Train of Thought

The Burgh Diaspora has a nice little post about the Amtrak high-speed rail plan and how it relates to the Burgh.

Pittsburgh is increasingly isolated. The historical geography of the region lends itself to a particularly fierce form parochialism and is partly to blame for anemic in-migration. Pittsburgh desperately needs to improve its inter-urban connectivity, especially with cities outside of the United States. Domestically, which high-speed rail route would best benefit Pittsburgh?

Paz chips in his two cents:

No one is going to admit it, but Cleveburgh is probably a more important line than the Keystone corridor (and this is coming from someone who goes East far more often then he goes West). A Cleveland-Pittsburgh line is more in keeping with the major city-paring lines like the Hiawatha in Milwaukee or the Lincoln service in Illinois. Keystone makes more sense politically, but I think Cleveburgh makes more sense from an economic and cultural standpoint.

Actually, it's surprising that Jason Altmire is pushing the Cleveland/Pittsburgh corridor.

No, wait... what's the opposite of surprising? Yeah: obvious.

I mean, Altmire gets that there's a Regional connection between Cleveland and Pittsburgh... and that if this rail line is built, PA-04 is going to benefit enormously, not just from the construction itself but also from the competition/collaboration that can result between the two Regions.

Amtrak, of course, believes that because we are in Pennsylvania, we're obviously to be lumped in with Philadelphia.* While to some extent there may be some truth to that, there will probably be less Regional cross-pollination.

What Altmire has the opportunity to do, however, is make Pittsburgh a major transit node, linking Chicago and the Midwest with Phillie, D.C. and the East... you know, like Switzerland.

Or Breezewood.

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* Amtrak is obviously unaware of the existence of the Great Pop/Soda War of '19, between the East and Midwest, in which the loser got Pittsburgh.**

** This is a joke. The loser got Toledo.***

*** This is also a joke. It was the Toledo War.

Business Casual Saturday

A little self-depreciating humor from Cleveland.

The Cleveland Tourism Board gave me 14 million dollars about 8 months ago to make a promotional video to bring people to Cleveland. As usual, I waited till the last minute and I ended up having to shoot and edit it in about an hour yesterday afternoon. I probably should have invested more time.

And the inevitable Part II:

Maybe the Grass isn't Always Greener

In my browsing this evening I stumbled another one of those rankings from Forbes. This time it was America's Fastest Dying Cities. For those of you that don't want to click the link, here's the spoiler:

Canton, OH
Youngstown, OH
Flint, MI
Scranton, PA
Dayton, OH
Cleveland, OH
Springfield, MA
Buffalo, NY
Detroit, MI
and of course...
Charleston, WV

But whither Pittsburgh? I, and I'm sure many of my 7 readers, are shocked that Pittsburgh isn't included. I mean, we suck, right? Right?

It would seem, to me anyway, that either we're actually not doing as bad as we could be or that the Forbes rating is off.

Of course, saying that we're better than Flint, MI or (God help us) Cleveland is probably not exactly what our civic boosters want to run in trade periodicals.

COME TO PITTSBURGH: WE'RE NOT BUFFALO