Fantasy Light Rail Map (Pittsburgh, Wilkinsburg: sales, chapel, how much)

[krogerDisco]

Today's PG has a fantasy light rail map.



An airport line goes from the airport to New Kensington, cutting across downtown and I suppose making most of the hotels and the Strip district and includes a downtown trolley. Like the line out to Monroeville, I'd terminate it at the mall, picking up Duquesne, Pitt, and CMU is nice. Pittsburgh could really use this. Getting around Boston was made easier for me because of its public transit, and I could get to MIT and Harvard as they are on the same line. I can't read the article as I maxed out on my freebie views.

So how much would this cost? Any gotchas that make it unworkable?

[krogerDisco]

Can read the comments section, someone pegged it at 233 miles and costing a bit more than $8 billion. Pricey, but maybe worth it? Like the idea of the Blue line and a river loop.

[_Buster]

It looks like about 70 new stations not including the trolley line. I think it took them since the late 1990s to build the north shore extension, which was 3. So if they start now they should be done by around year 2300

[tclifton]

Originally Posted by krogerDisco

I can't read the article as I maxed out on my freebie views.

Use Google Chrome Incognito Mode and you can view all you want.

[Geeo]

Extensive, yes. Pricey, yes. Years to build, yes. But definitely something that we need and would make the region even better. We could do what other cities have done and are doing: raise the money locally and through the state and build it ourselves. Any federal funding is minimal, at best these days.

[phatty5011]

This is the only way the majority of our regions dead river towns will make a comeback in the next 100 years.

[tyovan4]

Originally Posted by Geeo

We could do what other cities have done and are doing: raise the money locally and through the state and build it ourselves.

How would the money be raised locally??

Edit - it's also hard to take this too seriously as the map has a "First Street" stop named where the existing First Avenue garage and T Station Are. How much local insight did the author of the map really have if they make a mistake like that??

[Moby Hick]

I'm not sure how well this is though out, even for fantasy.

1. The purple line south and east of downtown seems absurd. Greenfield is less than a square mile in area and it has two stops on different lines. If it's important to get Hazelwood, just move the dark blue line over to it.
2. Do enough people actually go the the Allegheny County Airport to justify transit?
3. The Dark Blue line is comically repetitive of the other lines. I can't, for example, imagine that having to stop in East Liberty to get from Fox Chapel to Wilkinsburg would be any kind of delay worth the expense of a separate line.
4. If you are going to run a line from Forbes and Murray (that's what I guess the Squirrel Hill stop is) to "West Greenfield" (I'd assume near the Greenfield Giant Eagle) with no stops on the way, you're training a transit system that is useful for people in the area (the 61c/d) for something that mostly doesn't help.

[Geeo]

The money has been raised locally in other cities like Denver, Salt Lake City and Seattle through an addition to their sales tax. In Denver, it was an additional 4/10 of a cent or something like that. Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston are doing it the same way, but I don't have details.

The federal government used to pick up 80 percent of the cost, but it stopped doing that in the 90s. Now every region is on its own.

[MountainDewGuy]

Let's just start with a line from Downtown to Pitt and CMU in Oakland. Then plan to extend it to other locations. One future extension can be the proposed private driving road from CMU to the Hazlewood Almono site. That would absolutely help to revive Hazelwood as a great place to live and work, and connects it to Oakland and Downtown, as well as the Northshire and South Hills.

I can't believe we don't already have such a line to Oakland, but we have one that stops right at the doorstep of Heinz Field. Shows where the city's priorities really are. Disgusting.