MVX Episode VII: Blue Harvest

In what surely is one of the penultimate nails in the coffin of the Mon-Fayette Expressway:

The Mon-Fayette Expressway might never reach Pittsburgh, now that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission no longer is pursuing private investors.

The $4.5 billion estimate for the remainder of the project includes connecting to the Parkway East in Monroeville and in Hazelwood, but the price tag is too steep for state funding, officials said. And three companies interested in "public-private partnerships" to build the remainder of the highway — in exchange for toll revenue — couldn't raise enough private funding either, said Frank Kempf, the turnpike's chief engineer, during a meeting Thursday in Washington County...

The turnpike decided in late January to stop pursuing partners for the project. Unless state or federal legislators find new funding to design and build the remaining links to Pittsburgh, the future of the project remains unknown...

And hopefully by "unknown" they mean 'buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighter', all of which is fine by me; the project (especially the last 10 miles) is beyond ridiculous from an engineering standpoint, would disrupt communities, and frankly bring little benefit to the Pittsburgh of the 21st century.

The collapse of the housing industry only serves to undermine one of the main "benefits" of the project: the opening up of greenfields to the south of the City to more suburban subdivisions.

Anyway, here's a novel (or at least what passes for novel around these parts) idea, spurred by a musing by Rear Adm. Briem (Ret.):

[A]t the end of the day the foundation of the East Busway was engineered with the intent that rail of some sort could be built along the corridor... Once you take out folks who can't travel by car either because of income or for other reasons, folks who have a choice will take rail who won't ever consider taking a bus.

Indeed, when the busway expansion was planned in the late '90s/early '00s, the folks in Edgewood raised holy hell that damned dirty buses would pass through their gentile community.

Now, I understand why PAT *lurves* its busway and while associated municipal entities/political mucky-mucks also *lurve* in a way that is frankly illegal in most countries, but there is a case to be made for (1) converting at least part of the busway to light rail and (2) using the existing CSX tracks to serve Oakland/Hazelwood/Homestead and eventually beyond. While the upfront capital cost may be high (and the negotiations with CSX may be ridiculous), a dedicated right-of-way would connect downtown, the universities, one of the largest brownfield development opportunities in the City, a fairly successful brownfield redevelopment, and a few muncipalities that really need improved transportation connections to all of them.
Peduto had pushed a somewhat similar heavy rail project back in '08, but it hasn't seems to have gone anywhere; the ACCD is pushing a fixed guideway (which would be a fourth mode of transit, for those of you keeping track). There's something to be said, however, about keeping with what you have and expanding a system.

While, yes, the SPC came out almost kinda-sorta-but-not-quite for this plan (warning: big file), the proposed alternative was, I would say, a bit grandiose and chose to build an extensive system from Etna to West Mifflin, creating a new line through the Strip District, rather than recycle what already exists. There's *big thinking* and there's *over thinking*. Interestingly enough, the major complaint was that they looked at the new line as something to help supplement existing transit oriented development, while ignoring the possibility that it could potentially help to generate transit oriented development. That seems to be *small thinking* or at least *narrow* thinking.

Of course, the benefits of this type of project would acrue, not to the suburbs, but to the City which could now easily connect future lab space in Hazelwood with the professors in Oakland and the banks downtown. That kind of forward thinking is something up with which the legislature does not put. And to make it worse, we'd be severely conveniencing people in the Mon Valley, making their trip to work or school easier, quicker, and more enjoyable. The horror!

If the MFX is well and truly dead (and I hope it is), now is really the time to start planning its alternative. Perhaps what PAT and the folks at the DoT really need is a big ol' money sink. If that's the case, I'm more than happy to amend my proposal to call for the boring of a giant tunnel under the Mon to waste a few billion here and there.

Something About Where the Choo-Choo Goes

The city's newspaper of record finally caught up with its not-being-sued-by-Mylan rival and published a story about last week's East End Rail proposal to Council, which can be found here in all of its sic transit gloria.

This proposal is appealing in that it seeks to do with 80 million bucks what the North Shore connector is trying to do with a zillion-bagillion bucks, which makes the calculations so much easier for those of us that don't have advanced degrees in hyper-imaginary accounting. There's a couple of problems in the proposal, however.

First (and this is kind of addressed in the presentation), this proposal seems to be a bit like renting out a semi in order to haul a credenza a block and a half to your new apartment -- heavy rail is sort of overkill for such a short service area. Now, if the line went all the way up north to Indiana County or south to the Mon Valley, maybe these stops would make sense, but it currently seems a bit much. In the proposal's defense, it does say that the line should link up with other proposed lines, which makes much more sense. Indeed, if you're going to have this type of system, we should be thinking about using other heavy rail lines to create a network of suburban commuter opportunities, use light rail as "high speed intra-city connectivity," and use buses as local connectors. Heavy rail, however, doesn't seem to be the right tool for a relatively small service area with frequent stops.

Of course, this gets to the second critique: the proposal isn't easily connected into the existing systems. If you want to get Downtown, you need to jump off and take another mode of transportation. While Oakland may be "bursting at the seams," Downtown is still the major commercial nexus for the region. Perhaps this criticism is a moot point, as it's fairly easy right now to get from Oakland/Lawrenceville/Hazelwood to Downtown anyway. Without expansion, however, I wonder if it makes sense to add in a fourth public transportation option into the mix, with all the extra overhead costs that may entail.

Then there's RIDC's Bill Widdoes' quote, "CSX is a tough negotiator," which has to be competing with "Water is wet" for the understatement of the year award. CSX, it is widely known, doesn't want to deal with anyone, ever. Even simple "rails-to-trails" project on defunct lines get tied up in years of legal morass. Cities, States, Authorities have no eminent domain powers over rail lines, so it's nearly impossible to get anything done on the local level without begging, borrowing, or stealing (although it's usually limited to only the first one). IF CSX signs on (and it's a big "if"), maybe there's something to the proposal, but right now I'm not holding my breath.

[This all sets aside the logistical nightmare of passenger rail sharing a line with freight rail should CSX actually agree to the proposal.]

And then there's the giant elephant in the room: the Mon-Fayette expressway. I can't imagine that Whitman, Requardt & Associates didn't notice that their proposed alignment runs right through where the folks at PennDOT and the Turnpike Commisssion really, REALLY want to lay their pipe dream down. (I mean, you can almost hear their angry, frantic, disappointing mutual masturbation when you get near the former LTV site, so much so that it causes cats to yowl.) Now, don't get me wrong: this is a great alternative to the MFX circle jerk, but with bureaucratic processes and political weightiness being what they are, I can see the whole process being stopped because somebody, somewhere wants to build a fifty-gazillion dollar clusterfuck along the Mon, goddammit!

Obviously, however, this is just a proposal, but it's probably one of the least insane proposals to come before City Council in some time and it would be a good first step in creating a high-speed, integrated regional transit solution.

Which means, of course, that the whole damned thing is doomed from the get-go.

A Kennywood Aside

After the last post, I got to thinking: what would be a good name for the Roller Coaster that will be replacing the Turnpike at Kennywood?

I think the answer is obvious: the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

I think the Roller Coaster will have more annual riders though.

MFX IV: Mason v. Dixon

For all of you that are looking forward to going nowhere fast, there's this:

Pennsylvania, West Virginia and federal officials gathered here today to break ground on the final West Virginia section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

The four-mile stretch will connect Interstate 68 outside Morgantown with the section that currently ends in Fayette County, Pa.

The $150 million Mountain State section is expected to open in October 2010.

I'm still trying to figure out what the point of all this is... I mean other than a giant boondoggle and give away to the heavy construction industry and related unions.

Maybe the folks at PennDOT just wanted to reenact the Braddock Campaign* and try to retake Pittsburgh from the French.

I gotta wonder, though: with the clusterfuck that is the State Budget, does PennDOT, the Turnpike Commission or anyone else really have the money to complete this damned thing in the near future, or are they just jerking off?

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* Of course, they should remember that Braddock gets massacred outside of Pittsburgh (not all too far from Hazelwood in the grand scheme of things) and is buried in a shallow grave outside of Uniontown. One can only hope that the MFX suffers a similar, but more gruesome fate.

MFX III: Revenge of the Sh*t

Not this crap again:

Three private consortiums have expressed interest in building one section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway and two segments of the Southern Beltway that state officials don't have the money to complete.

One construction team is composed of local firms, including PNC Capital Markets and Wilbur Smith Associates, while the other two include Spanish and American companies.

All three groups include firms with expertise in financing, designing, constructing, operating and maintaining the new roads, Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission spokesman Carl Defebo said yesterday.

Great, just great. Here we are combining this crap taco of a public policy initiative with the raging success of privatization. I can only expect the best out of all this for the Commonwealth.

Now, two points:

First, with all the talk of infrastructure improvement in the upcoming administration, the MFX has started to scare me once again. Unfortunately, compared to a whole bunch of other better projects, the MFX is pretty much ready to go... despite the whole detail of not having all the property assembled and the minor point of the friggin' thing costing billions and billions of dollars with only a small amount of benefits to a relatively small group of citizens in the East and South. I would hope, *HOPE*, that this kind of new project gets passed over for funding in favor of, you know, repairing the crap that we already have.

Second, with the crash of the housing market, I question the demand for opening up vast tracts of land in Fayette County to urban sprawl. While at some point (hopefully) the region will start growing with gusto again, it will probably not be any time soon and probably not in the exurbs.

Indeed, the draft stimulus bill seems to start a move away from highways and towards mass transit, which signals to me that there's going to be a more urban bent to the next few years. Fester has a bit of an analysis on this point:

Three quarters of that [draft stimulus bill] money is dedicated to highway construction and maintenance while a quarter is allocated to mass transit, including a the possibility of SUPERTRAINS. I would prefer a 50:50 split or an inversion of the ratio, as my consumer surplus is much higher with mass transit, and I think the societal surplus is higher as well.

However, a 3:1 highway to mass transit split is a dramatic improvement from typical federal funding ratios. The last major transportation law funded highways at roughly 5:1 over all other alternative modes of transit. A good chunk of this ratio is purely political. The law was written when the majority party's base and swing lives in the suburbs and exurbs. Mass transit makes far less sense in low density areas, and when the votes are lined up, the marginal decision will be supporting the majority's preferences. Furthermore, there is some serious interest group bundling aimed at political capture. Developers, construction firms, some unions push hard for a form of construction that they understand and can exploit for their own interests. Again, this is just politics.

And, of course, politics is what the MFX is all about, really.

That, and civil engineering fuckwittery.

Road to Nowhere

Well we know where we're going
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out.
-- Talking Heads

Sometimes, the Pittsburgh Business Times scoops the competition on the really good stories:

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is moving forward with plans for elevated toll lanes above the Parkway East and plans to make an announcement on the project in the next two weeks.

Turnpike Commission CEO Joe Brimmeier said the organization is putting out a request for information from private investors for the project, which would likely start near Churchill or Penn Hills and come toward Downtown, bypassing the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.

Bypassing the Squirrel Hill Tunnel?

I mean, I'm no traffic engineer, but the way that I see it, the function of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel is to go "through" Squirrel Hill. I also realize that I am unfamiliar with non-Euclidian geometry, but to my simple mind, there are only four ways around Squirrel Hill: under, over, around, and through. Not to say that none of these options are impossible -- all things are possible with money -- but this all seems infeasible, considering the massive engineering that will be necessary to build the necessary interchanges, flyover ramps, tunnels, and so forther. That doesn't even begin to take into consideration the economic impact on the City's investment in Frick Park, Nine Mile Run, and Summerset, and the established homeowners in Squirrel Hill.

Admittedly, this plan is probably better than the proposed Mon-Fayette Expressway, but only in the way that being punched in the stomach is better than being kicked in the head.

Of course, this all has nothing to do with the fact that the chair of the State House Transportation Committee is Joe Markosek, a Monroeville Democrat.

But PennDOT is always thinking ahead. We've already snagged a preliminary proposal for the future of transportation in the Commonwealth:

MFX Pt. XLII

Here we go again:

When the Mon-Fayette Expressway was conceived more than 40 years ago, the idea of a high-speed highway connecting Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., seemed like an urgent transportation and economic development need for southwestern Pennsylvania...

Now, a group of business and political leaders is looking to jump-start the project through a public-private partnership that they hope could raise half of the estimated $3.6 billion cost.

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl recently convened a closed-door meeting of more than 60 elected officials and business leaders from all corners of southwestern Pennsylvania to expedite plans to complete the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

For his part, Mr. Onorato, who has always supported the toll road, signed onto this latest effort because of his desire to further redevelop the brownfield left by the demise of manufacturing in the valley, where he has concentrated his efforts in recent years, said spokesman Kevin Evanto.

"[Mr. Onorato] believes development in the Mon Valley needs a road connection like this highway," Mr. Evanto said. He added that Mr. Onorato was especially drawn to this effort because of "the possibility of what public-private partnerships can bring to the table."

Now if Onorato was being intellectually honest about this, he'd point out that the areas that are being "served" by the Mon-Fayette aren't the brownfields or old mill towns in the Mon Valley, but the land developers in Fayette County. In fact, a close examination of the route shows that the road will avoid or cut through a lot of the communities that would have benefited from such "help."

I do not believe it to be a coincidence, however, that the preserved Carrie Furnance site is situated next to the proposed MFX: a perfect blending of antiquated technology and antiquated city planning.

Now, if the Ravenstahl administration actually thought about this plan for a second, they'd realize, apart from encouraging sprawl, that such a road would detract from the ongoing and planned developments in Nine Mile Run, Hazelwood, Southside Works, and the Pittsburgh Technology Center. If they were engineers, they would probably realize that the interchange at Bates Street alone (connecting the Parkway East to the MFX) is going to be ridiculously cumbersome, an eyesore, and a traffic nightmare.

But, far be it for rationality and logic to stand in the way of our young mayor and his 3rd Rate CPA "big brother" getting potential campaign contributions from highway contracting firms and housing (bubble) developers.

It's like they're saying "Eat this Shit! It tastes better than any other Shit you've ever eaten!" and they have testimonials from other shit eaters saying "Yes! You'll love this shit! It's the best shit ever!" and they have people that say "We'll raise the money to make sure that you'll have all the shit you can eat for life! You'll never have to worry about running out of shit again!"

And I'm saying

YOU'RE STILL EATING FUCKING SHIT, YOU ASSHOLES!

Still, I sort of understand the whole Mon-Fayette expressway on the bureaucratic level: it's a Golden Turd.

Let me tell you a story which continues on my scatological musings:

Back many, many moons ago when I was in college, one unremarkable day there were signs posted in the dorm alerting residents that one of their brethren had left what can only be described as "a massive shit" in one of the stalls and inviting whoever it was who left the giant crap to "seek medical attention at once" for "there is no way anything that size should come out of a human being."

As we were curious youths, we immediately sought out the offending stall and, sure enough, the most massive piece of shit we had ever seen sat there before us.

Word quickly spread through campus about the massive dump left in our dorm and it wasn't long before select residents were leading tours through the bathroom showing off, with pride, our giant brownie loaf.

After several hours, however, the smell wafting out of the bathroom was almost too intense. Residents started leaving and people started complaining about the stench. Still, no one wanted to flush it because no one wanted to be the guy that had flushed King Dookie down the drain. We didn't really want the shit, but we couldn't bear to part with it.

Eventually, some RA took it in his hands (not literally) to dispose of the waste and that was the end of that.

I think every bureaucrat has his or her own Golden Turd: an awful, stupid, vile project that, for whatever reason, no one wants to flush.

And that's a good metaphor for the Mon-Fayette Expressway, in my opinion.

Warning: The previous post contained foul language and should not have been seen by younger readers.

Onorato Takes Lead for MFX; Slams Fork into Eye for Encore

There are few things in Western Pennsylvania public policy that I get as angry about as the Mon-Fayette Expressway: a heaping, hulking stretch of highway that is supposed to stretch from Downtown Pittsburgh to the the grand metropolis of Morgantown WV, thereby spawning economic development, freeing up transportation opportunities for the Mon Valley, and otherwise launching a wave of unsubstantiatable goals and accomplishments.

Oh, and it'll probably cost a zillion dollars, rip through a whole slew of communities, contribute to the destruction of undeveloped greenfields to the south, aid in urban flight, and bring on the thousand year reign of the Antichrist.

Well, maybe not the last one, but you get my drift.

Of course, Gubernatorial Candidate (né Allegheny County Executive) Danny Onorato is now throwing his weight behind this Public Policy equivalent of a fruitcake: something no one really wants, but everyone, for some inexplicable reason, decides that they have to give away.

On Friday, Chief Executive Dan Onorato convened a meeting of 60 state, local and county political and business leaders to develop a plan to finance the $3.6 billion section of the project that would run through Allegheny County...

"The expressway and Squirrel Hill bypass are critically important regional transportation and economic development projects," Onorato said.

"The Mon-Fayette will provide linkages and open up old industrial sites to jobs and commerce in the south, and its Squirrel Hill bypass will provide important traffic congestion relief to Pittsburgh's eastern suburbs."

Maybe back in the 1970s, right as the United States steel industry was on the verge of collapse and as a preemptive measure for the reuse of old brownfield sites, this policy may have made some sense. Now, it's like closing the barn door after the horse has left, run down the street, gotten on a plane, flown to Hollywood, and married Matthew Broderick. Today, with oil prices rising, the home construction industry collapsing, and the economy on the brink of full on recession, the MFX makes as much sense as the entire female population of Nome, Alaska screaming Thursday's lottery numbers at composer Philip Glass.

And just how bad is this idea, you ask? Well, Luke Ravenstahl seems to be supporting it, if that gives you any indication.

Of course, should he want to make a go at running for Governor, Danny O is going to need some generous contributions from people with disposable cash on hand... let's say, perhaps, people in the construction and building trades. So, you can see how important this policy is to the regional economy and has absolutely, in no way, has anything even remotely to do with anything relating to campaign contributions.

The sad part about this whole thing, however, is that the longer this bad idea stays alive in people's minds, the less people are going to invest in these communities, in anticipation that the Turnpike commission is just going to buy them out anyway. No one wants to buy a house (or even fix up a house) that may just be taken by eminent domain in the near future. Steel Valley municipalities and neighborhoods will keep going down the toilet and the tax payers will, once again, be subsidizing new construction in previously undeveloped areas...

That is, until those areas need a bypass too, and we start all over again.

So, you know, well done Danny, Luke, and everyone. Well done.

Cult of the MFX

I think that every bureaucrat has a project that just won't die. The Mon-Fayette Expressway is one of those. From the P-G:

A biennial public hearing about funding road, bridge and transit projects in southwestern Pennsylvania could turn into a rally supporting the $3.6 billion northern section of the Mon-Fayette Expressway.

A dozen speakers, including local officials, have lined up to testify as a bloc Wednesday before the State Transportation Commission about completing the toll road in Allegheny County. County Chief Executive Dan Onorato and state Rep. Joe Markosek, D-Monroeville, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, are on the list.

They want to re-establish the importance of building the final 24 miles to Pittsburgh and Monroeville. Otherwise, when final design is finished about a year from now, a lack of funds could threaten one of the nation's biggest new highway construction programs after more than a decade of planning...

Mr. Markosek said no one expects the commission to identify or pledge funds for expressway construction. Not only is the estimated $3.6 billion price tag well beyond the reach of traditional revenues, but the state Legislature directed in the 1980s that the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission be responsible for building the expressway and a Southern Beltway as key elements of a toll road expansion program...

I kinda imagine these meetings to be filled with guys twirling Snidely Whiplash mustaches waiting for Little Hazelwood... er... Nell to get hit by the train. It's a cadre of rejected comic book villains named things like "The Exhaustinator," "Commander Concrete," and "Solomon Grundy & Trumbull, LLC."

But let's set aside the problem that there's no real budget for this project, nor any real political will, just a lot of people obsessed with building bypasses just to build bypasses. Let's also assume that the hold up of construction has not put the communities in the path of the expressway in limbo.

But, assuming that the ascertain that the Mon Valley still needs a limited access for manufacturing that disappeared in the mid 80s, here's my suggestion: acquire all the properties in the right of way, move them 50 ft. back and build a four lane neighborhood boulevard.

Heck, I'm feeling generous: throw in a light rail line down the middle an give everyone a gold sovereign.

Honestly, the whole "process" of the Mon Fayette has become so much of an ordeal, that we might as well just wait around until those eggheads over at CMU actually get around to building us them there flying robotic cars.

Imagine the tolls on THAT expressway.

Mo-Fo Excessway

And speaking of poor policy and planning decisions, I noticed a series of articles in both the Trib and the P-G on that engineering monstrosity called the Mon-Fayette Expressway. First, the Trib:

The head of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission on Tuesday urged lawmakers to decide whether to build the Mon-Fayette Expressway through Allegheny County or scrap the project.

"What has to occur from today on, if people believe the project should be finished, is the political leadership in the state has to have the courage to fund it," commission CEO Joe Brimmeier said during a forum hosted by the Urban Land Institute at the Rivers Club, Downtown...

That section through Allegheny County is projected to cost $2.4 billion...

Possible sources of additional money includes gasoline taxes, drivers' fees and leasing the highway to a private company.

There is no indication that lawmakers intend to raise taxes or fees. The commission is talking with an Australian company, Macquarie Group, about possibly forming a public-private partnership that could generate the money needed to complete the highway.

And from the P-G:

Braddock Mayor John Fetterman said officials of towns in the path of the Mon-Fayette Expressway need to know whether the project will be built.

"You've created a ribbon that's a dead zone through the middle of Braddock," Mr. Fetterman said. "Otherwise, you're causing more hardship than we already have [and] we have to develop alternate plans. You need to establish a jumping-off point."

As you can guess from my above, snarky comments, I have some ideas on this matter, primary of which is to scrap the whole damned plan. I'm not interested in creating a "Cranberry South" that will detract much needed revenue and resources from communities that need them more. I do not believe that the State and Local Governments should be active participants in facilitating sprawl or unsustainable development.

But hey, that's me.

Still, being a Bureaucrat (or at least that's the claim in the title of this 'blog), I can understand a simple principle here, namely Rule #18: "Money is not created equal": PennDOT, the Locals, the State, all of them are going to lose this money if they don't spend it, and they can't just spend it on anything. A $2.4 Billion investment in Beanie-Babies is right out, as is doubling down on Red 18. No, PennDOT and the Turnpike Commission need to spend this money on the Mon-Fayette, else they get $0, nothing, nada.

That, however, is not the best reason to build this thing. Just because it's an expressway doesn't mean that you have to build an expressway... even if the plans were on display (in a disused lavatory in a locked filing cabinet, in the basement, where the lights had gone out and a big sign had been posted saying "Beware of the Leopard".) PennDOT may have to give this project up, but here are some suggestions/alternative, none of which are very original:

(1) OK, the primary reason, or so I've been told, that the Mon-Fayette has to be built is that so many of the old, disused mill sites could be more readily used if they had better access to transportation, i.e., tractor trailers are necessary to access any light industrial sites that could be developed. That's a fair assessment, and it could have been much more useful in, say, 1970... however, that does not preclude an expansion or reengineering of existing roads and highways to better accommodate these transportation and shipping needs. I don't quite understand why highways are the only solution to this problem. Something tells me that a four land "West Braddock Grand Boulevard" would go over much better than a four lane expressway.

(2) Alright, you'll lose the tolls. Fine. Take the hit, but you won't have to do so much massive engineering. There, I've slashed your costs.

(3) Seriously guys, shit or get off the pot.

(4) If your big concern is the flow of commuters from the Steel Valley to Downtown Pittsburgh, you could always regulate the flow by installing some sort of Light Rail or mass transportation system along the existing CSX lines... although, I suppose that that would pose problems of its own... but it beats the hell out of the North Shore Connector!

(5) Dicking around doesn't help anyone, least of all the rust belt towns along the Mon.

So, at this late hour, those are my thoughts. If you are up this late to read them, shame on you.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

I for one, welcome our new robot overlords:

Carnegie Mellon University wants to build a research center called Robot City at LTV's former Hazelwood Works to develop the next generation of robots.

CMU would use the space to build and test prototypes of robots that would plant grass, mow the lawn, harvest crops, provide cleanup, oversee security and do other tasks. University officials hope the move will bring Pittsburgh closer to living up to the monicker given it by The Wall Street Journal: "Roboburgh."

As always, a couple thoughts:

(1) OK, this sounds like a plan for the former LTV site that will take up a lot of space, which could be used for businesses, parks, housing, etc. Is that a socially, economically, or politically responsible position?

(2) From a planning perspective, the use space on these old brownfield spaces has been a source of criticism (cf. the Waterfront & the Pittsburgh Technology Center).

(3) Speaking of planning, you can see the plan for Hazelwood here.

(4) I wonder how this plan works with the second dumbest idea in Western Pennsylvania regional planning: the Mon-Fayette Expressway. The dumbest idea is, in fact, slots.

(5) Well, on the other hand, this is a positive move towards a cluster of industries in which Pittsburgh has, apparently, a competitive advantage.

(6) Although, it would be nice to have some sort of connection to Oakland through Junction Hollow.

(7) What has ALMONO done for us recently? Seriously.

(8) Roboburgh is a dumb nickname.

(9) Will this assist in finding Sarah Connor?

I'll be back.

Mon-Fayette

One day I'll write a post on subsidizing sprawl vis a vis the Mon-Fayette Expressway, but here's the latest from the Post Gazette. What better way to clear up traffic congestion around the Squirrel Hill Tunnel than creating four additional confusion lanes for Pittsburgh Drivers? Why don't they just go whole hog and merge all into one lane, and put a stop-sign on the on-ramp so that drivers have to accelerate to 60 mph in 3/10 of a second. Oh, and land mines; that'll clear traffic up.

I'm sure that if you follow the money, you'll find that the people driving this deal are those that get significant contributions from the Construction industry. I don't know about you, but if I were a Pennsylvanian resident, I'd rather pay for 5 more stadiums than see the M/F Expressway blow down the river.

[Deep breath]

Anyway, the whole Mon-Fayette situation reminds me of scene in this book.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, "this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!"

"First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be built?"

Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again.

"What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses."

Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

I'm going off to point D, which has coffee waiting for me.

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This post brought to you by: STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!

Transit & Rule #4

I’m a little swamped today, with the plethora of tasks that are piling up, so I can only dash out a brief post right now, hopefully to be followed by a more substantial analysis.

Both Furrow and Jonathan Potts have some very in depth discussions on Pittsburgh’s Port Authority Transit projects and the proposed Mon-Fayette Expressway. Both seem to be puzzled over the rationale for these endeavors, but both agree that these are bad projects.

Bad projects! No biscuit!

So, while I go and brush up on all the back story involved (THE BUREAUCRACY has done little work with the DOT and even less with the State of Pennsylvania), I’ll leave you with Rule #4, “The Money Rule”:

IT’S ABOUT THE MONEY! IF PEOPLE TELL YOU IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY, IT’S MOST DEFINITELY ABOUT THE MONEY. IF IT’S ABOUT POWER, IT’S ABOUT MONEY. IF IT’S ABOUT SEX, IT’S ABOUT POWER. IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY! FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!

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This post brought to you by: That light headed feeling you get from missing lunch.