On Transportation (On Donner, On Blitzen)

And so while I was hung over from turkey (and about three bottles of Bordeaux), Jon Schmitz wrote a nice little positive article on the North Shore Connector in the PG. I wouldn't go so far to say that this is a fluff piece, but it is comparable to what I regularly find in my bellybutton.

It's not that I have a problem with the North Shore Connector, in concept. Indeed, high speed dedicated mass transportation should be provided to as many Pittsburgh neighborhoods and outlying suburbs as possible in order to enhance interconnectivity between communities. The NSC (as I will now call it after a further bottle of Bordeaux), however, goes about it in a rather ham-handed way.

To the points raised in Senor (because my computer won't let me put a "~" over the "n") Schmitz's article:

(1) Is this a subway train to nowhere?

Schmitz argues no: this is a line that complements development already underway. While this may be true, the NSC seems to half ass it.

First, while the line does reach into the North Shore, it doesn't reach into the North Side. The City has already invested many millions of dollars in the adjacent neighborhoods of Manchester, Allegheny West, and Central North Side, but they don't get to appreciate a T-stop unless they walk under a highway, down a cavern, past the river Styx, fight a legion of rabid monkeys... etc. While they train doesn't go nowhere, it doesn't exactly go *somewhere*.

Second, if you look at the flyover ramp next to the casino, it seems very difficult to imagine how this line will eventually go *somewhere*... like, say, to the airport. I mean, if it went underground, paralleling the Northshore Expressway or event the CSX lines, servicing Manchester, Marshall-Shadeland, Brighton Heights, etc., I could see opportunities for future expansion, but it sort of stops and runs right into the casino. And, while I am no expert of Real Estate acquisition, I would think that this would be a problem.

It's like PAT is planning on a 100 year time horizon in which the Morlocks have risen from under the earth and have destroyed everything in their path, at which time the Port Authority can extend light rail service to Findley Twp. Unless you're a forward thinking Morlock, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

(2) Can they afford it?

The question is wrong. It isn't really "Can PAT afford it" but rather, "does it provide a net benefit to the region?"

I would say no.

Rather than connecting, say, the two of the most commercially developed areas in the state (Downtown and Oakland), PAT has decided to connect the 2nd most commercially developed areas in the state with a slight outlying area to the 2nd most commercially developed area in the state.

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially considering that the East Busway was designed to be eventually converted into light rail and could relatively easily be repurposed to that end.

Now, I may be completely hammered on a mixture of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sam Adams, but it doesn't really seem that the Port Authority is really keyed into the long term economic development plans of the City of Pittsburgh. While service to the Northshore is nice and all, (as built) it doesn't really serve a long term economic development strategy. Rather it seems to advance a bureaucratic fetish to build stuff because money is available and stuff needs to be built.

I mean, I hope that I'm proved wrong and that come April Steve Bland will announce an multi-billion dollar project to connect the airport to Oakland. I will not, however, be holding my breath.