Why can't they extend the T to the Strip (Pittsburgh: sales, neighborhood)

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by Bubby Brister

I specifically said it'd give South Hills people a transferless trip to Oakland and THAT is why it's worth it. Not because rail is cute, but because transfers suck especially with how they are laid out in Pittsburgh many times....

Maybe the T is slow and you moved for that reason but those trains are packed at rush hour and a lot of those people are going to Oakland and have to transfer and would love the option of sitting on the train for another 10 minutes rather than watch 3 crowded 61's pass them by as they stand in the cold and the rain...

Easy there, big guy! Your points are certainly valid, and were understood in their original form. I insist, though, that examining the costs and challenges would turn the argument AGAINST rail.
Yes, it would be great if there were a seamless commute from the South Hills to Oakland. One might say that it could make homes in the better neighborhoods more attractive. But again - cost, with how much benefit?

[wpipkins2]

Never said i preferred buses to light or heavy rail. All this talk of re-inventing The east busway is a total waste. I would prefer the spine line from dowtown to squirrel hill via the Hill and Oakland. I prefer a subway over a slow ass street car;however, the cost would make either impossible to build.

[xdv8]

Originally Posted by wpipkins2

Never said i preferred buses to light or heavy rail. All this talk of re-inventing The east busway is a total waste. I would prefer the spine line from dowtown to squirrel hill via the Hill and Oakland. I prefer a subway over a slow ass street car;however, the cost would make either impossible to build.

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) discussion has flared up again. It isn't the spine line, and if chosen and funded would be the death knell of eastern rail. I am very skeptical, but who knows. Has this been widely discussed here since it was revived a few months ago?

Bus Rapid Transit

The Port Authority is giving a presentation on it at Eastminster Presbyterian in East Liberty on Thursday.

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by xdv8

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) discussion has flared up again. It isn't the spine line, and if chosen and funded would be the death knell of eastern rail. I am very skeptical, but who knows. Has this been widely discussed here since it was revived a few months ago?

Bus Rapid Transit

The Port Authority is giving a presentation on it at Eastminster Presbyterian in East Liberty on Thursday.

In addition to the one on Wednesday? The link does not mention a conference at the church in East Liberty. Do you know what time the Thursday one is scheduled for?

[eschaton]

Unless you're talking about true heavy rail - subways or commuter lines - generally speaking buses are superior to a similar level of fixed-rail transit (e.g., surface buses are better than streetcars, and BRT is better than light rail). This is because.

1. Rail requires very heavy capital investment to set up, even though it's generally cheaper once in place. Thus rail lines should generally not be converted into bus lines, but new ones generally shouldn't be built unless they repurpose existing track.

2. Buses have flexibility rail does not. A bus can be diverted off of a route when there is an accident. A streetcar has to wait. A bus can exit the end of a BRT line and take a surface route. With light rail, as I noted, you'd need a transfer at the outermost station.

[xdv8]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

In addition to the one on Wednesday? The link does not mention a conference at the church in East Liberty. Do you know what time the Thursday one is scheduled for?

The email I got from ELDI states March 30, 2017 @ 6:00pm.

[captainmidnight]

Yes, the city (and region) should have light rail service to Oakland and the Strip. No brainer areas for even peer cities. I would argue the airport too. But for various reasons, those
never happened. The time to do those projects was in the past instead of today and there is not much we can do about it now. Sure, maybe a miracle will happen and the city/region will find billions of dollars growing on a tree. Seriously though, there is no way extending the T to Oakland, the Strip, or even the airport would happen without a massive tax increase. That is the only way to properly fund these projects and we'll probably never see that in our lifetimes sadly. There just isn't the political and financial will in the region to do it.

I'm not sure why there is only single track from Steel Plaza to Penn Station. I'm guessing because of space constraints at some point? Just too much of a hassle to operate service since you can't much of a regular frequency unless you have a dedicated train from Steel Plaza to Penn Station and back again. Otherwise it would hold up the rest of the inbound trains. Its just a very awkward setup that was put in place to satisfy some past need and that is something all too familiar..

The East Busway is great, but there is no room for light rail tracks. PAT is lucky they have the right-of-way that they do since they are sandwiched by land, properties, etc and CSX owned heavy rail tracks. So they can't really 'expand' the width of the East Busway and buses and the T cars won't mix very well. You'd have to keep it all bus or transition to all light rail
(there are trolley buses but I don't think that would work well here). IMO, moving to dedicated light rail on the East Busway would make service worse compared to the existing buses. Yes, trains carry more than buses but there are some tight turns and curves (underneath the Bloomfield Bridge and near the East Liberty stop come to mind) that the train would have to slow down more than the buses do. The buses usually take those turns over 50 MPH..no way a train could do those that fast. Thus trip frequencies would be slower since you would have to deal with signaling and waiting for slow moving trains to clear switches. Peak service is already slammed on the East Busway. Plus the operating cost per passenger of the T is very, very high compared to buses especially heavily traveled routes like the P1. This good read of a paper (http://www.alleghenyinstitute.org/wp...oads/96_06.pdf)
from 1996 said the T's operating cost per passenger was $11.49. That was 1994 dollars and with inflation that cost is now $18.89. Not sure if that is the actual number but I would hope its lower since PAT has made some operational changes since then. Besides, if they did all light rail on the East Busway you do it right and extend it all the way to Monroeville.

Many people get upset about the North Shore extension to the T, like they think PAT purposely never wanted to extend the T to Oakland and shunned it for a shuttle to the stadiums and parking lots. That is false as the 'Spine Line' is mentioned in the paper I linked above. They only had certain amount of funding earmarked for a capital project and it was obviously well
under what would be needed for an Oakland T extension. They could have not done anything and lost the funding or do something at least and it was better than nothing. You don't leave money on the table. Again the T isn't coming to Oakland unless money rains down from the sky, the feds spend a trillion on infrastructure projects, and/or we shift to an alternate universe where the region and politicians and transportation leaders from the past identified the T to Oakland as important enough to get the money somehow and the will to make it happen.

I also get the impression that some people (outside of here) think PAT chose the South Hills as the only direction/area that gets light rail service like they threw a dart to the board. But its just the
surviving old (but upgraded) South Hills trolley lines and the subway Downtown is the result of an effort to get the trolleys off the surface streets of Downtown and clogging traffic. Sometimes I think if Pittsburgh was a "newer" built up area (and Pennsylvania was a "newer" state) that we'd have a better and more modern infrastructure instead of trying to maintain and upgrade a very, very old infrastructure. Of course, the terrain doesn't help..

[ferraris]

Regarding "something is better than nothing" with the North Shore Connector, they at least could have planned the stops better and put one on the North side of the highways. I shake my head every time I see the CCAC kids walking under the underpass and crossing the on-ramps...it very easily could have been avoided. Now they even fenced off the grassy area that they would cut through. Daily college students and neighborhood residents should have taken precedent over 30 or so days a year that Heinz Field has an event.

Honestly, for the money, they probably could have made something more effective by extending up the Strip, or from Station Square down the South Side.

The one good thing about the NSC is that it can serve as a starting point for future expansions to the north and west.

[szug-bot]

Hindsight is 20/20.

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by szug-bot

Hindsight is 20/20.

Bingo! Same thing with the highway system through Pittsburgh. The founding fathers of Pittsburgh should have known horses would become obsolete transportation.