How did Pittsburgh initiate it's Light Rail construction? (York, Rochester: neighborhoods, live in)

[Machino]

I am looking to initiate construction of a Light Rail for my city (Rochester, NY) on a smaller scale (only 8 miles of track) in order to connect our airport to downtown, hitting select high interest districts along the way.

Rochester is a city of around 200,000 people vs Pittburgh's 300,000, but they seem to be similar in many ways. I am very impressed at Pittsburgh's 25% increase in downtown population in the past decade and feel it has a lot to do with your Light Rail. I am ashamed of the state of Rochester's downtown as it is suffocated by bad zoning decisions, poor walkability, and construction that has no regard for walkability or utility. It is riddled with empty parking lots, empty garages, and monstrous single use buildings that take up entire city blocks. It is a large issue to tackle, but starting in lower downtown it could be rectified.


There is a lot of legal and social obstacles in the way, and this is another area that I am curious, what steps were taken for Pittsburgh to successfully initiate it's Light Rail? Pittsburgh is an inspiring example for my city and is leading the way for smaller cities in the 21st century.

[greg42]

Pittsburgh's light rail wasn't so much initiated as saved. What's left is a remnant of what was once a large streetcar system. The rest disappeared with that big scam in the 50s where GM bought up a lot of streetcar lines and replaced them with buses.

Because the light rail here only goes one direction, and not to the airport or anything similarly useful, I highly doubt it was instrumental in the downtown population gain. Keep that percentage number in context by realizing that only a couple thousand people live in what we call downtown, which is a very compact area. Similarly, while the light rail is a convenient way to commute to downtown for those southern neighborhoods and suburbs that it serves, it didn't much contribute to their development either because they are old suburbs. It contributes to certain people favoring moving to those areas now, perhaps, but that's about it.

[ajl777]

how well connected was the old street car systems

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by ajl777

how well connected was the old street car systems

Courtesy of another poster, here is a streetcar map from 1959:

[gameguy56]

The old streetcar system was over 400-ish(can't remember the exact number I found during research for my undergrad thesis) miles of track and traversed all of Allegheny county and much of the surrounding counties as well. It was a pretty amazing system considering the topography of the place.

[Machino]

oh man, I thought it serviced downtown as well. This light rail thing is a hard sell in my city but it would do a world of good.

Perhaps I can still use Pittsburgh as a model because of it's condensed downtown. I would like to see my city change it's model to a more mixed use, less sprawl one. You would all be shocked at the waste of space here. The 25% increase is very impressive and if Rochester could even get a 10% increase over the next decade it would be a huge victory.

This city was also a victim of the GM shut down of all rail lines, as we were the smallest city with a working subway at the time. Now our city continues to be abused by our leaders, they have no vision!

[BrianTH]

I don't think Pittsburgh's pretty good rapid transit into Downtown (including the T and also the East Busway, which serves about the same number of daily riders as the T) is entirely disconnected from Downtown's recent redevelopment as a residential area. It is a little hard to explain, but I think the fact that so many commuters take public transit into Downtown contributes to it being a more pedestrian-friendly area. Or to turn the point around, imagine what Downtown would have to look like if around twice the number of car commuters were trying to get into Downtown and park during rush hour, which is what would have to happen if nearly half the Downtown workforce wasn't using public transit to commute.

In turn being pedestrian-friendly means you can have attractive street-level businesses and amenities, which in turn can be enjoyed by residents as well as commuters. Again you can turn this point around: I've been to newer central business districts where almost everyone drives, and the streetlevel is dominated by highways, wide high-speed streets, and parking garages. So in such CBDs it is readily apparent you aren't in the sort of area where people are expected to want to walk around much, which in turn isn't very attractive a proposition for prospective residents.

All that said, there is a chicken and egg problem here. You really would have to completely reconfigure Downtown Pittsburgh to handle a lot more car commuters, so we don't have much choice about providing it with decent rapid transit instead. That in turn reinforces the walkable nature of our Downtown, but if you were starting from scratch--well, again, you can look in a lot of newer CBDs and see how that turned out: when they choose a car-oriented transportation system they got a car-oriented CBD.

So I'm not sure where Rochester stands, but I think there is a bit of a lock-in problem: once you head pretty far down one path or the other, it may be difficult to reconsider that choice and make the leap over to the alternative path. That said, it sounds like Rochester has a history of decent rapid transit, so maybe it does in fact still have that opportunity.

[ki0eh]

I wonder if the busways have been more of a diversion to adequate transit development in Pgh. I get the impression someone actually believed that busways were cheaper but I don't know if they really have the same ridership gain as light rail has in other cities despite the traffic separation.

[Geeo]

Busways are more flexible. You can have the main routes that use the busway and all its stations for local service, you can route express buses from the suburbs on to the busway for express service, you don't have to worry about a breakdown on the rail (which causes huge delays), and you can change the routings of buses that use the busway. Rail is way more expensive to build and maintain.

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I've been to newer central business districts where almost everyone drives, and the streetlevel is dominated by highways, wide high-speed streets, and parking garages. So in such CBDs it is readily apparent you aren't in the sort of area where people are expected to want to walk around much, which in turn isn't very attractive a proposition for prospective residents.

All that said, there is a chicken and egg problem here.

SO TRUE! Most US cities are like this, just massive parking lots littered all over the place, parking garages, big buildings with few ground level businesses.

When they become so pedestrianly-unfriendly to that degree, no one really wants to spend any time downtown to warrant trains there...nor do they find it worth their while. The downtowns are just desolate empty places to work and get out before the sun goes down.

In those cities, a train's sudden existance won't make people want to take it downtown...it's just too poorly designed. You'd actually need to rip out the multitudes of dead intimidating massive buildings that lack floor-level retail, wipe out most of the parking lots...and parking garages should be encouragered to have drive-in ramps to get inside, but leave the outside perimeter with ground-level businesses around it's periphery as to not make it an entire empty block of space, etc.

Even if you WERE to create the proper downtown, I still think most people would just drive to suburban malls to 'walk around' in most cities. Unfortunately.

I think the areas that REALLY work are the cool little urban neighborhoods...I'm thinking New Orleans 'French Quarter', New York's 'Greenwich Village', etc. Places where people can both live and enjoy everything within close proximity. Most cities/countries outside of the U.S. are absolutely filled with neighborhoods exactly like those throughout everywhere, which are unfortunate rarities in the U.S. Fortunately it seems Pittsburgh still has those types of neighborhoods.

I think it might be difficult to re-create that for Rochester NY. From what little I know of it, it just seems the downtown buildings are too impersonal, and not much street activity whatsoever. So even if there was a train going right downtown. People would still have to walk long-distances to get anywhere downtown, and it looks too impersonal/intimidating to do so. Plus they'd most likely have to drive to a station of a train to do so as well, and if its as sprawled out as it sounds, then a train line would be a disaster for it.

I also notice Rochester looks so empty, there are gazillions of empty parking spaces throughout those massively wide streets everywhere. That also means it would be much easier for a person to just park in nearly any one of those empty spots than for them to drive to a station in the suburbs, ride in, and then walk to their destination.

Seems like Pittsburgh works as the streets are narrow, the buildings are tall, and the space downtown is limited by the rivers...it seems to me. Kind of this ideal situation, much like Manhattan island was for NYC.