Two rush-hour two-car trains wait at the Allegheny station, which is the end of the Red and Blue Lines until somebody gets to work on the next extension toward the airport.
Camera: Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS.
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Allegheny Station
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“Exit to Street”
A geometric composition in the Gateway subway station.
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Pittsburgh Rapid Transit (again)
Click on the image for a PDF copy.
By far the most popular features on this site are the Pittsburgh rapid-transit maps Father Pitt created himself, probably because the Port Authority hasn’t had a decent overall rapid-transit map since about 1990. But old Pa Pitt’s most recent map is badly out of date, and it’s time for a revision. Here it is.
Three kinds of transit are used on Pittsburgh’s rapid-transit lines, or “fixed-guideway systems” as the bureaucrats call them:
Trolleys or streetcars run on the Red Line and the two Blue Lines. All the lines go into a subway downtown and under the Allegheny to the North Side.
Busways are metro lines for buses; they are designed like subways, with stations relatively far apart.
Inclines go from the bottom of Mount Washington to the top. Although they move slowly, they are still by far the fastest way to make the trip without a helicopter.
Father Pitt’s map uses the mnemonic device of colored lines for the busways. The official Port Authority map uses the same colored lines, obviously the remnant of some scheme, very much like Father Pitt’s “Pittsburgh Metro” idea, that was quashed by senior executives; but the lines are never named, and the reason for the letters in the routes that travel the busways is never officially explained.
The Port Authority also uses orange-colored lines, and bus routes beginning with “O,” for the carpool lanes in the Parkway North. Father Pitt has not included those lines on this map.
Much of the controversy over “bus rapid transit” comes from the corner-cutting implementation in other cities. Boston, for example, has its “Silver Line,” popularly called the “Silver Lie,” which crosses at-grade intersections and has to deal with city traffic, yet is promoted as equivalent to a subway line. Pittsburgh did it right. Our busways really are metro lines for buses: no at-grade intersections, no mixing with traffic. The trip from downtown to Shadyside by busway is literally twice as fast as the quickest automobile route. Father Pitt still thinks rail transit is superior, but he cannot withhold his admiration, however grudging, for the excellent bus rapid transit we do have.
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Gateway Station, Above the Ground
The part of the new Gateway subway station that projects above the ground is a weirdly surrealistic pile of glass that will probably look “futuristic” far into the future, in that wonderfully hokey way that old Flash Gordon serials still look “futuristic” today. This is meant as a compliment. Most trends in architecture look terribly dated a few years later, but the most outrageous Art Deco or Space-Age creations never look stale, even when we can hardly believe that they ever actually got built. The multiple angles of the glass reflect the surrounding buildings in a wild cacophony of fractured images. The architects have succeeded in creating a station that Pittsburghers will want to show off to visitors, and that we will enjoy using ourselves.
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New Subway: Allegheny
Between North Side and Allegheny the subway comes up out of the ground and rises to a viaduct past Heinz Field, until it ends (for now) at Allegheny between the casino and the Science Center. Allegheny is thus one of our two fully elevated stations (Fallowfield, which juts out over the edge of a cliff, is mostly elevated), the other being First Avenue. It’s an attractive station whose best feature is its entrance, which actually looks as pure and sharp as an architect’s conceptual drawing.
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New Subway: North Side
The North Side station is our deepest underground station, and the only fully underground station outside downtown. It’s at the north end of the pair of tunnels that carry the subway under the Allegheny.
Compared to the older underground stations—Wood Street, Steel Plaza, and the old Gateway Center—this one is built on a grand scale, more reminiscent of the Metro in Washington than the rest of the subway in Pittsburgh. The decor is minimal, emphasizing the openness of the space.
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New Subway: Map
The map displayed in subway stations, showing the extension of the line to Gateway, North Side, and Allegheny. Click on the picture for a very large version.
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New Subway: Gateway
The new subway line to the North Side is rolling, and the stations are beautiful and functional. We begin with the wonderfully airy new Gateway station, which is flooded with natural light from the glassy superstructure above.
The mural “Pittsburgh Recollections” by Romare Bearden has been removed from the old Gateway Center station and reinstalled here at Gateway.
The old Gateway Center still survives as a ghost station; watch carefully for it between Wood Street and Gateway. Its name also survives in a curious way; it sounds as though the original recorded station announcement has been clumsily edited. As you come up on the new Gateway station, you hear a voice saying, “Approaching Gateway Ce—.” [UPDATE: This voice announcement has since been re-recorded without the ghostly sibilant.]
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East Busway
The Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway, which in the Pittsburgh Metro scheme almost but not quite adopted by the Port Authority would be the Purple Line, is an almost unique phenomenon in “bus rapid transit”: real rapid transit, but with buses. Unlike the half-baked busways in other cities, Pittsburgh’s busways are true metro lines, with no at-grade crossings or mixing with street traffic. Cheery signs like the one above were put up all over the neighborhoods the busway serves when it first opened in 1983; many of them are still there, though they do not seem to be maintained or replaced. Below, we see the real secret of this busway’s success: it follows the railroad through a deep hollow in the middle of the city, giving it a subway-like grade separation without the expense of digging tunnels.
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The Transformation of Beechview
Suburban riders on the Red Line, if they have ever lifted their eyes from their iPhones for a moment, must have noticed the peculiar anomaly of Beechview: a tidy and pleasant residential neighborhood with an almost abandoned business district. A good part of the abandonment was the result of a scandal-ridden failed urban-renewal project, in which the city gave millions to a private developer who vanished with most of the money.
But now the mess is nearly sorted out, and storefronts in Beechview are filling up with interesting and useful businesses.
The big accomplishment was finding someone to open a new supermarket, which will anchor the whole business district. The owner of the new Market on Broadway already has some experience operating a successful urban market in Oakland, the Market on Forbes.
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A new neighborhood coffeehouse gives the locals a place to gather and gossip.
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This 1920s-vintage storefront has been beautifully restored for the new Crested Duck Charcuterie, which will be an interesting addition to a neighborhood more accustomed to spaghetti and meatballs in a church basement.
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A neighborhood artist has taken over this little building that was abandoned when the ESB Bank moved to larger quarters across the street.
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Eventually, this clothing store will have a name other than “Grand Opening.”
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All these new businesses face an uphill struggle; most new businesses fail, and Beechview residents themselves, who learned to go elsewhere for shopping, will have to be lured back to their own business district. But Beechview, aside from a strong sense of community, has one great strength most other neighborhoods lack: the Red Line, which brings rail transit right to the center of the business district. Perhaps some of those suburban riders will glance up from their iPhones, see the new Beechview, and start to think of it as a place for dining and shopping.We’ll see.
