[PRCo] Bob O'Connor's Streetcar

[Matt Barry]

Did the group already discuss this?    Was I asleep on the car stop 
bench  at the time?
 From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:


    O'Connor gets behind streetcar idea

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

By Timothy McNulty, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mayoral hopeful Bob O'Connor is unveiling his first major economic 
development proposal of the young political season, saying he favors 
building a new streetcar line connecting Downtown and Oakland.

O'Connor said the streetcars would promote development, especially in 
the Hill District and other neighborhoods along the transit line, spur 
housing Downtown and make the city more attractive to college students 
and other young people.


	

	

The plans are preliminary, but O'Connor said he has met with officials 
from HDR Inc., a nationwide engineering firm with offices Downtown, to 
go over general proposals. Neither O'Connor nor an HDR official would 
put a firm price tag on the plans, but O'Connor estimated the cost at 
$70 million, which he said could come largely from private investors and 
federal transportation funds.

"Quality of life is the most powerful economic strategy," the Democratic 
candidate said yesterday, after a briefing on the streetcar plans. "This 
adds to quality of life and that's why it really caught my eye, 
especially as we're trying to retain young people and all these people 
going to our universities."

O'Connor -- who is facing county Prothonotary Michael Lamb and city 
Councilman William Peduto in the May 17 Democratic primary -- has been 
talking about the streetcar proposal lately in meetings with 
neighborhood groups and party officials.

Until now, promoting public transit has been a major part of only 
Peduto's campaign: Peduto has long opposed construction of the 
Mon-Fayette Expressway extension through the city and Allegheny County, 
saying the money should be spent on other transit needs instead.

O'Connor favors the $2 billion expansion of the toll road while Lamb has 
said he supports the project generally, but not links into city 
neighborhoods.

Peduto said there is not enough federal transportation funding available 
to Western Pennsylvania to support the Mon-Fayette project and a city 
streetcar line simultaneously.

"This and other transit ideas will never happen as long as we have 
elected officials who support big-ticket items like the Mon-Fayette 
Expressway," he said. "To make streetcars or light rail a reality, it 
must be the next mayor's first priority."

Lamb said a Downtown-Oakland link should be a priority for the next 
mayor, as long as the city worked with affected neighborhoods on the plan.

"Great cities have great transit. Pittsburgh is a great city and our 
goal should be to have a world-class transit system," he said in a 
statement.

The streetcars O'Connor is studying are different from the Light Rail 
Transit cars already connecting Downtown with the city's southern 
neighborhoods. They are smaller and their tracks are built into existing 
streets, sharing the roads with regular auto traffic.

The electric-powered trolleys are typically 8 feet wide -- a couple of 
feet narrower than street lanes -- with tracks dug 12 inches into the 
street surface, which does not disturb sewer lines or other utilities 
during construction. Construction can be completed in three to four 
weeks per city block.

The streetcars are meant to supplement the LRT and bus routes that bring 
visitors to the city from outlying suburbs, acting as people 
"circulators" among city neighborhoods, said Edward E. Reese, a senior 
vice president at HDR.

They have been most successful in Portland, Ore., where a 
city-affiliated nonprofit group opened a streetcar line in 2001 after 
two years of construction.

O'Connor was aware that past plans to build a "spine line" between 
Oakland and Downtown, most recently in the early 1990s, had failed, and 
said he plans to meet with the Port Authority and with Allegheny County 
Chief Executive Dan Onorato to discuss the idea.

O'Connor said he envisioned one end of the streetcar line at the 
Carnegie Mellon University campus, with links to and from Downtown via 
Fifth and Forbes avenues. Links could also be built through the Strip 
District, he said.

It is roughly 3.75 miles from Carnegie Mellon to Downtown and O'Connor 
and Reed said the lines could be built at $11 million per mile. A study 
HDR performed last year on a 14-mile streetcar system proposed for 
Atlanta estimated construction costs of up to $335 million, with $23 
million in annual operating costs.

There is no way the cash-strapped city could pay for the project, in the 
short term at least: It has no money to pay for regular capital 
improvements this year and its poor credit rating is barring it from 
borrowing money until next year at the earliest.

Funding could be provided by developers owning land along the new 
transit line, perhaps through a self-imposed "improvement district" tax.

"You'd have to talk to the community. If this is the thing we want -- 
between the hospitals, the universities and Downtown businesses -- at 
$11 million a mile you could do the whole thing for $60 or $70 million," 
O'Connor said.