Who's afraid of a Beltway? (Pittsburgh, Penn Hills: 2014, neighborhoods, to buy)

[MathmanMathman]

The PG is bringing up the Beltway again.

In The Lead: Nay to a Pittsburgh beltway? - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Originally Posted by PG

Washington, D.C., has the most famous one. Baltimore has one, as do Indianapolis; Buffalo; Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio; Nashville, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; and several other major and midsized cities.

Pittsburgh doesn't have a beltway, and something that bears a slight resemblance to one is years, if not decades, away.One of the side effects of going belt-less — we don't count the color-coded and mostly ignored Allegheny County belt route system — is that many suburb-to-suburb trips pass through the congested confluence of highways in Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle.

That means backups and delays can loom at virtually any hour in the cramped area where the Parkway East, Parkway West, Parkway North, Route 28 and Route 65 converge, especially at rush hour.

Seems like any concerns about job center shifts could be handled by zoning. Besides, a lot of the exodus from the city center was during suburbanization, and right now, the focus seems to be back on the city center again. And the Turnpike, 70, and 79 don't serve as a beltway.

How to nurture development? You need infrastructure.

[WhoIsStanwix?]

A bit of a nitpick about the article: Louisville doesn't have a completed beltway. They've had issues between Indiana and Kentucky for years regarding bridges across the Ohio, as well as right of way issues and people not wanting their quiet riverfront neighborhoods to be blasted by development. NIMBYs are everywhere.

If you had to choose between widening 376 and a beltway connector between either Monroeville or somewhere else beyond the Sq Hill Tunnel and the Mon Valley Expressway, what would you choose? Personally, without a rail connector to the airport, I say the road connection from the city to the airport is more important than a bypass around the city. Not saying we don't need it, just that there are more important infrastructure projects ahead of this.

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

How to nurture development? You need infrastructure.

We have infrastructure, some of which would be greatly improved at a fraction of the cost of a beltway. The region should focus on it's strong core where the existing infrastructure runs and on improving transit instead of trying to be Columbus, Ohio 2.0 or whatever.

[Hopes]

I don't see the point. I get around the metro just fine.

[Moby Hick]

Maybe we should have public service announcements about the non-freeway belt system we do have. "The Orange Belt: It's Not a Crosswalk Sign So You Can Notice It."

[Hopes]

The north really doesn't have any problems getting anywhere. We have easy access to 279, 79 and 76 for getting around the city. The people with the problem are those in the South Hills. They have the same access to 79 so they really just need an easier way to go east. The only thing needed is something looping in the south towards the east from Canonsburg to Murrysville. Then you have your full circle. That's all just down in the depressed municipalities of the Mon Valley area. It would be easy for them to buy up property to build it, but it seems like a waste of money because those areas aren't destinations for the metro.

[gb933-lon]

All those proposed connectors will NOT make a beltway. It's obvious the PG author never drove in Columbus or Indianapolis and knows what a true beltway looks like.

With Pittsburgh's hilly topography, a true beltway similar to DC or Baltimore would cost in the tens of billions to excavate, build bridges, etc. That seems like a HUGE waste just because some people work in Monroeville but want to live in Robinson Twp. Tell these nimrods to live closer to work like everyone else!

Besides, with Google's self-driving cars about to hit the roads by 2016, you wont need to worry about long commutes or traffic congestion because you can get a lot of productive work done in the car without having to spend a couple hrs. a day paying attention to the mundane task of driving.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by gb933-lon

That seems like a HUGE waste just because some people work in Monroeville but want to live in Robinson Twp. Tell these nimrods to live closer to work like everyone else!

That's unrealistic because people's employers can change many times during their homeownership. Sometimes the next job you get isn't nearby. You don't just sell a house, change school districts, and move across town simply because a job changed. This isn't the 1960s when people can count on working at the same company for long. But I agree we don't need a beltway to accommodate this.

[Craziaskowboi]

I'm in favor of widening and modernizing I-376 over building a beltway.

With that said, I-376 is PennDOT's jurisdiction, and the new beltway that's being built is the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's jurisdiction, so it's not as simple as diverting funds from the beltway to I-376.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

The notion that we should leave our highway system as-is to promote growth in the core is misguided. What do the Squirrel Hill and Ft Pitt tunnels look like in 20 years if we even add just 50000 extra suburban commuters? I'd think that some sort of tunnel alternative would be beneficial for both commuters and the health/growth of downtown. I'm not sure why it needs to be an either/or proposition.

There are also alternatives to a beltway that may be cheaper and easier to implement. How abount a north/south expressway connecting the Parkway East at Penn Hills/Churchill and Allegheny River Blvd? It seems like that land could be had given that 2/3 of the route would cover either the abandoned Churchill County Club or the sparsely populated Coal Hollow valley. Widen Allegheny River Blvd to the Highland Park Bridge, improve the bridge interchange, and you'd now have a viable Parkway East alternative for those coming from the north and downtown.

In conjunction, I would also look to streamline/combine the interchanges/on-ramps from Penn Hills through to Churchill and connecting Wm Penn Highway between Churchill and Wilkins Township. This whole mess of exits and entries certainly adds a secondary bottleneck prior to hitting tunnel traffic.