Pittsburgh to study new commuter rail line

[SewickleyPA]

Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212

IMO The T needs to be extended to these areas in this order -

- Fifth Ave Line from Downtown clear out to Penn Ave, making a right up Penn continuing to the Wilkinsburg EBA...Making Wilkinsburg a Major transfer hub to Local buses, EBA, and the T.

- Change the HOV (Parkway North) to Rail lines.....Convert the Ross Park n Ride into a transit Hub, having North Hills Local and Express buses terminating for a transfer to the North Hills T; which would then run Non - Stop to Downtown with the exception of maybe one stop on the North Side for AGH, Alleg Center, and North Shore Workers.

- A Penn Ave line - From Downtown - Serving the Strip, L'ville, Childerens Hosp, Friendship and E Liberty....Either terminating in Wilkinsburg @ the Hub or send out as far as M'ville Mall creating a transit hub in Monroeville.

- South side/Carson street line - From the exsisting T line downtown heading thru the S. side, out to Homestead and possibly Mckessport......Express service possbily thru Hays.

- Service to the Airport.


If Pittsburgh and Port Authority would have these lines in place watch the city explode with growth.....

This would be the best plan for rail that anyone could conceivably come up with in my opinion. However, I would probably move the South side line up to #2 in importance.

[pman]

Originally Posted by stevo6

First of all- the North Shore Connector IS the first leg towards the airport. The idea is that the light rail would go down river , cross over (hopefully on an existing bridge and not another tunnel) and head out to the airport.
An extension to Oakland etc. sounds nice but imagine all the infrastructure one would have to build and/or remove! Plus- there is already an effective busway to the east.

North may make some sense down the line, but right now it is the least congested artery into town, and the least densely developed direction. I think Rt. 28 north along the Allegheny would make better sense. Steve

couldn't the busway be electrified, run trolley buses, and run into the T tunnel downtown? Seattle has done something similar.

[JoeLeaphorn]

Originally Posted by stevo6

First of all- the North Shore Connector IS the first leg towards the airport. The idea is that the light rail would go down river , cross over (hopefully on an existing bridge and not another tunnel) and head out to the airport.

All I can say is that the current plan is nonsense. People don't fly into or out of the city in order to have a leisurely ride through the burbs. The "plan" is, supposedly, to cross at the West End and then follow 51 up through Coraopolis, parallel University Boulevard until you get to the Airport. There is almost no way that such a route would be competitive with the West busway.

[Copanut]

I also question sending the T out to the airport via Sewickley and Coraopolis. That would probably take an hour at least from downtown with all the stops. Getting from the airport to Downtown is not all that tough. And with a lot of corporations located in the suburbs, why waste all the money. Seems to me there are better places to extend the T.

[BrianTH]

Extending the West Busway all the way into Downtown, as originally planned, would have provided adequate rapid service that far. Then you would just need a rapid bus corridor directly from Downtown to Oakland (which is potentially in the works, and for now you can loop around the East Busway), and you would have the entire rapid CBD-Airport route you really needed. And even with all the ways in which this original vision has been short-changed, the theoretical light rail connection to the airport would still provide no real benefit, and at great cost.

[JoeLeaphorn]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Extending the West Busway all the way into Downtown, as originally planned, would have provided adequate rapid service that far. Then you would just need a rapid bus corridor directly from Downtown to Oakland (which is potentially in the works, and for now you can loop around the East Busway), and you would have the entire rapid CBD-Airport route you really needed. And even with all the ways in which this original vision has been short-changed, the theoretical light rail connection to the airport would still provide no real benefit, and at great cost.

You already have Penn Station (downtown) to Neville (Oakland) on the East Busway. It would do people some good to walk the rest of the way rather than rely on stops at your door, but you could always run a circulator from Neville around Oakland.

The cost of light rail at least from the North Shore to Moon Twp would be far less, per mile, than the Bore to the Shore, but why? You already have heavy rail ROWs on both sides of the river sufficient to add additional tracks.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by JoeLeaphorn

You already have Penn Station (downtown) to Neville (Oakland) on the East Busway. It would do people some good to walk the rest of the way rather than rely on stops at your door, but you could always run a circulator from Neville around Oakland.

Yep, that is what I meant by "loop around the East Busway". Using the proposed rapid corridor along 5th between Oakland and Downtown would be more direct and thus potentially could be faster (if it is done well), but the East Busway route is a workable alternative.

[Mugatu]

Originally Posted by COPANUT

I also question sending the T out to the airport via Sewickley and Coraopolis. That would probably take an hour at least from downtown with all the stops. Getting from the airport to Downtown is not all that tough. And with a lot of corporations located in the suburbs, why waste all the money. Seems to me there are better places to extend the T.

I don't get this either. To get the T to the airport from the north shore connector it has to cross the river AGAIN. Wouldn't it have made more sense to expand the T west from Station Square and have it follow a path near Route 60 out to the airport? There would have been no rivers to cross, and it could also serve people living in the city that do the reverse commute out to Robinson to all the major employers in that area like Bayer, Dick's Sporting Goods headquarters, Fed Ex, etc.

[JoeLeaphorn]

Originally Posted by Mugatu

I don't get this either. To get the T to the airport from the north shore connector it has to cross the river AGAIN. Wouldn't it have made more sense to expand the T west from Station Square and have it follow a path near Route 60 out to the airport?

I, for one, do not believe that the Airport link was ever something serious. The problems with the North Shore Connector are plenty (including the Gateway alignment which takes the Convention Center out of the loop). There was a great deal of opposition to it being built both because of the cost and because of the limited scope.

To counter the widespread dislike of the proposal (County Council actually voted to oppose it), the politicians do what they always do in this area, which is that they expanded the potential scope so that there was something for everybody. Now, all of a sudden, this wasn't just a 1.3 mile extension, this was the building block of LRT to North and West Hills.

The problem is that the Southwestern Commission's own study, done by Michael Baker, suggests that there is no compelling reason to build LRT to Cranberry or, for that matter, the West Hills and unless the regional transportation planning body ok's a project, there is no chance that it will be Federally funded.

That's the great thing about being a Western PA politician; you can promise anything knowing that they'll be some other organization that you can blame for why you couldn't follow through.