PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[BrianTH]

PG article on the BRT release:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/tra...s/201703090174

I am looking for an actual document . . . .

Edit:

TR article with pictures:

http://triblive.com/local/allegheny/...uses-officials

[AFW523]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Speaking of which, it looks like at 10 this morning, they are going to release some update of some sort on their BRT plan for Downtown/Oakland/Squirrel Hill:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...bus-rapid.html

I believe the target was to be submitting this for federal funding in 2018, so I am not sure this will be a final and complete plan. I know they were trying to pick the route, though, so maybe they will be announcing that decision and maybe some other plan details such as station locations.

I'm not really for this, or against it...but my honest question is this: Is the drive time from Oakland to Downtown really that bad via public transport? I don't regularly use it, and I know they have those half-assed diamond lanes on Forbes near campus...but I frequently go home (from Uptown to L'Ville) through Oakland at peak rush hour, and unless something substantial happened to cause gridlock, I move at a fairly reasonable clip. Does public transport get bogged down from something I don't encounter, or am I just not going that way often enough to understand the impact? And is there that much cross traffic from Oakland to town? Again I'll plead ignorance because I'm just applying anecdote, but I don't really know of a large segment of people that travel back and forth from town to Oakland. In my encounters, it tends to be an either/or kind of thing.

Again I'm not against it because $200 million is a drop in a bucket these days and I'll take all the infrastructure improvements we can get...it just surprises me that this gets positioned as so impactful and transformative for a route that I don't really personally find all that bad.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by AFW523

Again I'm not against it because $200 million is a drop in a bucket these days and I'll take all the infrastructure improvements we can get...it just surprises me that this gets positioned as so impactful and transformative for a route that I don't really personally find all that bad.

I think the critical thing to keep in mind is that a whole bunch of bus routes pass through Oakland. So it is not just about the riders going from Oakland to Downtown or vice-versa, but all the other riders passing through the corridor. And in that context, minutes matter--a 5 or 10 minute savings for every bus route passing through that choke point will likely lead to increased ridership for all those routes, compounding the net benefit.

Plus a lot of what they want to do is not about time savings per se, but a bunch of other upgrades that can help increase ridership independently. All that increased ridership leads to lower average operating costs on the affected routes, and again collectively we're talking about a lot of routes.

[photoLith]

I don't care about buses, I want damned light rail for Christ's sake. Pittsburgh is virtually the only major city in America that doesn't have a decent light rail system now. Clevelands for example is a million times more useful than Pittsburghs pathetic T that is quite useless and avoids the most urban areas of the city. Hell, even just a line from downtown to Oakland I would be happy with. Ive only taken a bus one time since living here, they are confusing and dirty. You go to Philly, Houston, Portland, Boston, etc and you can get to nearly all the important places via rail or light rail. Here in Pittsburgh, you have to have a car and if you don't, it takes 5 times as long usually to get anywhere by bus here.

[eschaton]

The Pittsburgh Business Times article on the BRT plan has more details. Namely that the additional two routes past Oakland under consideration are to Squirrel Hill and Highland Park. I presume the Highland Park route would extend up the Baum-Centre corridor through East Liberty, which is sorely needed, considering how congested the buses are on that route despite being close to the East Busway.

Edit: I also wonder on the Squirrel Hill Route. I'd guess it would be:

1. Forbes to Murray Avenue
2. Murray to Forward
3. Forward to Beechwood Boulevard
4. Beechwood to Fifth, and back to Oakland

Beechwood is windy and doesn't have a lot of density, but it's a wide road, so I figure it could house the return loop of a Squirrel Hill line better than just about any other street.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by photoLith

I don't care about buses, I want damned light rail for Christ's sake.

Why are steel wheels inherently better than rubber wheels?

From an operating perspective, rail is nice when it is on a dedicated ROW and there are really high volumes. If you live a short walk from a rail station on the exact line you want to use, rail can also be nice to the extent it provides a smoother rider.

Rail is less nice from either an operating or ridership perspective when you have to take some sort of connecting bus (or drive) just to get to a rail station. Rail is also much less nice when it doesn't have a dedicated ROW. Meanwhile, electric buses and other technologies are somewhat closing the gap in terms of things like the smoothness of the ride.

Finally, where rail is scarce, higher-income people can crowd out lower-income people, making rail appear "nicer" for other higher-income people (it can also lead to a lot more investment in rail stations, and so on). This is not such a good effect from a broader perspective.

Personally, I love the fact the East Busway is buses. That is because my regular bus, the P71, picks up a block from my house, then gets on the East Busway at Wilkinsburg Station for its run Downtown. I can walk to Hamnett Station, but that is much more inconvenient from my house, and I wouldn't prefer it even if the East Busway was rail. And I wouldn't want to have to take a shuttle bus and transfer either.

Pittsburgh is actually really well suited to benefit in these ways from BRT due to its complex topography. We can't just build a few nice straight rail lines and have everyone live along them. Instead, our developable land snakes in small patches along river valleys, across plateaus, through ravines, and so on. So, absent spending tens or hundreds of billions running rail everywhere (with lots of expensive bridges and tunnels), we're still going to have many people not living close to a rail station. And for them this sort of local-to-express feature of strategically-located busways is really useful.

Ive only taken a bus one time since living here, they are confusing and dirty.

I like my bus, as do many other people. But, I agree we could make some things nicer and less confusing about the bus system, and this would help.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The Pittsburgh Business Times article on the BRT plan has more details. Namely that the additional two routes past Oakland under consideration are to Squirrel Hill and Highland Park.

I've also seen references to Wilkinsburg, which I assume would just be an extension of the Squirrel Hill route.

[Austinlee]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

PG article on the BRT release:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/tra...s/201703090174

I am looking for an actual document . . . .

Edit:

TR article with pictures:

http://triblive.com/local/allegheny/...uses-officials

This is so exciting to see renderings and price tag ($200-$240m) and a potential timeline - Opening by 2021.


Here's a random photo I took from the 3rd floor of a townhouse on Miltenberger. Beautiful dense area. Just too many parking lots in Uptown. I am feeling really good about Pittsburgh such as the Lower hill redevelopment, Strip District development, BRT, CMU construction and more.

Taken from 305 Miltenberger:

[PGHFan]

Interesting views on how other cities have better systems. Atlanta spent near $90 million for a street car (light rail) that is mainly used by homeless people. From Wikiepedia: "Since opening for service, the Atlanta Streetcar has been criticized by officials and residents for its short route, safety, poor management, and lower-than-expected ridership." Cleveland's BRT that connects downtown with the University Center is a slow ride with stops about every two blocks. While in a dedicated lane, the ride is bumpy and shuddering. Even in a flat city like Cleveland, if a BRT is not done well it won't add much, e.g., passenger comfort. Philadelphia's transit system is old and its streetcars are, well, old also. I hope that the Pittsburgh BRT will learn a bit from these other systems that are less than well executed. Having a nicely paved dedicated line with new stations and other passenger amenities would be a step forward. I agree with Brain TH's implication that there is nothing inherently better about tires than wheels, especially if on an electrically powered vehicle, as is proposed for Pittsburgh.

[eschaton]

In general, discounting the nostalgia/class factor, surface buses are superior to streetcars, light rail is superior to surface buses, BRT is superior to light rail, and heavy rail is superior to BRT. The most important aspect is having a dedicated ROW for the "express" portion of the trip.

[BenM]

Dedicated lanes, fixed routes, Pittsburgh as a growing hub for self driving vehicles? That sounds like a huge opportunity to develop autonomous rapid transit.

Leapfrog everybody else.

(With the major caveat that I have no idea how long it would take to achieve that vision.)

[BrianTH]

I do wonder if the busways and such could be shared with self-driving vehicles at some point.

[BrianTH]

Riverfront 47 has acquired the Sunoco Station on Freeport, property it needs to build an access road into its site:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...o-station.html

[BrianTH]

Snap of a possible BRT map resolving what we were discussing above:



I was wrong about the Wilkinsburg route going via Squirrel Hill--it would go via the East Busway.

[AFW523]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Snap of a possible BRT map resolving what we were discussing above:



I was wrong about the Wilkinsburg route going via Squirrel Hill--it would go via the East Busway.

So do the new vehicles continue on the satellite routes past the cathedral, or is that just done to illustrate the feeder patterns? Because if not, I stand by my original point that it won't really be that impactful. It's basically a boardwalk tram from the cathedral of learning to the point and back. Which I'm still fine with.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by AFW523

So do the new vehicles continue on the satellite routes past the cathedral, or is that just done to illustrate the feeder patterns? Because if not, I stand by my original point that it won't really be that impactful. It's basically a boardwalk tram from the cathedral of learning to the point and back. Which I'm still fine with.

That may be up in the air. In earlier phases, they were looking at three possibilities: more of a transfer model, more of a shared route model, and hybrid in between where some existing routes would be consolidated and there might be more transferring, but some existing routes would more or less remain on the local-to-express model. The hybrid seemed like the preferred choice. Note that's basically the East Busway approach--some people are transferring to the P1 or P3, but other people are just sharing the East Busway on routes like my own P71.

Based on their introduction of electric buses, my guess is they are either looking at the transfer or hybrid model for this extended system, and my further guess is it is the hybrid model. Assuming these are battery buses (no wires or anything), they wouldn't really be committed to exactly where they used those specific buses, and ordinary buses could probably still use the same infrastructure. So why not?

All this is a good illustration of how with this sort of BRT, you need to separate out the vehicles from the other infrastructure. Potentially a lot of different vehicles can benefit from the new infrastructure, including legacy vehicles, and your use of special new vehicles can be flexible based on things like demand, funding, and so on.

Edit: Just to try to clarify:

Suppose you get on a bus at Loretta or Bunkerhill. One question is whether that bus will take you all the way to Downtown without a transfer at Cathedral, where the dedicated BRT lane starts. My guess is yes, at least on these buses you won't need a transfer, but I don't know for sure.

Another question is whether that bus will be one of the fancy new electric buses. I'm not sure about that either, but my point is they don't necessarily need to know the answer right away.

A third question is whether these are the only buses that will either feed into and/or share the dedicated BRT lane starting at Cathedral. Again, I don't know--could be this is just picking out the only routes designated for the new vehicles, or the only routes allowed to use the lane past Cathedral, or the only routes feeding all the way to Cathedral (but no farther).

[BrianTH]

A small portion of Trek's plan for the Garden Theater block (conversion of the Bradbury Building into 16 apartments) is going forward:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...-bradbury.html

[acenturi]

Originally Posted by PGHFan

....Philadelphia's transit system is old and its streetcars are, well, old also. I hope that the Pittsburgh BRT will learn a bit from these other systems that are less than well executed. Having a nicely paved dedicated line with new stations and other passenger amenities would be a step forward. I agree with Brain TH's implication that there is nothing inherently better about tires than wheels, especially if on an electrically powered vehicle, as is proposed for Pittsburgh.

You are obviously unfamiliar with SEPTA to make a statement such as "less than well executed". Philly and NYC transit systems are not just (old) streetcars, they are composed of major (very efficient) networks of streetcars, buses, light rail (elevated and subways) and high speed regional trains (http://www.septa.org/maps/system/ (Does not include the extensive connecting Bus system). These local networks interconnect seamlessly with the National Rail System (AMTRAK) via large station complexes. The only portion of Philly's system that is "old" are the streetcars, which if you are nostalgic, represent a long ago era when Philly and other large cities were saturated with embedded rail.

Pittsburgh is tiny, relative to it's transit related geography and annual ridership compared to Philly (110 Million) and can only dream of a similarly efficient system. That is not to say that Pittsburgh can't copy that efficiency on a much smaller scale.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

A small portion of Trek's plan for the Garden Theater block (conversion of the Bradbury Building into 16 apartments) is going forward:

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...-bradbury.html

Thats awesome, I was afraid that building was going to get demolished. I went inside it a couple of years ago and its a disaster, parts of the roof had collapsed and water damage all over the building. Glad they are restoring it.

[BrianTH]

Many more details (and some questions we have discussed answered) in this new PG article about the BRT plan:

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/ci...s/201703100086