A brilliant idea

Brilliant Branch trail project potentially transformative

Many years from now, Pittsburghers will remember the purchase of the Brilliant Branch as one of Allegheny County’s most effective uses of federal pandemic aid funds. By acquiring the property for the Allegheny RiverTrail Park, formerly known as the Aspinwall Riverfront Park, the county has cleared the first hurdle to create a major bike and pedestrian link between the East End and the Allegheny Valley.

When complete, pedestrians and cyclists, traveling between Aspinwall and Sharpsburg on the north shore of the Allegheny and Pittsburgh neighborhoods on the south shore, will no longer need to use the Highland Park Bridge, built exclusively for automobiles. Further, the converted rail line will connect core city neighborhoods to the expanding trail system along the river, which could ultimately go from Millvale and the Strip District up the Allegheny to Freeport.

The Brilliant Branch is a threemile railroad most recently owned by the Allegheny Valley Railroad. It was originally built at the turn of the twentieth century by the Pennsylvania Railroad for about $4 million — a little less than the 2022 sale price of $4.7 million. It runs from an intersection, or “wye,” with Norfolk Southern’s Pittsburgh Line in Homewood to the Conemaugh Line in Aspinwall, right at the Allegheny RiverTrail Park. Spurs could connect to the proposed Riverfront 47 development to the west, and to the Waterworks Mall and St. Margaret Hospital to the east.

The railroad, used only as an emergency bypass since at least 2019, runs roughly parallel with Washington Boulevard. Anyone familiar with the area will recognize the enormous 120-year-old stone-arch bridge, called the Brilliant Cutoff Viaduct, that passes alongside Route 8 and over the equally impressive Lincoln Avenue Bridge. On May 12, 1904, a headline in the Pittsburg Press trumpeted: “Gigantic local engineering feat is now almost completed.”

Soon, Pittsburghers will be able to do more than gawk while whizzing by on Washington Boulevard: They’ll be able to experience it from its surface high above the valley, either on bike or on foot.

It will not be cheap to turn such a complex piece of railroad engineering, which also includes the Brilliant Bridge over the Allegheny, into a safe and sustainable trail. The Allegheny RiverTrail Park estimates costs of at least $10 million.

But that’s chump change for a dynamic tourist and recreation attraction. The city, county and state, as well as the region’s foundations, should be able to figure out a funding scheme, quickly, to turn the Brilliant Branch from a brilliant idea to a brilliant reality.