and North Huntington.
Last edited by villageidiot1; 05-23-2012 at 06:13 PM..
Why should this be such a high regional priority? The bulk of the peak flows are going into and out of the city, not between those two particular areas.
If this was true, a series of of more extensive Park & Rides should solve the problem. Are the Park & Rides successful from places like Monroeville/Murrysville and Robinson/Moon/North Fayette. It sounds like some fill up too quickly. Would more people use them? Are they too expensive? Inconvenient?
By taking traffic off of the Parkways, you free up capacity for people commuting into the city. There is no "mega project" in Penn DOT's long range plan to relieve the situation. In other words, Pittsburgh will live with the Fort Pitt and Squirrel Hill Tunnels for decades into the future. The goal of any solution should be to take traffic away from the Parkways.
Anyone who has lived east of the city of Pittsburgh who has had to fly in and out of Pittsburgh International know what a problem it is. I've known people who get a hotel room the night before an early flight, or take Interstate 70 or the Turnpike to Interstate 79, to the Parkway West. I'm not talking about only the people from Monroeville. This applies to all of the counties east of Pgh such as Westmoreland, Cambria, Fayette, Indiana and Somerset.
Obviously, an alternate route as I suggested from the Monroeville area to the Airport area is not an easy solution. A northern or southern route would require extensive eminent domain across heavy residential neighborhoods. This is where a lack of foresight is now hurting the region. The Squirrell Hill and Fort Pitt Tunnels were outdated by 1960 when the Fort Pitt Tunnels opened. This is when planning should have started on a major east-west highway to bypass the tunnels and downtown. The logical route at the time would have used part of the Turnpike and cut across the North Hills before extensive development took place. This would have been in the vicinity of the existing Yellow and Orange belts of the Allegheny County Belt System.
I dont care if you're sitting in a car or on a bus - i cannot fathom how people deal with the wasted hours they lose out of their lives by commuting into & out of the city day in and day out.
I knew a guy who liked traffic cause it was more time away from his nagging wife. He even used to smoke left handed cigarettes on the Friday commute home. What a character he was, wish we were still in touch.
I dont care if you're sitting in a car or on a bus - i cannot fathom how people deal with the wasted hours they lose out of their lives by commuting into & out of the city day in and day out.
Of course not. You are ahead of the curve. I hope it gets harder and harder to commute because that will have people gravitate to the city and work. Therefore it is a win, win for the city of Pittsburgh. Not sure why people are whining about this? In the long run this is great!!!
Of course not. You are ahead of the curve. I hope it gets harder and harder to commute because that will have people gravitate to the city and work. Therefore it is a win, win for the city of Pittsburgh. Not sure why people are whining about this? In the long run this is great!!!
Or it will drive development and employment AWAY from the central city of Pittsburgh and into outlying areas such as Robinson, Murrysville, or Cranberry, or just simply out of the region entirely.
I sympathize with your worldview Curtis, I really do, frankly I AGREE with it. But come on now, you know in America "old habits die hard". Virtually no one will be giving up their cushy McMansions and SUV's just because the Port Authority goes under or traffic on the parkways gets noticably worse. Trust me, I've wanted to think people will change, but as time goes on in this county, I just don't see it happening on a profound level... at least YET. Europe has some bright ideas when it comes to this, but even THEY have extensive transportation options outside of the private automobile. I think Brian's idea of "premium pricing" is a warranted experiment and I also think that any new truly massive transportation investments should be made in the form of mass transit. Essentially anything that's an incentive or decentive to stop as many people from driving solo through the region's major tunnels as possible.
And this is all coming from a guy who doesn't own a car, rides his bicycle virtually everywhere, and lives in South Oakland. I like how I'm living, but I'm convinced that the majority of Americans don't want to live the way I am.
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