More proof that I-376 lacks sufficient lane miles for a major metropolitan area

[Penguins Fan]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Oh, to correct something asserted above:

City politicians didn't kill off the new Mon bridge connecting the West Busway into Downtown. What happened is this: extending the West Busway along the river would have required using the Conrail railroad shelf uphill from West Carson. Originally there was space available, but then Conrail used that space itself to build a second set of tracks. They redid the engineering and determined you could still cantilever the Busway out from the railroad shelf, but that would have cost more money. Then the County, and thus PAT, was taken over by Republicans who killed all sorts of transit projects (including also the Spine Line), and eventually they promoted the North Shore Connector instead. And of course the NSC actually got funded, thanks to a brief period of time in which Republicans also dominated our congressional representation and there was a Republican White House and Republican Congress willing to freely spend money on Republican-led projects (although the state was in Democratic hands, they actually structured the deal to minimize the state contribution so the state went along with it).

I still think we should complete the West Busway into Downtown, using a new Mon bridge landing at Stanwix, which should be transit and pedestrian/bike only. But for that to happen, we will need to get past the NSC (which is still being used to argue against any more "special treatment" of Pittsburgh when it comes to such funding issues), and generally we will need to see another such alignment of county, state, and federal politics in favor of transit/pedestrian/bike investments (the City is going to be on board regardless, but the City doesn't have a significant role to play in funding these projects).

Brian, drop the Republican this/Republican that garbage.

There was vocal opposition from the City of Pittsburgh government against another bridge crossing the Mon River.

The West Busway alignment did not have to follow the Conrail shelf, which had two sets of tracks already. I know they started to build it there, but PAT pulled the plug when the city was opposing the bridge. There exists the old railroad bridge over Saw Mill Run Boulevard that could have been converted to bus traffic - but was not. There only needed to be a connector between the present West Busway and Saw Mill Run Boulevard - even if it meant using existing streets for part of the alignment.

As for PAT being taken over by Republicans, I have to laugh.

Dunn and Cramner killed off the Spine Line because there wasn't money available to complete it, just as there has not been sufficient money to extend the T to the Strip District.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Penguins Fan

Brian, drop the Republican this/Republican that garbage.

Um, no, I'm not going to do that. It is descriptively accurate, and understanding what actually happened is important because it demonstrates:

(1) That it takes an alignment of political forces at multiple levels of government to get funding for large capital projects in Pittsburgh; and

(2) That the nature of that political alignment will dictate the nature of the projects.

These things remain true and we should be well aware of them going forward.

There was vocal opposition from the City of Pittsburgh government against another bridge crossing the Mon River.

I have read a lot of contemporary news reports, and I don't recall any of that. There was in fact a lively discussion about the alignment of the Downtown landing, and eventually it was switched from Market to Stanwix (which in my view was the right decision). Here is an article that describes that alignment issue:

Tunnel to nowhere | Pittsburgh Business Times

But I never read anything about the City actually opposing a new bridge in general.

The West Busway alignment did not have to follow the Conrail shelf, which had two sets of tracks already. I know they started to build it there, but PAT pulled the plug when the city was opposing the bridge.

That is really not accurate. Conrail did in fact build the second set of tracks after PAT had planned the West Busway. That was a great contributor to the estimated project costs, and costs is why PAT decided to switch to Carson and abandon its bridge plans. See this contemporary article laying all this out (it notes the Conrail issue and the resulting costs leading to PAT cutting back the project to its current form, and says nothing about City opposition to a bridge):

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Google News Archive Search

But the possibility of a new Mon bridge wasn't actually dead at that time. From the later article linked above:

The entire busway was to cost $327 million, according to 1994 projections. By 1997, that had reached $515 million. Rather than seek more money, PAT cut the project back. . . . The cuts shifted the bridge location and a two-mile portion of the busway itself was eliminated. . . . Now, the first-choice alignment ends with a Stanwix Street bridge over the Mon.

But as discussed in that article, they needed more funding for that Stanwix bridge, which never materialized.

As for PAT being taken over by Republicans, I have to laugh.

What is funny about it? Dunn and Cranmer fired almost the entire PAT Board and replaced it with their own people (as they had a right to do).

Lost Tracks - The planned T extension to the North Shore is the last surviving remnant of bigger, better plans - Main Feature - Pittsburgh City Paper

For the first time since the Great Depression, two Republicans had been elected to run county government, which was then headed by a panel of three commissioners. Within four months, an overhauled Port Authority board -- all but one of its nine members newly appointed by Dunn and Cranmer -- ordered the transit agency to stop Spine Line planning and take a "fresh look" at transit.

That's a takeover.

Dunn and Cramner killed off the Spine Line because there wasn't money available to complete it, just as there has not been sufficient money to extend the T to the Strip District.

No, that's wrong too. As described in that article, the Spine Line was still in planning at the time, and they killed it off before there was ever a serious effort to get it the federal and state funding the project would need. The reason they killed it is that they saw it as too much of a City project. Again from the article, here is what one of their new appointees to the PAT Board said at the time:

New member Ed Stewart, then mayor of Crafton, led the decision. "I just find it extremely difficult to justify that expenditure from Oakland to Downtown when we have this entire area with needs that aren't being met," he told the Post-Gazette. "I think it's a bad investment. ... [M]y view is we have to look at all of Allegheny County and not just Oakland or Downtown."

It is important to get this history right, so we can understand what it will take in the future to do better.