PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[BrianTH]

It would be nice if they did something that didn't require knocking down the houses.

[BrianTH]

Speaking of bikeway development, Peduto is appointing Scott Bricker, head of Bike Pgh, to the board of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/bl...-to-name-bike-advocate-to-spc-board.html

The SPC, as our designated regional planning body, helps determine the allocation of federal transportation spending.

[SkyPittsburgh]

Public transit drawing record numbers in U.S.

From the PG:

With Americans taking a record number of trips by public transit last year, some Pittsburgh ridership is following the national trend, but only on the local systems in which the city has invested: the sleek, fast and reliable light rail, or "T," system rather than the overcrowded, slow and unpredictable bus system, according to transit experts.

Use of Allegheny County's Port Authority light rail system increased by 7.5 percent last year, the second-greatest increase among cities of comparable size, according to a study released recently by the American Public Transportation Association. At the same time, the study found that Pittsburgh's bus ridership dropped by 3.4 percent, even as similar cities such as Cincinnati and Cleveland posted gains.

Read More: http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/...cord-numbers-in-U-S/stories/201403110098

With the talk of AVRR Light Rail, this should help promote it even more, more Pittsburghers are taking the light rail over buses. I really wish that we could implement better Commuter rail in the city, it would help so much. I speak of a proposal by the WCTA to take Commuter Rail to Latrobe.

[George Woods]

Interesting. I wonder just how much of the increase in T-ridership is due to the North Shore Connector. No matter what time of day I get on at Allegheny Station, it's packed.

Also, how much of that decrease in bus-ridership is really just the result of decreased service on many routes (some drastically reduced) and altogether-eliminated routes (of which there were a not-insignificant number)?

I know the EBA (I refuse to call it by its new name) is not a middle-of-the-road example as Port Authority routes go, but I sometimes have to let it go by on weeknights at 7:30 because there are people standing in the stairs, and it literally can't hold one more human-being. And that's with service every fifteen minutes, and longer, articulated buses. The 54, 86, 88, and 91 are also pretty full these days. And Northside buses are usually packed.

But what I do really notice lately is just how much time often passes when I'm waiting at a stop that multiple buses serve. I used to ignore schedules and just stand at a stop that Liberty and Penn buses serviced, or that all the Northside buses serviced, because one would show up in a few minutes. Now, I almost need to look at a schedule, or else I might wait for twenty minutes and not see one of several different routes come by.

[Evergrey]

More rail please! The market is speaking... the people demand rail! Buses are the lowest form of mass transit. We should be looking to our "transit peers" and how they are all aggressively expanding rail. Cleveland is a less transit-oriented city... taking "lessons" from them on BRT is a waste of time.

[Private Dick]

I particularly like how the PG describes the T as... "sleek, fast and reliable light rail".

Have I been away from Pittsburgh that long?

[photoLith]

The T is anything but sleek and fast, in fact out of all the light rail lines I've been on and I've been on most of them in the US, Pittsburghs is one of the slowest.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

More rail please! The market is speaking... the people demand rail! Buses are the lowest form of mass transit. We should be looking to our "transit peers" and how they are all aggressively expanding rail. Cleveland is a less transit-oriented city... taking "lessons" from them on BRT is a waste of time.

Unless they further break down the statistics, there is no way to tell from this how Pittsburgh's BRT routes in particular are doing. But with the benefit of real time ridership information on the P1 they are adding service, and that fact suggests it is not true that BRT is systematically disfavored locally.

In that sense, I agree we don't need to be taking lessons from Cleveland. We should be taking lessons from ourselves, since we know BRT has already been a big success here.

Incidentally, lots of cities with higher transit usage than Pittsburgh are also expanding BRT, including NYC (the unquestioned transit champion of the U.S.). The only real lesson to learn from the experience of other cities is that all forms of contemporary rapid transit have valid uses, and which technology you choose should depend on the specific facts of the case at hand.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by photoLith

The T is anything but sleek and fast, in fact out of all the light rail lines I've been on and I've been on most of them in the US, Pittsburghs is one of the slowest.

It all depends on what you compare it to. Metro-style rail running in subways, or commuter rail running on dedicated tracks, is going to be way, way faster than the T. On the other hand, a streetcar running in mixed traffic is usually going to be even slower. The T is an odd sort of hybrid in that it uses streetcar technology, but sometimes runs in subways, and also it goes out to commuter-rail-like distances, and so on.

I think the bottomline is that while we don't necessarily need to redo the T as it stands, we should be very cautious about using the same technology for major expansions. If you just want to do something like a streetcar in the Strip or South Side, it might be OK. But if you want to do serious new commuter service, upgraded airport service, and so on, you should be switching to a different technology.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by Urbana

http://park7group.com/welcome

Look how much fun those guys are having!

[GeneW]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

More rail please! The market is speaking... the people demand rail! Buses are the lowest form of mass transit. We should be looking to our "transit peers" and how they are all aggressively expanding rail. Cleveland is a less transit-oriented city... taking "lessons" from them on BRT is a waste of time.

Yeah but more buses are better than fewer buses. Rail is a great long-term strategy but we could have more buses and more bus routes almost immediately.

[BrianTH]

People should also keep in mind how our unique topography leads to equally unique development patterns, unique challenges to routing, and so on. At the end of the day more rail may not always mean fewer buses if a lot of people are still going to need buses to get to a rail stop. And at that point, having your local bus convert to an express bus without a transfer (ala the PXX routes) can be a more attractive proposition.

[AaronPGH]

I would prefer to see many dedicated bus lanes and busways criss-crossing all of the city instead of light rail. I keep thinking about what it would take to build one subway line – something like 1-3 billion dollars. What if you took that amount and invested it into busways? You could probably connect the vast majority of the city. Every main neighborhood.

[Wiz Khalifa]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

More rail please! The market is speaking... the people demand rail! Buses are the lowest form of mass transit. We should be looking to our "transit peers" and how they are all aggressively expanding rail. Cleveland is a less transit-oriented city... taking "lessons" from them on BRT is a waste of time.

If we wait for rail to Oakland, it could take decades to plan, develop and build. I think BRT was chosen because it is 1/10th the cost and could possibly be up and running in under 5 years.

Since the BRT route could always be upgraded to rail at some point in the future as well, I think it makes sense to at least get started with BRT. A lot of those up front BRT costs would therefore effectively be purchasing us future light rail right away.

[George Woods]

I would prefer to see many dedicated bus lanes and busways criss-crossing all of the city instead of light rail. I keep thinking about what it would take to build one subway line – something like 1-3 billion dollars. What if you took that amount and invested it into busways? You could probably connect the vast majority of the city. Every main neighborhood.

AMEN.

Low-hanging fruit. And as anyone who rides them can tell you, our busways work REALLY well. Subway-systems are sexier, but I'd much rather walk to the corner and get a bus that gets me to the East End in under ten minutes than spend those ten minutes descending a billion hot, smelly stairs and ascending a billion more. Even something as simple as being able to look out the window and watch the scenery go by at sunrise or dusk, as opposed to fluorescent lights reflecting off of the blackness outside the windows is easily overlooked when comparing the two technologies. Admittedly, on-street buses can be a royal pain in the ass, but if you've ridden both a subway and one of our busways regularly, you know that our busways are far more pleasant.

[AaronPGH]

Originally Posted by George Woods

AMEN.

Low-hanging fruit. And as anyone who rides them can tell you, our busways work REALLY well. Subway-systems are sexier, but I'd much rather walk to the corner and get a bus that gets me to the East End in under ten minutes than spend those ten minutes descending a billion hot, smelly stairs and ascending a billion more. Even something as simple as being able to look out the window and watch the scenery go by at sunrise or dusk, as opposed to fluorescent lights reflecting off of the blackness outside the windows is easily overlooked when comparing the two technologies. Admittedly, on-street buses can be a royal pain in the ass, but if you've ridden both a subway and one of our busways regularly, you know that our busways are far more pleasant.

Exactly. And the new articulated buses are REALLY nice. I think they're easily as nice as any of the LRT vehicles. Throw in nice bus stations in every main business district with real-time arrival/departure boards, ConnectCard machines, etc. That is a beautiful transit system right there that everyone would freak out about.

[George Woods]

One other thing non-bike-riders tend to overlook:

Ever since a bike-rack was added to every Port Authority bus, the ability for bike-riders to make "hybrid" trips has been amazing. I can plan to go one way on the bus—or part of the way—and if it rains unexpectedly, or I get a flat or something, knowing I can always throw the bike on a bus is really nice. The busways' buses have the racks, just like any other in the system. This is another advantage over subways. I often ride my bike Downtown, put it on the EBA, take the bus to a destination in the East End (uphill), then ride the bike all the way back (downhill). And this doesn't just apply to rides of utility—I've taken the bike on the East Busway to Frick park, as well as the West Busway to the airport to ride the trail.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by AaronPGH

I would prefer to see many dedicated bus lanes and busways criss-crossing all of the city instead of light rail. I keep thinking about what it would take to build one subway line – something like 1-3 billion dollars. What if you took that amount and invested it into busways? You could probably connect the vast majority of the city. Every main neighborhood.

Of course if you invested it in aerial gondolas, you could do even MORE . . . but I digress.

To be fair, there is some low-hanging fruit where busways and bus lanes definitely make sense. Oakland is one, thanks to all the excess street capacity in the Fifth/Forbes corridor, and extending the Easy Busway to Monroeville is another (there is a handy rail ROW it could share).

But at some point you will run into similar problems with topography, such that you would need to add expensive tunnels/bridges, at which point the costs will get closer to rail. Of course where Busways have a head start, such as in the case of the West Busway (which really needs a new bridge over the Mon to be finished), you will still come in cheaper than rail. But if you get into completely new lines, the cost savings for comparable service really aren't all that high--after all, the steel rails themselves are not all that expensive.

Of course there is a WAY cheaper alternative to tunnels and bridges, namely aerial cables . . . but there I go again.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Wiz Khalifa

Since the BRT route could always be upgraded to rail at some point in the future as well, I think it makes sense to at least get started with BRT.

I agree. In fact, major development activity along that BRT corridor could finally be enough to push that project over the edge into political viability (of course in a rational world, Oakland alone should have been enough, but we have around a century of experience suggesting otherwise).

[George Woods]

You gotta pitch the gondola-idea to Peduto. It would be so awesome.