Father Pitt

Since we were speaking of Pittsburgh transit, it’s time for some trolley geekery: here is the Pittsburgh LRV as advertised on the site of the company that makes it, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles.

You can read the proudly technical description of the cars’ features and details, although oddly the “doors per side” spec leaves out the extra street-level door (what we might call the “Pittsburgh door”) at the front. The same Spanish company made the cars for Sacramento’s light-rail system, as well as many European tram networks.

These are the newer cars on the Pittsburgh rails, the 4300 series. The older cars, the 4200 series, came from Siemens Duewag in Duesseldorf. They have almost all been rebuilt to the same standards as the newer cars, so that they’re nearly indistinguishable from the CAF cars. Aside from the car numbers, the easiest way to distinguish the cars is from the front or back. The Siemens cars have a pair of headlights side by side in the center; the CAF cars have headlights toward the sides, like a conventional automobile or bus. The Siemens cars also have a “Cyclops eye,” a separate high-beam light mounted on top of the car; the CAF cars have the high beam incorporated into the body of the car above the windshield.

The Port Authority bought 55 Siemens cars to run on the rebuilt Route 42 line in the 1980s; the other lines, too rickety for the heavy new trolleys, still ran PCC cars. In 2004, the Route 47 line through Overbrook reopened after extensive reconstruction, and the Port Authority bought 28 cars from CAF. In total, that makes 83 cars, but old Pa Pitt has had some trouble figuring out how many are actually in service. Some Siemens cars may not have been rebuilt, and may be languishing somewhere in the enormous car barn at South Hills Village. At any rate, the number in service is fairly large, since the cars are run in pairs during rush hour, averaging less then five minutes apart downtown.

Update: Here is old Pa Pitt’s most recent map of Pittsburgh rapid transit:

Click on the image for a PDF copy.

The article below is kept here for historical reasons, but the map below is out of date.

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What, again?

Not entirely satisfied with the results of his previous attempt, Father Pitt has employed a somewhat more sophisticated drawing program to create another schematic map of Pittsburgh rapid transit. This one is simpler and more utilitarian, but also more legible, or at least old Pa Pitt hopes it is.

Click here for a copy in PDF format (a much smaller file).

A brief summary (a more discursive description of rapid transit in Pittsburgh is at the earlier article):

Trolleys run on the street in Allentown and Beechview, but otherwise on their own dedicated right-of-way. Downtown they run in the subway. There are three underground stations (Steel Plaza, Wood Street, Gateway Center) and one elevated station (First Avenue); all other stations and stops are at ground level.

Inclines are funicular railways that climb the steep slope of Mount Washington.

Busways are like rubber-tired metro lines, with complete grade separation, infrequent stops, and high speeds between stops. Most busway routes make a loop on the street downtown.

The contraflow bus lane in Oakland is the sort of thing that counts as “bus rapid transit” in other cities. It helps, but it’s not good enough.

In addition to these lines, of course, there are nearly two hundred bus routes that run in street traffic. See the Port Authority’s web site for detailed schedules. There are also numerous interurban routes run by various transit authorities outside Allegheny County.

An update: Mr. Ken Zapinski remarks, “I would suggest adding the HOV lanes to the north which carry express/commuter service from the North Hills, but including that makes configuration of the map difficult.”

The HOV (“high-occupancy vehicle”) lanes he mentions are a set of inner lanes, completely separated from the main highway, that run from the Lower Hill just outside downtown up the middle of Interstate 579 and 279. They are open to inbound traffic in the morning and outbound traffic in the evening, and they do carry commuter buses as well as the few carpoolers who manage to comply with the absurdly lenient restriction to vehicles with two or more occupants.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Port Authority published rapid-transit maps including those HOV lanes as well as the trolleys and busways (the West Busway had not been built yet). Since then, for some reason, the Port Authority has not published a good map of the whole system, preferring to hand out individual maps of the various parts of it.

Father Pitt considered adding the HOV lanes, but left them out for two reasons: first, because there are no stops along the way, meaning that the ordinary carless traveler cannot use their presence on the map to answer the question of how to get from here to there; and second, because (as Mr. Zapinski remarks) they make the map harder to draw.

The HOV lanes do, however, materially improve commuting from the North Hills; the buses have a far easier time of it than the ordinary one-per-car commuter who sits in traffic and curses.  Old Pa Pitt may reconsider the map some day soon.

Another update: Chris Briem at Null Space (a remarkably intelligent blog on Pittsburgh economic issues) kindly links to this article and remarks, “Not sure the Mon Incline counts as rapid, but I won’t quibble.”

Father Pitt uses the term “rapid transit” in place of the far more cumbersome “fixed-guideway systems,” which is what the Port Authority prefers. English is not a bureaucrat’s first language. Except for the Allentown and Beechview street-running sections on the trolley lines, what all these lines have in common is that they avoid street traffic. (And it’s hard to call what happens in Allentown or Beechview “traffic.”)

As for the inclines, they move slowly, but it would be hard to imagine a way of getting from the bottom to the top of Mount Washington that would be faster and didn’t involve a rocket pack.

Update: This article is kept here for historical reasons, but the map here is out of date. For an up-to-date map, see Father Pitt’s latest article on Pittsburgh rapid transit.

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Father Pitt has already offered one map of Pittsburgh rapid transit. That one was meant to show the attractions along the way. This new map is an attempt at a schematic map, somewhat after the manner of the famous London Tube maps, that will fit comfortably on a single sheet of letter-size paper. Old Pa Pitt would not have attempted such a thing if the Port Authority had created a useful rapid-transit system map, but that august body has not done so, instead doling out partial maps in bits and pieces.

This map is an early draft, on which comments are invited.

And now, a few words about Pittsburgh’s rapid-transit system, which old Pa Pitt (who is admittedly prejudiced) thinks is an admirable start, better than almost any other system for a city of this size in the United States.

What is rapid transit, and how does it differ from plain old non-rapid transit? For our purposes, “rapid transit” means what the Port Authority calls “fixed-guideway systems”: that is, anything that has its own dedicated track. In addition to the lines on this map, there are nearly two hundred bus routes that run on the street in ordinary traffic.

Trolleys or streetcars (the terms are interchangeable here) run on rails. The Port Authority calls the cars LRVs, for “light-rail vehicles,” but no one else calls them that. Depending on how you count, there are somewhere from three to six routes.

Route 52 runs almost entirely on the street. Routes 42C and 42S run on the street in Beechview, but on their own right-of-way everywhere else. Routes 47L and 47S run entirely on their own right-of-way. The short spur to Penn Station is served by only two rush-hour cars (Route 42 Penn Park) a day.

Downtown, the cars run in a clean and pleasant subway. Routes 42 and 47 also run underground between Station Square and South Hills Junction, and Route 42 runs underground between Dormont Junction and Mount Lebanon. For reasons old Pa Pitt doesn’t pretend to understand, no one around here calls those other streetcar tunnels subways.

Subway stations, and major stations elsewhere, have high-level platforms on the same level as the floor of the car. Other stops on the lines have street-level platforms (if they have platforms at all). Because of this odd system, Pittsburgh streetcars have to be specially made with entrances at two levels. You can see the two levels plainly in this picture:

The disproportionate rail coverage of the South Hills is an accident of history. When shortsighted bureaucrats were abandoning streetcar lines right and left, the ones that stayed were the ones that had their own right-of-way for most of the route, and those happened to be in the South Hills. The exception is the Allentown Trolley, Route 52, which survives because it makes a vitally useful bypass for the other routes if the transit tunnel under Mount Washington has to be closed for some reason.

Busways in Pittsburgh are not like the half-hearted “bus rapid transit” lines some cities like Cleveland and Boston are installing. They’re more like rubber-tired metro lines. Like a true metro, they are entirely grade-separated, meaning that they never intersect with any cross streets or join with street traffic. Also like a true metro, they stop infrequently and reach high speeds between stops—sixty miles an hour or more. The main difference is that, at the ends of the busway, the giant articulated buses can go on into the streets; most busway routes make a loop downtown.

Father Pitt thinks busways are inferior to rail transit, for the simple reason that no one loves a bus, no matter how quick or convenient. Rail transit attracts more riders. Nevertheless, the busways (which were built with eventual conversion to rail in mind) are efficient and very fast. Pittsburgh invented the busway (the South Busway was the first one in the world, as far as we know), and we got it right the first time.

Inclines are funicular railways that climb steep hillsides. The cars come in pairs attached to a long cable; the weight of one car going down helps pull the other car up. The cars move slowly, but because an incline goes straight up an otherwise impassable hill, it’s the fastest way to get from up to down or down to up.

Pa Pitt debated with himself whether to include the Fifth Avenue bus lane, but eventually decided to keep it. Outbound through Soho and Oakland, the buses travel against the flow of traffic in a lane of their own, so that even in rush hour they move smoothly through the most congested part of the city. And the link to Oakland is so vital that including it markedly increases the utility of the map. The inclusion of the bus lane, however, should not be taken as a sign of old Pa Pitt’s acquiescence in the current state of affairs. Some form of subway, trolley, monorail, maglev, or teleportation between downtown and Oakland is still our highest transit priority.