Is the Airport a Money Pit?

For all the griping about the North Shore Connector, how come no one gripes about the Pittsburgh "International" Airport. This money pit has been attempting to sink the county since 2001 when a series of unfortunate events finally conspired to yank the title of major airport hub from this mid-sized city airport. It was inevitable. Yet, in 1992, the airport was expanded??? After years of awful unemployment and folks leaving in droves, someone thought it'd be a great idea to expand this airport? At the time, the new airport buildings were "also being seen as a way to lift the economy." Talk about a boondoggle.

Nowadays, we've enticed (read: spent lots of money on) Delta to operate a non-stop flight to Paris and the powers-that-be have spent millions of dollars attempting to link this mediocre airport to the city instead of actually building a viable downtown to Oakland transit connection. If they were really concerned about inter-city travel, $1 Billion would have been much better spent on having more than one train per day to cities like Cleveland, Philadelphia, Harrisburg and New York.

Pittsburgh needs an airport, but *gasp* I agree with Onorato. Sell off the airport parking garages, make the airport solvent, and let's get the hell out of dodge.

Port Authority Endangering Lives?

Another day, another Port Authority accident.

When will there be some accountability for bus drivers in the city of Pittsburgh? Today, "Port Authority spokesman Jim Ritchie says the 77B Penn Hills bus was rounding a bend in North Oakland when the driver lost control and the bus jumped a curb." Several passengers were injured. My guess is this driver was driving recklessly because I have seen that happen too many times in Oakland.

May 21? Port Authority bus hits bicyclist.

May 19? Cars rear-end Port Authority bus.

May 8? Port Authority bus rear-ended.

January 19? Woman killed in car / Port Authority bus accident.

And these are all the results of a brief google search. Add to this the countless stories of friends and myself almost or getting hit by buses. A few years ago, my brother's car was hit by a Port Authority bus. He told them, and they just sent him a check for the damages. No questions asked. How commonplace is this? How are these accidents handled within Port Authority management? Is there a regular process of firing these reckless drivers which endanger pedestrians, riders, bicyclists, and other drivers?

In case, you like many other people in Pittsburgh are at the losing end of an encounter with a Port Authority, there is a due process to follow as outlined in the Post-Gazette way back in 2006 which vents the frustrations that existed back then.

Bike-PGH sets the steps out plainly:

If you’re ever involved in an accident (or incident) with a Port Authority be sure to:

1. Write down the four digit bus identifier number on the back of the bus along with the route number
2. Call the police
3. File a claim with Port Authority by calling 412.442.2000
4. Go directly to your Magisterial District Judge

So remember, if you get in an accident with a Port Authority bus, publicize it and report it. It is ridiculous that the people of Pittsburgh need to live in fear of the buses.

Changes to Port Authority

One of the good things about being out of the country for 3 months is that things seem to happen more quickly. For instance, when I was in Pittsburgh it was a slow waiting game for Port Authority to announce their new transit initiatives, but today relatively out-of-the-blue, they announced their preliminary findings and by the time I'm back (in June), they'll be well into the next public input phase and thinking about actually implementing these plans.

Things I'm psyched about?

• Reducing the number of stops to somewhere below 16,000.
• Reducing the mind-boggling route variations
• Renaming/color-coding routes to reduce confusion and the steep learning curve
• Direct route to the airport without stopping at Robinson
• Bus priority at stop lights
• Fare boxes outside the buses where you can buy tickets
  

What I'm disappointed about the process?
1500 people showed up at meetings to comment on this overhaul. Only 900 people commented on the website, including myself. Only in Pittsburgh do you have more people who are willing to drag themselves to a public meeting than surf the web. This speaks to 2 things. First a lack of publication by Port Authority in the right circles. If they had pushed their agenda at colleges or in the City Paper or perhaps online advertising at the Post-Gazette, they should have had thousands of online responses. Hopefully, they will work to rectify this lack of feedback in the next few months.

I have a few hooks they can use to get some more college student responses:
"Want to rename the 54C to the 'Drunk Bus'? Fill out this survey!"
"Want to be able to take the bus after you get your 3AM hot dog fix at the O?"
"Want a quicker ride to Giant Eagle, Ikea, or the movies? Fill out this survey!"

An extra bonus? Hold a raffle for the people who complete the surveys and give away a free month bus pass to one lucky winner to encourage the non-college student crowd. Good old-fashioned paper surveys distributed to the buses wouldn't hurt either. In the meantime, make yourself heard online.

On the flip side, kudos to the Port Authority for getting 1500 people to voice their opinions in person.

I am also a big fan of their seemingly new goal of increasing ridership and cutting per-passenger costs. It's about time someone had an actual plan for Port Authority instead of just ignoring it while it bloats along while regularly cutting service and increasing fares.

Good Day For Mass Transit

So I spend yesterday lambasting Onorato for creating schisms between county and city and today he goes and proves me wrong. Onorato wrote a letter requesting money for transit links between Downtown, Oakland and the airport. In fact the headline for the Post-Gazette article is:

Onorato eyes rail links to airport, Oakland

Of course, I have to look closer.

The "fine print" for this letter breaks down Onorato's requests as such:
$7 Million for downtown mass transit system design
$10.5 Million for commuter rail system design
------
Total: $17.5 Million

$25 Million for a road in Robinson
$32 Million for a road in Upper St Clair and Scott
$35 Million for the Mansfield Bridge which connects Dravosburg, Glassport and McKeesport.
$12 Million for a flyover ramp in Rankin and Swissvale
$4.5 Million for road improvements in Marshall
$2.5 Million for road construction in Monroeville
$7 Million for traffic improvements in Brackenridge near a steel plant
------
Total: $118 Million

So $17.5 Million out of a total $135.5 Million (about 13%) of his requests are for mass transit.

I understand that the elephant in the room here is the dreaded North Shore connector which is gobbling up a lot of funding right now.

I also understand that these transit projects will cost ultimately cost billions of dollars but they're only in the design phases right now and there's a limit to how much money you can request for design.

However, I seriously question the short-term vision of our local government who only finds these projects worth pursuing when they are in national favor. Imagine if someone a few years ago had the gumption and follow-through to initiate these studies and if we were ready to go on a spineline between Oakland and Downtown instead of working on a half-assed North Shore connector which no one is truly happy about. What happens in 4 years if Obama is no longer in power and our pathetic local leaders still are (and perhaps Onorato has his governor prize)? Will we then be left with yet more money being spent on highways and interchanges and more transit plans being curtailed and swept under the rug? Will we end up with a new tunnel to the South Side as a booby prize?

But in the meantime, I am very excited to see mass-transit plan being seriously considered even if it's local leaders jumping on the bandwagon. I like this bandwagon. I'd just appreciate some serious long-term regional commitment to spending time and effort on improving our transit systems because right now I feel like it could all disappear at the drop of a hat.

Pittsburgh After Dark

There's been lots of chatter lately about the Pittsburgh's college corridor and connecting Oakland and Downtown via mass transit. The new chief executive of the Allegheny Conference (the new Wizard of Oz as it were) lists the connection as one of the conferences highest priorities.
"In addition to linking the two business centers, a transit link also would provide students access to Downtown, which would make the area more vibrant after dark." But will it?

Temporarily living in Arequipa, Peru, a city known for its urban crime, has given me a new perspective on downtown Pittsburgh. Last night, I ate dinner in a crowded hopping restaurant with purse "leashes" on every seat. The idea is you hook your purse to your seat so that random bag-snatchers have a harder time filching your valuables while you're relaxing over a meal. You'd think that this threat would deter the nightlife. However, central Arequipa is a very bustling shopping and socializing destination. Just this week they installed walk signals on the intersections where their ridiculously long walk-street crosses traffic streets - really an innovative compromise to traffic concerns. Alongside these throngs of people are also lots of police officers. Arequipa appears to be sparing no expense on security.

Reasons crime-ridden central Arequipa is more popular than downtown Pittsburgh?
Lots of events, attractions, and shopping. People need a reason to come downtown.
Lots of cops (without billy clubs). People need to feel safe (but not threatened.)
Lots of public transportation. Peru doesn't have mass transit, but it does have a gazillion taxis and mini-buses.

If a magic subway showed up between Downtown and Oakland tomorrow, do you really think that Downtown would become a great destination? No. Downtown needs a coordinated effort between the theaters, the universities, the restaurants, the bars, the police and public transportation. I head to downtown Pittsburgh regularly for movies at the Harris and plays. But on a weeknight or weekend, almost all the stores and restaurants are closed. Downtown feels like a ghost-town because of all the shuttered storefronts not because of the lack of people. The first time I visited downtown on a weekday afternoon (courtesy of jury duty), I was utterly amazed at how alive and happening the city was and how difficult it was to find parking.

Of course, Pittsburgh does have sure-fire ways to get people Downtown after work. The crowds flock to the city for special downtown events - from Gallery Crawls to First Night to Light Up Night to St Patrick's Day to the Thanksgiving Day Parade. But the saddest thing I noticed? Macy's didn't open up their store on the day of the Thanksgiving Day Parade until after the parade started and the crowds had been milling around for an hour. The day after the busiest shopping day of the year, and my family was waiting for Macy's to open in order to go shopping. They certainly don't stay open late for the quarterly gallery crawls. Where did my family eat the day of the parade? Sammy's Famous Corned Beef. Why? They're good and they're always open.

How about this simple idea? The next time the URA helps fund some new retail development downtown, they can add in a caveat, you must be open on the weekends and on weeknights. That's how to get people staying and coming Downtown.

So, in summation, do I want mass transit between Oakland and Downtown? YES! Do I think it will solve all our problems? NO! Do I think there are steps we can take in the meantime to help solve our problems? YES! What do you think?

Cleveburgh vs Pittsland

This weekend, I roughly followed the dated 36 hours in Cleveland piece by the New York Times with some yelp help thrown in. I was drawn to the inevitable comparisons between the two struggling rust belt cities. Looking for the city's equivalent of Primanti Brothers left me stuffed at Cleveland's kitschy and charming Sokolowski's.

Oakland = University Circle a little further from downtown but more accessible via RTA
Bloomfield = Little Italy with less Thai food more Italian food
Tremont = a trimmed down Shady Side
Ohio's City's awesome West Side Market = our beloved Strip District
The Flats = Station Square

Deserted downtown = deserted downtown

My first impression of Cleveland in spite of the dirty piles of snow (they get about 20% more snow than Pittsburgh) was very positive. It reminded me of a European city with its wide boulevards, grandiose statuary, and classically styled buildings from the Convention Center to the Library.

The highlights of the weekend were definitely the West Side Market and the Great Lakes Brewery. The West Side Market is another European addition to Cleveland - a giant hall with everything for sale from bratwurst to pierogies to chicken gizzards to cannolis. The Great Lakes Brewery and Bar is an outstanding ambassador of the city. Not only is the beer great, they give hilarious tours of their eco-friendly brewery and have a packed-to-the-gills bar all adjacent to the West Side Market.





As rock music is not my biggest interest (and the $22 price tag a big deterrent), I steered clear of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Instead the Cleveland Museum of Art was a nice cap to my weekend. It's currently under an ambitious re-construction plan with only half of the galleries open to visitors - the rest re-open in June, but you can still check out their crazy collection of medieval armor and swords.

Things we can learn from Cleveland?

• Better bus shelters and bus lanes. They have special lights for their bus lanes which give them an edge over normal motorists. They have bus shelters that remind you more of getting on a light-rail line than anything else.
• Use light-rail judiciously to connect important places. They don't have a large light rail system, but it does connect downtown to the west side to university circle. They also connect their airport directly to a mall downtown which contains a hotel. How sweet is that?
  
• More city hotels - no visitor to the city should have to stay in Greentree unless they really really want to.
• Our own market - we even have the South Side Market House - invite regional butchers, bakers, and farmers to sell their wares in the winter months. Pittsburgh has an eating and cooking culture that can support multiple foodie-areas and being able to step inside the market on a cold day is a wonderful respite.
• More cheap parking - almost every downtown parking lot had super-cheap weekend rates - not just the ones owned by the city of Cleveland.
  

Things Cleveland can learn from Pittsburgh?

• More cohesive neighborhoods. Perhaps this can only come with time, but the only time I really felt I was in a full-fledged neighborhood was in the quaint Little Italy. Everything else just seemed a little too piece-meal - like our currently evolving Penn Ave district.
• A better alternative city paper. Our City Paper blows their Scene out of the water. I understand they have more pages to fill in the live music department but their Scene doesn't talk about politics at all. After the Short List, my favorite part of the City Paper is their off-beat take on local politics.
  
• More ethnic variation - aside from European offerings there was a dearth of international options at the West Side Market. Considering that Cleveland has 7 times the Hispanic population of Pittsburgh, I was disappointed to see only 1 booth of the 180 booths of the West Side Market selling tortillas. The Strip in Pittsburgh is a treasure trove with its Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European stores.
• More reasonable restaurants. Cleveland has PLENTY of over-priced hoity-toity food and a fair share of super-cheap college eats, but not enough in-between. Without my pre-trip yelp research, I would have been lost for a reasonable dinner in the city.
• Less Blight. Pittsburgh has its fair share of blight in certain areas but on the main route between University Circle and Downtown, there were more abandoned buildings than I could shake a stick at. It would greatly improve a visitor's first impression of Cleveland if some of those eyesores were demolished. How about turning mid-town into a nice big green space filled with cross-country skiing, biking and walking trails?
  

Overall, I had a great weekend in Cleveland. If you haven't been there, hop in your car and drive the scant 2 1/2 hours next weekend. As one Browns fan told me: "You have the Steelers, but we have Great Lakes [brewery]."

Feeling Kinda Friday

Everybody's gearing up for the big game around here, and the news front is pretty quiet here if you don't care that Ben got caught stretching and more snow is falling.

A chink in Cranberry's armor has appeared though. I'm not too sad. I find that there already enough malls in the area that I avoid like the plague. But I've also never actually gotten off the highway in Cranberry. It's not too surprising that PennDOT is taking the blame in this failure.

Does PennDOT actually want Western Pennsylvania to fail? Between closing the major artery to Oakland for a year to planning mass devastation to Route 28 to now preventing a new shiny mall in Cranberry, it sure seems like it. There has got to be a way to reconstruct Route 28 without literally shutting down parts of this major artery for 6 months. Crawling through rush-hour traffic on Route 28 last night, I day-dreamed about a commuter rail on this artery. Instead, we'll be spending our stimulus money on wreaking havoc on commuters while we build more lanes. Thankfully, I work from home, so it's hard to get too angry. My ire is mostly reserved for the nearby evils like the Department of Public Works.

This whole post is feeling like a day-dream. I guess it's the lull before the Super Bowl storm.

Go Steelers!

Less Than $20 Million

According to the Steelers and VisitPittsburgh, the home AFC championship game should bring in $20 million to the city on Sunday. That's on top of the $18 million for last week's game.

And how much extra are these games adding to the drink tax coffers alone? I'm going to make an educated guess and say that if you take the drink tax profits from Steelers Sundays, that alone will easily land you $1 Million per year.

The North Shore Connector is costing the county 3.33% of its total cost - or about $15 million. Even if it balloons to a $600 million project, that's still less than $20 million in local funds.

Don't you think a new subway line is worth 1 home Steelers championship game?

I can go over the Port Authority spiel that this paves the way for future T lines. Or that this will add yet another fringe parking area alleviating traffic and parking woes downtown. Or that this will encourage more development on the North Side which needs some help right about now.

But instead I'll tell you why I think it's not a horrible idea.

When out-of-towners or former Pittsburghers come back to visit in droves, it's for one of two things. The holidays and Steelers games.

Theoretically, we want to give these people a good impression. We want them to think their city is improving. We want them to go back to where they live and say good things about Pittsburgh. We want them to tell their friends, so that when they get a job offer and they're deciding between Houston, Texas and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they remember that they heard Pittsburgh was sweet. They choose Pittsburgh.

How do we impress these people? We give them slick public transportation where they're going to use it. To the Steelers game and to the airport. Assuming this risky bet works, then those people will get up and move here. Then we'll have some money in our pockets and we can do more practical less flashy things like actually get people between Oakland and Downtown.

And all for less than $20 million.

But the most important thing to realize is that this is just a piece of the puzzle. If we actually want a world-class transportation system (which we do, right?), then this is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Might as well build it first if we have the money and it can attract and impress some people. We just can't stop here. I don't care if it takes another 50-100 years. (I have faith that Pittsburgh and this country will still be around then.) But we need to keep building and planning and thinking big and we will get there.

Are We Going Somewhere?

Councilman Peduto - the only person on council that appears to be putting forth bold ideas and attempting to sidestep council politics - has put forth yet another bold and interesting idea in council today.

Peduto's idea is partially converting a freight line that runs through Hazelwood/Oakland/Lawrenceville into a commuter line. More public transportation is good. Building on existing infrastructure to work on a project that costs potentially less than $100 million instead of a project costing in the billions is a very smart use of our resources.

However, who is going to take this train? Carnegie Mellon folks who want to reach their robotics center from the central campus? The people who want a relief from parking in Oakland and are willing to park their car at either end of the line in a cheaper less crowded garage? Would this connect to the new Children's Hospital and give parents and UPMC workers more access to this grandiose new Lawrenceville destination? And where does this plan fit in the grand over-arching scheme of Pittsburgh public transportation dreams? Does such a dream plan even exist? There are a ridiculous number of freight lines throughout the city. How many of them could potentially be converted to commuter rail?

And most importantly, are these connections valuable enough to CMU or UPMC or someone else to drive some public-private partnership money?

At an upfront cost $9,000 it's worth finding out the answers.

Disappointed?

Are you disappointed with the mayor's wish list for the city?

I understand your disappointment. There are no public transit initiatives on the list. And there are very few green initiatives. There ARE some crucial water and sewer improvements on the list.

In terms of public transit, it's important to keep some things in mind though.
Controversial as it is, we ARE currently working on the North Shore connector. There is a LOT of federal money contributing to that project. We are also working on Point State Park - which will be a major boon to the city when it's finished. I'm psyched about all the connecting parks that are in progress.

My question is why isn't Maglev to the airport on the list?? That is totally shovel-ready. A lot of money and time have been spent on this project already. I understand it's another controversial project, but it would clearly be a positive addition to the area (I refuse to comment on whether it's worth the money.)

In terms of becoming a city with nationally respectable public transportation, though, we need to connect Oakland and Downtown with something other than buses and cars. Light rail seems like the best option, but I don't know for sure. I'd be happy with a monorail if necessary. Unfortunately though as far as I know there are NO solid plans for this connection.

Also, there is a TON of resistance to the Oakland-Downtown line for some reason. I don't know why... It's disappointing to me to realize that that project is NOT shovel-ready.

Where Are the Bonuses When You Need Them?

If only we had a way of improving neighborhoods, making Pittsburgh a safer place to live, and earning money for the city all at the same time. Whoever came up with the idea of sweeps for building code enforcement deserves a bonus (unless they did it while campaigning for their boss, then please fire them and unless it's Mayor Ravenstahl himself because then it would inevitably turn into "bonus-gate").

Please, take this magnificent idea to overlooked Allentown (that sketchy place with the good Italian restaurant) and bring some bulldozers in tow. But, while you're at it, visit the South Side. In fact, why not visit every neighborhood including the precious Squirrel Hill and Friendship? Let's make money for the city in an equal opportunity fashion and not give "bad area" owners a chance to feel singled out.

Of course, this begs the question as to why every day police officers aren't trained to keep an eye out for exterior building code violations and enforce them throughout the year as they do their patrols...

(reference: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08198/897188-53.stm)