Increase mass transit usage. Since the car is getting more prevalent, mass transit must change from a system that people use only when they need to – for example, to commute Downtown to save the cost of parking or because they can’t afford a car (or a second car) – to a system that they want to use.

Rethink the nature of mass transit in this region. To acknowledge that the region is now a series of urban hubs, such as Monroeville, Cranberry, Robinson Township, and that a system must be able to move people in all directions to all hubs to be successful.

Coordination. Coordinate the several public agencies, such as PennDot and PAT, with private transportation companies, such as the railroads, so that they work together towards a common goal instead of independently as they do at present.

Solve Sprawl Issues. The final challenge is an interesting paradox – an excellent transportation system that meets the present and future needs of this region will actually facilitate suburban sprawl. Thus the final challenge is to resolve the sprawl issue and acknowledge that the creation of a good transportation system could make it worse.

The Port Authority is just now completing a major highway interchange between the Airport Busway and the Parkway West at Carnegie. Considering how few busses will be making the connection between the Parkway and the Busway, this interchange should have been designed for both busses and cars as a replacement for the Carnegie Interchange. Not only would this have replaced a very dangerous existing interchange, it would have provided much better access to Carnegie and could have opened up the Chartiers Creek valley in Crafton for development.

The location of the Airport Busway is itself a missed opportunity. If the Busway had been designed as HOV lanes down the center of the Parkway West from Carnegie to the Fort Pitt Tunnel (and then used the Wabash Tunnel for the final connection to Downtown), the money spent on the Busway could have, at the same time, totally rebuilt that stretch of the parkway into a safer highway.

The I-279 HOV lane could have been designed to divert cars directly into the parking lots around Three Rivers Stadium. This would have offered the opportunity to allow single occupant cars to use the HOV lanes (and increase the daily usage from 1750 per day per direction) as long as they parked at the stadium. This would have encouraged more fringe parking in Pittsburgh.

Few Effective Park and Ride Lots -- PAT is investing in a large number of park and ride lots, which vary significantly in their usage rate. In general, the most successful lots appear to be those that offer users a better option than driving. For example, the lots on the South Hills LRT are filled because, even though it is a very slow ride from the lot to downtown, that ride is still faster than driving. Many of the other fringe lots, however, the ones that should be the most successful, are understandably underutilized because it takes twice as long to travel by transit than by car to downtown from the lot.

Unchanged Travel Time -- PAT replaced the South Hills trolley lines with a LRT system that did not change travel time from the South Hills to downtown. Instead of designing a system with feeder lines to express stops, PAT replaced the rails and cars but provided only marginally better service than the South Hills had over 50 years ago. Even now PAT is planning to spend $500 million to reconstruct 12 miles and upgrade 10 miles of track on a system that is almost at capacity. Improving the trackage without increasing the speed of the system could be a waste of funds.

Longer Airport Busway -- During non-peak hours it will take longer for a bus to travel by the Airport Busway from Carnegie to downtown than to stay on the Parkway West, since the busway is longer.

Sporadic and Poor Service to North Side -- The Port Authority is spending millions of dollars to extend the South Hills LRT system to a portion of the North Side with no potential usage except occasional baseball and football games. Because this area has no housing and no office or retail, it will offer sporadic demand, at best, for this system. Ironically, the proposed LRT routes do not even offer good service to the proposed parking garages, which could, on non-game days, offer park and ride opportunities if there was good transit to downtown. Even more ironic is the fact that the private park and ride busses that used to serve the Three Rivers Stadium parking lots provided better transit to downtown than the LRT extension will.

The proposed Airport Busway bridge across the Monongahela River will greatly reduce the development potential of Station Square, while providing no great advantage to busses crossing the river. PAT and PennDot should explore converting the Smithfield Bridge to busses and HOV only, and constructing a new vehicle bridge at Grant Street. This would allow downtown development to spill over to the South Side on the undeveloped land to the east of Smithfield Street, at the same time providing much better highway access to the South Side. By doing this PAT would not destroy the expansion (and increased tax income) potential of the undeveloped land that the proposed new bridge will require.

Connect the I-279 HOV lanes to the new parking garage proposed on General Robinson Street, and provide transit access for park and ride. If designed properly, this would allow the HOV lanes to be opened to single occupant cars that park in the garage.

Construct a rapid transit line down the median of the Mon/Fayette while the road is being built, and integrate park and ride lots into the highway intersections.

Create a transit right of way along side Route 28 during its reconstruction. If not constructed at the same time as the road, this would at least allow for the potential for high-speed transit to the eastern suburbs in the future.

Parking -- Move all long term parking associated with downtown Pittsburgh workers to the periphery of the city and provide rapid transit connection to downtown, similar to Orlando’s approach.

Rapid Transit -- Create large park and ride locations that are fed by rapid transit. For example, build a park and ride at the intersection of the Parkway East and the Turnpike and provide rapid transit to downtown. If the transit came every 10 minutes, from 6:00 am to 12:00 midnight, and took only 15 minutes to get downtown, vast numbers of drivers would leave their cars to avoid the Parkway.

Hubs and Feeder Busses -- Provide feeder busses and encourage private bus systems to service the hubs. To continue the Monroeville example, feeder busses could pick people up near their homes and drop them off at the hub. Although ridership drops as transfers increase, this is not true if the overall ride, including transfer, is faster and easier that the alternate of driving. A Monroeville hub, with fast connections to other hubs (downtown being just one) would encourage private developments, such as Monroeville Mall, to provide private bus service as a service to its customers.

Industrial Parks -- Industry requiring heavy rail likes to have two competing railroads serve their plants to keep costs competitive. The region should explore establishing industrial parks that are served by two railroads. This would help attract new industries to the region.

Abandon Tracks -- The rail tracks in the Strip District should be abandoned. This would allow better access to land for economic development.

Remove Tracks -- It might be possible to remove the CSX tracks through Panther Hollow. These used to be the main line tracks but were downgraded when CSX’s predecessor purchased the tracks along the Monongahela River. These tracks also go by Nine Mile Run (and are causing a great deal of trouble for the Mon/Fayette Expressway), cross the Strip District on a trestle bridge, cross Washington’s Landing and continue up Routes 28 and 8.

Relocate Tracks -- It might be possible to move the CSX tracks along the Monongahela River from Sandcastle to Fort Pitt Bridge to the Norfolk Southern plateau through the South Side. This would allow access to the river along this entire strip (including Station Square), which could change the land use from underutilized industrial to housing, office and retail.