Let me be clear, if anywhere in Western Pennsylvania deserves a transportation improvement, it would be Oakland. The area is still heavily congested, even with Children's moving to Lawrenceville. Downtown and Oakland, if connected together by more development along the Bluff corridor, could eventually grow into a central business corridor to rival the major downtowns in the country. A service with high frequency between downtown and Oakland could spur development in the neighborhoods in between.
But Oakland already has one of the healthiest transportation systems in the region. Bus service is comparatively frequent. The Contra-Flow bus lane on 5th Avenue is incredibly handy. I wouldn't go so far as to call Oakland "over-served" by transit, but it is considerably more served than a lot of other neighborhoods. If some kind of downtown to Oakland system was put in place, it would lead to a massive readjustment of Port Authority service.
Funding is the critical issue here, as is obvious. This project has languished for 4 years (and that's just officially, the original idea for this thing is decades, now nearly a century old). A public-private partnership is the obvious answer, because the local government and the state are in no position to fund this thing the whole way through. The project isn't well-developed enough to try to get funding from the federal government. But I think that it would be more of a public-non profit partnership. The universities would need to step up big time if this thing had any chance of happening.
In terms of mode, I think most people would want light rail. Intermodality is great and all, but People would probably prefer the ability to transfer from Steel Plaza to Southbound trains. PRT is a pipe dream in my opinion. We all know that I'm pro-BRT, but I'm actually not sure that, unless there was some kind of elevated system, BRT makes a lot of sense here. The area is quite built up already, and a BRT system would probably be grafted onto the neighborhood without a whole lot of options for connectivity. I'd also be curious to see how all of this interfaces with the possible commuter rail line running between Hazelwood and Lawrenceville. Realistically, this is a question of priorities. There's only so many dollars for capital development in transit, and if you're looking at this project, plus this one, plus those projects in Westmoreland county, you really have to think long and hard about what is going to be the most bang for the buck.
There's a very serious question about development. I don't want to sound like the Cato institute, but development doesn't immediately chase after transit improvement. It needs to be cultivated carefully, and will absolutely take some time and money. Plus, just because you have a train/people mover coming through, doesn't mean it's a desirable place to be. Frequency is absolutely vital. No one should need to wait half an hour for service.
I would highly encourage you to set up an account on the website. A guy could spend a few hours reading all the documents there (this guy did).
If ground is broken in two years, I will eat my hat. Gears are in motion, but I can assure you that it will be some time until there is anything here. Keep on your elected officials, but don't get too excited. The history is Pittsburgh is littered with the ruins of public transportation ideas gone awry. How's that gondola coming?
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The state of public transportation in Pittsburgh is ridiculous - it transcends politics, economics, gossip - a person like me, not very interested in politics, raises his eyebrows thinking about public transportation in Pittsburgh. I suppose the same thing can be said about income inequality in this country generally - isn't that the root cause of so many of these extreme problems?
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