The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Transit was one of the deciding factors behind where Our Lady of the Pentacle and I decided to put down roots here in the Pittsburgh metroplex. Yes, we’ve got a car and use the thing frequently, but one such as myself has a distinct preference for being able to leave the automobile in the driveway occasionally.

The Pittsburgh Regional Transit people, aka the ‘PRT,’ operate a light rail service – called ‘The T’ – on the skeletal remains of Pittsburgh’s once far flung trolley system. The residential section we settled in enjoys this service and I ride it often, especially so on days when I’m taking the camera out for a walk. It frees me up to partake in a pint of beer or two after the walk is over, and allows egress to the core of the city without having to worry about parking or getting back to where I parked after scuttling about for miles and miles. I like it, and think it’s neat.

As mentioned a month or two ago, there’s a series of maintenance projects that PRT is performing this summer on the T service which has introduced a fairly random series of steps into riding the thing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Under normal circumstance, one boards the service at a dedicated stop in my town (Dormont, which is technically a ‘Borough’). The light rail unit moves along a set of tracks with a variety of conditions – street running, dedicated and separated from vehicle traffic rights of way, underground subway style tunnels, and then back to an elevated right of way track at the terminal end nearby the stadiums on Pittsburgh’s north side. This trip is normally about 25-30 minutes long.

The phase of work that PRT has begun involves the subway section of the service, which lurks beneath the office buildings and towers of the downtown section. The light rail thereby diverts to a normally shuttered facility in the downtown area called ‘Penn Station.’

Said facility is across the street from the former HQ of the actual Pennsylvania Rail Road, a magnificent building which has been converted over to luxury residential usage. At Penn Station, T riders are encouraged to debark the rail units.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The street which Penn Station is found on is the approach to one of several ‘Busway’ corridors that snake through the Pittsburgh metro, and there’s a series of switches and tracks back there where the T can ‘turn around.’ There’s also what seems like a bus depot, but this isn’t a public byway so I can’t really say. They don’t actually turn around the T’s, I’d mention, the operator simply switches from the controls at one side of the unit to the other for the reverse trip.

There seems to be an intellectual tug of war going on with the people who care about public transit here in southwestern PA, between investing in and expanding the bus system or doubling down on the T. Advocacy arguments in favor of one or the other both have validity and solid reasoning, to my ear. There’s also a social justice factor which has to be added to the argument, as Pittsburgh’s ‘communities of color’ are largely supported by the bus network, rather than the limited corridors of the T which run through mostly suburban areas.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Personally, I think rail is the cooler choice (especially so if you’re suffering from a disability), but it doesn’t mean that it’s the best fiscal or political decision for municipal investment. The buses offer a much greater range and versatility as far as servicing the more far flung sections of Pittsburgh, for instance, and provide reach into communities which are experiencing economic hard times and providing a pipeline of access to the employment possibilities of downtown, and the stadium area with all of its service sector jobs. It’s also fairly easy and relatively cheap to increase bus saturation, as opposed to rail.

The light rail, on the other hand, is far more reliable than the buses – but the upfront costs of acquiring land, building the tracks, and populating the rails with passenger units is frightening. Saying that, there’s parts of Pittsburgh that the T doesn’t touch by design, which is somewhat baffling. The Oakland section with its multitudes of college students, for instance, would benefit massively from T service. So too would areas with functional but unused tracks like Allentown and the South Side Slopes.

There’s also ‘hot’ real estate zones like Lawrenceville which are entirely dependent on buses instead of rail, which is goofy.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At any rate… my drill right now involves riding the T from home to Penn Station, debarking the train and crossing a street to catch a rail shuttle bus. The shuttle bus subsequently stops at the two stations which have been isolated due to the reconstruction work (they’re replacing the concrete plinths which the actual rails are anchored into) that is underway.

The bus snakes through downtown Pittsburgh, whereupon it drops you off at another rail station at the end of the T’s Subway section, and then you board another T unit to complete the journey. I didn’t ’stopwatch’ the trip, but in estimation it took about 25 minutes longer for me to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ than it normally had.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The shuttle bus carries you to another station, whereupon you ride an escalator down to the platform level and board another train set. This unit accomplishes the final two stops on the service, including the terminal stop on the north shore of the Allegheny River nearby Acrisure Stadium. Personally, I found the entire thing quite interesting, but I’m a known transit nerd, ‘out and proud.’

Things are about to get even more interesting for me at the end of May, when the concrete plinth replacement project rises up out of the tunnels beneath downtown and begins nibbling up the dedicated right of way and street running sections of the service closer to home. That’s meant to take about three months, according to the PRT, which will be followed by a long timeline project that’s meant to rehabilitate the bridge which the T uses to cross the Monongahela River. That should be a pretty interesting situation to take shots of.

The PRT’s plan is to run buses on the route during the construction, which lends some weight to the argument offered by proponents of doubling down on road vehicle oriented transit in the area. This, of course, risks increasing vehicle congestion and air pollution.

It’s going to be interesting to see which side wins out, in the end.

Back tomorrow.

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