Will Pittsburgh ever expand the T?
Mayor Bill Peduto says he can see a seamless, vibrant North Shore, stretching from where the 16th Street Bridge crosses the Allegheny River to the city line, down the Ohio River to the northwest.
A couple of decades ago, developing those nearly 5 miles of riverfront would have seemed farfetched. Now it seems close to a lock. The mayor attended the groundbreaking last week for the Rivers Casino’s 219- room luxury hotel. That $ 60 million statement will be connected to the 10- yearold casino and is expected to open in early 2021.
Next door, the Carnegie Science Center is exploring a mixed- use development of a 450space parking lot, and the mayor says 20 developers responded to a request for proposals. Farther downriver, Millcraft Investments has a 15- acre plan that includes a 2- acre lagoon, a marina, a giant Ferris wheel, an aquarium, office space, condominiums, apartments and restaurants. It expects to break ground in the next couple of years.
Where the customers and apartment buyers will come from, I’ve no idea. But how many Pittsburghers predicted the market for all the high- end apartments and hotel rooms that have opened Downtown, in the Strip District, Lawrenceville and East Liberty this past decade? A recession may yet scuttle some of these plans, but the North Shore is already a dreamscape compared with the asphalt sea that
surrounded Three Rivers Stadium for three decades.
Given that much of this would not have been possible without light rail crossing under the river with the North Shore Connector in 2012, I asked the mayor what it would take to extend the T further. I mean, apart from there being no money for that.
Mr. Peduto recalled touring the North Shore tunnel when it was under construction. The North Side station between the stadiums was built to accommodate a northern extension at about the point where it hooks west to the Allegheny station beyond Heinz Field. Port Authority engineers understood that continuing north underground — and perhaps using the HOV lane on the Parkway North to serve the North Hills — would make sense in a perfect world. ( HOV means the Hardly One Vehicle Lane, for those new in town.)
But any such ambitious project would take a countywide referendum, Mr. Peduto said. Citizens would have to decide whether they’d invest to make light rail something more than a South Hills perk. The question would be whether to spend billions of dollars to take light rail to the North Hills, west to Pittsburgh International Airport and to Oakland and/ or other points east. The first engineering proposals for the Martin Luther King East Busway in the early 1970s made accommodations for light rail to succeed that roadway, Mr. Peduto said.
It’s all idle conjecture, of course. The smart money is still with John Craig, late editor of the Post- Gazette, who wrote in July 2000 that without federal money for such projects, “it will be a very cold day indeed when there is enough’’ to get light rail to an airport 17 miles from the Golden Triangle. The chance of getting to the North Hills is not much warmer without federal help.
President Donald Trump made a $ 1 trillion campaign pledge to rebuild America’s roadways, bridges and waterways, but the last big news on infrastructure was the president storming out of a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders in May, unwilling to do any bipartisan building as long as the other party was investigating him.
That promise should be roundfiled with Mr. Trump’s magicbeans promise to cut taxes, beef up defense eliminate the national debt in eight years. ( Bloomberg reported this month that the budget gap of nearly $ 867 billion in the first 10 months of this fiscal year already exceeds last year’s shortfall of $ 779 billion — the largest federal deficit since 2012.) It’s not as if Mr. Trump is looking to do his climate- change nemesis Mr. Peduto any favors anyway.
No place has ever paved its way out of congestion, but persuading voting motorists to invest in getting some of their peers off the roads and on to streetcars or buses would be a tough sale. So any extension of light rail likely would be incremental; Mr. Peduto said there might be a creative way to take the T a bit farther up the North Side if Millcraft Investments wants to seek tax abatements as part of that project.
More than 80% of the funds for the $ 523 million North Shore Connector came from the federal government, and it was aggressively misnamed “The Tunnel to Nowhere” — until the day it opened. Since then, it’s been heavily used by sports fans, community college students, casino gamblers and commuters dodging the steep Downtown parking fees by parking north of the Allegheny River and taking the free ride under the water. ( The city Stadium Authority and station advertising revenue subsidize the free rides.)
Compared with 2011, the year before the connector opened, rail ridership in 2018 was up 1,500 on weekdays, 1,900 on Saturdays and 2,000 Sundays. The numbers were even higher a few years ago, when the Pirates drew about 10,000 more fans each game.
People like riding those trains. But those expecting significant extensions will be waiting a long time for that ride.