PITTSBURGH | Development Rundown II

[Muckk]

Originally Posted by gg1

That is an amazing photo and so clear. Really a great shot of our beautiful city. Doesn't get much better really.

Agreed. I snagged it for my desktop backgrounds folder. I think at least half of the Pittsburgh pics in that folder were produced by photoLith.

[photoLith]

Thank you, which folder are you talking about though?

[Don't Be That Guy]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Yes, although I think that is still being negotiated. The basic issue is they don't want to increase the federal gas tax, so they have to come up with other ways of providing funding, and the exact length and funding levels in the deal will depend on what agreement they reach about those other measures.



The MFE will likely never be completed as originally planned, because the leg into the City is almost surely dead. The leg into Monroeville is currently not funded but the PTC is still pushing it. It would cost about $2B and is a terrible idea, but that doesn't mean it won't happen some day.

The 22 to 79 portion of the Southern Beltway broke ground in 2014 and I believe is scheduled for completion in 2019. The 79 to 43 portion is also not yet fully funded--it would cost about $1B--and again would be a terrible waste of money, but is also still being pushed by the PTC.

Note there is no demonstrated need for these projects, and in fact every segment so far has fallen way, way short of the original usage estimates and therefore has constituted a huge waste of public funds. But when there are billions in construction contracts on the line, in this state it can be very hard to stop the bleeding until the victim is completely drained.



I know there is transit funding in the bill, along with an increase in funding for things like the TIGER program that can be used for transit. I doubt it is enough to fund things like subways or new heavy rail lines, but the BRT plan might be able to advance.

Although it makes some sense to add a connection between 79 and the airport, with the decline in oil and gas jobs, Southpoint and developments that that southern Beltway are supposed to service are no longer the hotbeds of real estate development in the region. Logistics and warehousing around the airport, and tech/eds and meds/residential in the East End are the traditional, and currently hot, locations for development. A much better way to spend $3 billion would be a dedicated transit right-of-way (heavy rail, light rail, BRT, anything really) that ran from Monroeville to the airport. That would remove a lot of traffic pressure from the parkways and incentivize denser development in areas with existing infrastructure.

The MFX has done nothing but made it faster to bypass the dying river towns it was supposed to help revitalize. It's an expensive boondoggle that was a bad idea when it was conceived 50 years ago and a worse idea today.

[Muckk]

Originally Posted by photoLith

Thank you, which folder are you talking about though?

Oh I'm just referencing a personal folder on my laptop. It's filled with many pics of Pittsburgh, New York and countless other cities. Mostly NYC.

[Jonboy1983]

Originally Posted by Don't Be That Guy

Although it makes some sense to add a connection between 79 and the airport, with the decline in oil and gas jobs, Southpoint and developments that that southern Beltway are supposed to service are no longer the hotbeds of real estate development in the region. Logistics and warehousing around the airport, and tech/eds and meds/residential in the East End are the traditional, and currently hot, locations for development. A much better way to spend $3 billion would be a dedicated transit right-of-way (heavy rail, light rail, BRT, anything really) that ran from Monroeville to the airport. That would remove a lot of traffic pressure from the parkways and incentivize denser development in areas with existing infrastructure.

The MFX has done nothing but made it faster to bypass the dying river towns it was supposed to help revitalize. It's an expensive boondoggle that was a bad idea when it was conceived 50 years ago and a worse idea today.

Better transit linking Monroeville, Oakland, Downtown, and the Airport would be nice, but I think $3 billion would pay for about half of that considering a subway line from Downtown to Oakland would run about $2 billion. Personally, I would like to see either metro rail or light rail as an option for such service, although BRT would be more financially viable right now.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Don't Be That Guy

Although it makes some sense to add a connection between 79 and the airport, with the decline in oil and gas jobs, Southpoint and developments that that southern Beltway are supposed to service are no longer the hotbeds of real estate development in the region. Logistics and warehousing around the airport, and tech/eds and meds/residential in the East End are the traditional, and currently hot, locations for development.

Yeah, it never made much sense to pay billions to connect other greenfield areas to the airport when the airport itself still had plenty of developable areas right around it. And while the shale-related development provided a handy rhetorical excuse to continue with the project despite highly disappointing usage of the first segments, ironically the existing 79 to 376 made that a particularly low marginal value scenario.

A much better way to spend $3 billion would be a dedicated transit right-of-way (heavy rail, light rail, BRT, anything really) that ran from Monroeville to the airport. That would remove a lot of traffic pressure from the parkways and incentivize denser development in areas with existing infrastructure.

Easily one of the best-bang-for-the-buck transportation projects we could do would be to simply extend the East Busway to Monroeville. Combined with the current East Busway, that would get you halfway there, and then the existing West Busway covers another large chunk.

Completing the West Busway into Downtown would be pretty expensive as it would require a new bridge, and you would have to decide if you really needed to extend a bus-only ROW further to the airport. But the bottom line is that by leveraging the existing Busways you could do all that for way less than $3B. And in the end you would get WAY more east-west capacity (a busway lane has something like 15-20 times the peak capacity of a highway lane).

The MFX has done nothing but made it faster to bypass the dying river towns it was supposed to help revitalize. It's an expensive boondoggle that was a bad idea when it was conceived 50 years ago and a worse idea today.

Yep, but the political inertia is huge.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Jonboy1983

Better transit linking Monroeville, Oakland, Downtown, and the Airport would be nice, but I think $3 billion would pay for about half of that considering a subway line from Downtown to Oakland would run about $2 billion. Personally, I would like to see either metro rail or light rail as an option for such service, although BRT would be more financially viable right now.

Just to reiterate, because you can use the existing East and West Busways as part of such a plan, high-quality BRT from Monroeville to the airport via Downtown should actually be doable for far less than $3B (although you would bypass Oakland). And in fact buses are really superior to LRT for such purposes, because they can actually go faster, and you can share all that infrastructure with local-to-express routes (like the PXX buses).

Heavy rail would be faster still, but that is where the infrastructure costs would likely prove overwhelming. There really isn't any available unused capacity in the eastern corridor rail lines, and there is no existing rail at all going to the airport.

[dfiler]

Focusing transit development in the densest parts of the metro area seems preferable to extending transit into the suburbs. From a long-term perspective, the solution to transit issues is not to further incentivize long distance commuting.

Instead it is optimal to spend money supporting an urban structure and transit network that provides incredible efficiency for living in the city. For decades we've spent most of the transportation budget subsidizing long distance commuting. While transit to the outer edges of the area are desirable, what we are lacking more is a complete transit network within the city itself.

With that in mind, i would prefer transit connecting downtown to squirel hill, east liberty, north side, south side and all the neighborhoods in between. Of these, downtown through oakland seems to be the most critical. Yes it would be nice to have transit to the airport. But that need is minuscule compared to the need for a complete transit system within the city. People mostly travel between work, home, stores and restaurants. Currently we don't have a transit system that makes that convenient or desirable without driving a car on a regular basis.

[eschaton]

Has anyone noticed how rapidly the new apartments and townhouses along East Liberty Boulevard are going up? Seems like there was nothing but dirt there as late as the summer, but the framing of the vast majority of the buildings are now up. Even some windows and a bit of brick facing are now installed.

My understanding is that these are not really going to be "new" units, insofar as they will be replacing Larimer's Auburn Street apartments and East Liberty Gardens (although both of those sites will then be available for redevelopment). Still, if you go down Larimer Avenue towards Larimer, the change is already notable. It used to feel like you were heading into the wilderness when you crossed East Liberty Boulevard, now it's starting to feel more like one cohesive neighborhood again.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by dfiler

With that in mind, i would prefer transit connecting downtown to squirel hill, east liberty, north side, south side and all the neighborhoods in between. Of these, downtown through oakland seems to be the most critical. Yes it would be nice to have transit to the airport. But that need is minuscule compared to the need for a complete transit system within the city. People mostly travel between work, home, stores and restaurants. Currently we don't have a transit system that makes that convenient or desirable without driving a car on a regular basis.

I completely agree. However, historically the problem has been the large cost of adding new rapid transit in the core neighborhoods due to the density of development and various topographic challenges, combined with the difficulty of getting all the necessary political levels aligned around projects which are typically attacked as being primarily for the benefit of just the City (a bad argument when thinking about transportation as an integrated network, but regrettably effective in certain circles nonetheless).

For what it is worth, the aerial gondola system I proposed was specifically designed to address those issues (by greatly lowering the cost per mile and also extending it far enough out to serve non-City commuters at key transfer points). But for now the best we might be able to do is the Downtown to Squirrel Hill BRT plan.

All that said--I think it would be worth extending the East Busway to Monroeville, at least, because that is tying together some historic neighborhoods and generally is within the current developed footprint. I would make a case for completing the West Busway into Downtown on similar grounds. The part I am not sure I would endorse is further extending the West Busway toward the airport.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Has anyone noticed how rapidly the new apartments and townhouses along East Liberty Boulevard are going up? Seems like there was nothing but dirt there as late as the summer, but the framing of the vast majority of the buildings are now up. Even some windows and a bit of brick facing are now installed.

Yeah, I drove through recently and was shocked at how much had happened in a short time. I definitely agree the feel is already much different.

[Austinlee]

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/...s/201511220133

North Side Story: battling over a blighted block
November 22, 2015 12:00 AM
Brian O'Neill



.....Even as home values in Mexican War Streets that start west of the block have doubled and tripled in value, most of the first block of North Avenue west of Federal has sat vacant since the 1990s. The corner building and the one behind it had to be demolished a few years ago, after bricks started crashing down like so many of the proposals for the block.

Now there is a very big plan to build 72 apartment units behind the historic buildings facing North. Andrew Wickesberg, president of the Allegheny City Central Association, says the support for the recent zoning variance allowing this eight-story project is overwhelming. The neighborhood Facebook postings in favor of it are legion.

But not everyone loves this plan from Trek Development.

[BrianTH]

That was my favorite color variation!

[BrianTH]

A groundbreaking for the new $60M+ CSX multimodal terminal, which among other things should help serve freight passing through the widened Panama Canal and landing at East Coast ports, has been scheduled for Friday (December 4):

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburg...on-on-new.html

[JVC]

design is a process but that process should never begin with "zombie chic"



the current design is a million times better than the one that was first presented

[Evergrey]

There's several developments under construction along the stretch of Butler between Doughboy Square and 40th. I noticed signage for one called "The Fletch". I'm not sure if we've talked about this particular development by Alphabet City at 3601 Butler, but the name is definitely new. It will feature a gourmet burger joint called "Burgh'ers".

http://fletchpgh.com/




not to be confused with...

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Evergrey

There's several developments under construction along the stretch of Butler between Doughboy Square and 40th. I noticed signage for one called "The Fletch". I'm not sure if we've talked about this particular development by Alphabet City at 3601 Butler, but the name is definitely new. It will feature a gourmet burger joint called "Burgh'ers."

The odd thing with the rendering is the one-story storefront that Divertido now occupies appears to be gone. I think I might see like 1/4th of the storefront hiding behind a street tree, but it's not clear - and I'm not sure why, as given an equal setback the building should be in full view.

I do know, however, the owner of Divertido has been a NIMBY stick-in-the mud about this project, doing everything she can to block it due to it "not being in character with the block, which contains single-story businesses." I can't help but wonder if the developers told the architects to deliberately obscure her business in the rendering, in order to ensure she got no free publicity.

[Jonboy1983]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The odd thing with the rendering is the one-story storefront that Divertido now occupies appears to be gone. I think I might see like 1/4th of the storefront hiding behind a street tree, but it's not clear - and I'm not sure why, as given an equal setback the building should be in full view.

I do know, however, the owner of Divertido has been a NIMBY stick-in-the mud about this project, doing everything she can to block it due to it "not being in character with the block, which contains single-story businesses." I can't help but wonder if the developers told the architects to deliberately obscure her business in the rendering, in order to ensure she got no free publicity.

You know what I say to that? Tough! Lawrenceville is changing, and new developments are trending toward higher density mixed-use structures (residential, ground-level retail or office, etc). One story buildings, warehouse or otherwise, are being phased out in places like the Strip and Lawrenceville in favor of developments that are more urban in nature.

[Minivan Werner]

I like the kid in the scarf staring longingly at the girl in scrubs on the balcony. Wonder if the design team gave these people back stories?

Pittsburgh is having an infill renaissance.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Minivan Werner

I like the kid in the scarf staring longingly at the girl in scrubs on the balcony. Wonder if the design team gave these people back stories?

I think he just got dumped by his sugar daddy on the third floor, and is regretting yet again majoring in Art History.