Republicans would rather watch the world burn than raise taxes to fund basic government services. They are in the House of Representatives proposing 25% across the board funding cuts for discretionary spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

Here is some reading

https://nlihc.org/resource/fact-week-federal-budget-authority-housing-assistance-has-declined-more-75-billion-real

https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/trump-budget-unhealthy-housing

https://www.cbpp.org/research/housing/congress-prioritizes-housing-programs-in-2018-funding-bill-rejects-trump

https://nlihc.org/federal-budget-and-spending

It’s been debated in this country since the Great Depression and the pendulum swings back and forth over the years for how much people want the government to get involved in the housing market. When blacks were not allowed in public housing, most of the country supported public housing. Once desegregation happened in the 60s many white people switched to supporting Republicans which are heavily on the side of no public housing or rent controls and they seem to keep getting elected so I don’t know what else to do besides vote for a democrat that might try to fix the issue.

Many smart people are trying to fix the problem but solutions have been elusive. Why haven’t we gotten stronger tenants laws? near everyone hates landlords so shouldn’t that be a popular law to pass? We need stronger measures to police bad landlords. That might help offset the negative affects of rent controls. If you want to get involved this is something good to advocate for. It is an issue that is constantly discussed here in pittsburgh. Oakland student slums and Larimar absentee landlords and abandoned housing in the hill are some topics I’ve heard of.

you addressed that rent controls disincentivize construction of new housing and you mentioned government funded housing to fill the void. One issue with that is government built housing has been some of the worst maintained housing in the city of Pittsburgh and most projects older than that from 70s are simply being torn down and being replaced with smaller amounts of housing like the terraces in the hill district. The federal housing agency is known as one of the most corrupt and poorly run government agencies for handing out sweetheart contracts to political buddys. the housing they build tends to end up more expensive than the housing private developers build on their own.

So after all that is said and done, the simplest solution is to build more housing in neighborhoods where people want to live and that have good transit to jobs. I’m very much in favor of cracking down on bad landlords and the government filling the void with new housing but I’ve lost most faith in the government properly policing landlords and construction contractors so I’d rather focus on supporting more housing in the right places. That’s just my opinion on the issue lately

Yeah I know I’m too sarcastic and you are not the first person to point that out ;) Sometimes a little humor makes people pay attention to what I say next and that is my main point was building more housing would be more effective than a rent cap. There is wide consensus among experts that have studied the issue of how to lower rents.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_the_United_States#Impact

There are several projects in Oakland, Shadyside and the east end that have been blocked for being two stories too high or not having a gazillion parking spaces and it’s gotten so bad there is a local YIMBY group to help get more housing built in these neighborhoods

https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/yj9d9x/were_prohousing_pittsburgh_advocating_for/

Your landlord was giving you a good deal and needs to make up for it on the next tenant. If you feel bad you can give some money to the next tenant… jk. Caping rent usually causes land lords to raise by the max amount every year. Rent controls are a controversial economic policy with disadvantages and tricky externalities. I’m not saying is moral to charge high rent but it’a just really difficult to improve the situation without unintended consequences. The bottom line is supply and demand dictates more housing supply means lower rents so the best way to help people is promote new housing and stand up to nimby influences.

Sure. I was making the point that buses are cheaper overall even if you need more drivers to operate them. Whether you consider maintenance a capital cost or operating cost is besides the point

Yeah but I dont agree that 30,000 is an absolute minimum. I prefer an estimate like $100,000 per rider and $100 million per mile construction would require 1000 riders per mile. Busier lines can cost more to construct and lines that are cheaper to construct won’t need as many riders so it is a handy little rule of thumb to go by.

If you want a similar sized city Portland is the closest to Pittsburgh. They spent $1.5 billion with 50% federal and 25 % state funding for 7.3 miles with a projected ridership of 17,000 puts it at $88,000 per projected rider. Sadly that lines projections were two high and actual ridership has come out to be around $200,000 per rider. Some agencies are better than others at estimating and the San Diego line had near perfect estimates.

Here is a great article with a lot of data. It discusses heavy rail in big cities first which is obviously not comparable to Pittsburgh but later in it gets into light rail in other cities

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/the-u-s-gets-less-subway-for-its-money-than-its-peers

Yes, but the issue is ridership that would unlock federal funding for the project. There is no hard and fast rule, but to be eligible for federal funds, there would need to be an absolute minimum of ~30-40,000 daily riders for a light rail expansion of this length to even be considered (and really a ridership of 50-75,000 to be seriously considered) against other projects.

Those numbers seem a little off to me. San Diego received funding for a 11 mile extension with 20,000 riders for a cost of $2 billion or $100,000 per rider

>I just hope for better county executive leadership in the coming years that prioritizes transit investment (among other things) more so than the “leadership” we have today.

Most funding for any significant transit projects comes from the state and federal government. there is very little the county executive can do and mobs of suburban voters come out of the woodwork at any hint of property tax increases. It's not productive to attack democrat politicians as being "republican" when republican politicians wold be much less supportive of your ideas.

Edit: Rich Fitzgerald has been in county leadership too long and I won’t miss him. But credit is due for extended the trolly to the north shore and securing funding for the Oakland brt and those are not things republicans would have accomplished. You won’t get support for liberal ideas by alienating and denigrating moderate democrats and whether you like it or not property taxes are the single biggest county wide issue. Older voters are reliable there are a lot of them and property taxes are a large burden for them. You won’t get anything done without being strategic and building consensus and support from wide groups of people. I support mass transit and increased funding but I also know how to be strategic about it instead of whining like an entitled child in a chocolate factory when a democrat isn’t perfect enough for you

It’s been looked at for many years but the capital costs and ridership ratio is not as appealing as you think it is. That’s why they went with north shore extension instead

PRT wants to extend the west busway at both ends to speed up the 28x airport flyer which will also benefit from the Oakland BRT project that is building an additional bus only lane and traffic signal priority

A small detail is FTA limits heavy rail to 79mph unless it is completely grade separated in which case a diesel train can do 110 and that is caller higher speed rail while over 110 is high speed electrified heavy rail

I thought this debate was settled when they decided to tunnel to the north shore. PRT is also proposing to extend the west busway at its ends to speed up the 28x airport flyer while they wait another twenty years to get state and federal funding for the next phase of the trolly to Bellevue. I’ll be impressed if they get to the airport before 2050.

Buses can meet high demand. They have lower capital cost but higher operating costs due to using more drivers. The bus only lane being added to Forbes has received federal funding and should help that corridor at a much lower cost than light rail. Unfortunately we are the 26th largest metro in the country so there are larger cities that throw their weight around to get federal funding. It also doesn’t help that the state republicans hate cities.

If it raises property taxes most people in the county won’t support it

The north shore extension was sold as a phased approach to the airport along the northern shore of the Ohio. It was also a way to use empty parking garages as commuter park and ride for downtown when there are no games at the stadiums. It was also intended as as an economic opportunity for more offices on the north shore which seems to have worked. I saw somewhere that the sports authority and casino contribute to operating costs. It was also described as costing a quarter of the price of an Oakland line

Your understanding is wrong. Buses are cheaper

Take the bus. We can’t afford to build modern style light or heavy rail to every neighborhood. Old street car networks were a totally different design that were replaced by buses which are superior in almost every way to old street cars

The PRT 25 year plan describes options they are looking into. They are considering a trolly extension to Bellevue or Ross. They are also considering a train from new Kensington to downtown using existing AVRR tracks. The Bellevue trolly extension is a phased approach for extension to the airport but given state and federal funding constraints that’s a long long way off. Given the limited funding, an incremental approach to expanding busways is more practical than building long light rail lines because buses can use existing roads beyond the end of the busways while trains can’t. PRT is investing in bus only lanes and traffic signal priority in Oakland as a lower cost effective improvement to the system. There is not a good right of way to use through Oakland and tunneling is very expensive. Light rail needs high density neighborhoods to justify the cost and a lot of neighborhoods dense enough in Pittsburgh already have good transit service. There is already a high volume of buses to Oakland and PRT is looking into more routes that bypass the downtown hub and go directly from suburbs to Oakland. They are also looking into extending the west busway at both ends to improve the speed of the bus from oakland to the airport. I encourage anybody who has an opinion on what Pittsburgh needs should read the report first

https://nextransitdraftplan.blob.core.windows.net/finalplan/NEXTransit%20-%20FINAL-web%209-16-21.pdf

Unionized workers almost always make more even after paying union dues. Some unions provide a lot of training so dues are high but that’s not going to be an issue for upmc employees

I’m just guessing on numbers and not trying to ignore all the stops in between new Kensington and downtown. I used $100,000 per rider capital cost as a benchmark from other projects that have been funded. So if it’s $250 million maybe it will be worth it if gets at least 2500 riders. I think it sounds reasonable but I would still be curious what PRT thinks ridership and costs would be.

I don’t think they are against light rail DMU at this juncture. It sounds like they haven’t done a thorough study besides napkin calculations.

“The project will begin planning with a proposal to utilize the current AVRR right of way as a transit-exclusive facility to minimize delays and traffic congestion between stations (freight rail operations could continue at off peak hours or overnight hours so as not to conflict with transit service). As the line currently carries very light industrial freight traffic, both light rail and bus modes can be further studied in this corridor to see which is warranted as the best solution. Cost estimates for the purposes of this high-level look have used busway-type cost ranges as a starting point. This plan could also look into the possibility of a transit-only connection to the Turnpike. “

I wonder how much deferred investment there is if they don’t use it much. I don’t know what speed it’s rated for or what it would cost to bring the rails up to speed to be competitive with a busway. Are there any double track sections for passing? Also they would need to budget a place to store and maintain the trains. I wonder how many of the 45,000 New Kensington area work in downtown Pittsburgh. Even if the whole project cost only $250 million they would need a ridership of about 2500 to justify the capital costs and then operationally it would cost a lot to run for not a lot of riders with how office buildings downtown are being converted to housing lately. PRT will have to look very closely at the cost and ridership projections to determine if it is a wise investment given how little money they get from the state and federal governments.

The busway option would be more convenient for servicing oakland but slower than the train for downtown. On the other hand 13 miles of busway would probably cost a billion dollars and seems excessive considering it’s not congested or part of the core network. Prt is probably interested in the possibility of a phased approach to the busway in which they focus on the bottleneck at Verona and Oakmont. Outside of those towns there are hardly any traffic lights or impediments that would justify a dedicated right of way.

the sprinter in San Diego is 22 miles and with 5000 daily ridership and got a lot of bad publicity for how it requires a transfer to get anywhere popular. San Diego is about twice the size of Allegheny county and is able to beat us out on the federal funding competition. They revived a billion federal dollars that was matched by the state and county for a total of $2billion to build a 11 mile light rail extension for 20,000 daily risers that received a medium-high rating from the FTA . It seems like cities the size of Pittsburgh are getting shut out from the large chunks of funding that go to rail projects. The larger ridership, larger population growth and willingness to raise taxes to match federal funds is a factor in pittsburgh being at a disadvantage to other cities.

Why is PRT considering a busway when AVRR is being used for freight? Does freight line want to sell the ROW? I follow city and south hills transit news more closely because I’m more familiar with the geography. I’ve been to oakmont once but I haven’t explored anything else over in that part of the county

They would probably find a way to rework their accounting to zero out excess revenue if they were subject to income tax. Does any entity besides the state have business income tax?