Update: The map above is Father Pitt’s latest map of Pittsburgh rapid transit. This article is kept here for historical reasons, but the map below is out of date.
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The new Transit Development Plan has changed [updated from “will change”] the names of the streetcar lines from route numbers to colors, which is so obviously sensible that Father Pitt wonders why no one thought of it before.
Here is Father Pitt’s revised map of Pittsburgh rapid transit, which takes the changes into account:
Click on the image for a PDF map.
Once again, old Pa Pitt attempts to explain what he means by “rapid transit.” For Father Pitt, “rapid transit” is any form of mass transit that runs on its own dedicated track: in other words, what the Port Authority calls “fixed-guideway systems,” a lovely slice of terminology that would warm the cockles of a bureaucrat’s heart if there were any cockles in there. That includes trolleys or streetcars, the subway (which is just the streetcars running underground), and the inclines, all of which run on rails. It also includes the busways, which are completely grade-separated tracks that run like metro lines.
The HOV lanes on the Parkway North are included as “rapid bus” routes on the Port Authority’s new system map (available here in PDF format), but not here; see an explanation at the earlier version of this map.
So far we have what is, which old Pa Pitt is delighted to find is at least halfway to what ought to be. For the next step, Fathr Pitt will soon provide another map—one that shows how the Pittsburgh Metro ought to work.
The style of architecture called Egyptian Revival had its heyday in the 1920s. In Pittsburgh it is almost always associated with death: we find it especially in mausoleums and in memorial dealers. The style always teeters on the edge of kitsch unless, as here, it is handled with restraint and taste. The setting of this mausoleum, under the shade of mighty trees, gives it a calm dignity it probably didn’t have when it was built.
Andy Warhol, whose life and art are memorialized in the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single artist, was often accused of dealing in junk. Oddly enough, other branches of his family (who have kept the original Slovak spelling of their name) are in a similar business.
Everything old Pa Pitt remembers about Col. Alexander Leroy Hawkins is inscribed on the Spanish-American War Monument in Schenley Park. No one seems to think of him today, but he was obviously all the rage in 1899, when he died at sea. He was a hero of the Spanish-American War; he died during the the subsequent Philippine Insurrection, when the ungrateful natives, entirely disregarding the proven fact that the United States was a much nicer colonial power than Spain, attempted to set up their own republican government on their own terms, forcing the Americans to crush all resistance in order to guarantee them a republican form of government.
Mark Twain was one of the most vocal opponents of “American imperialism,” and he used the now-familiar term “quagmire” to describe our involvement in the Philippines:
I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it—perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands—but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector—not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now—why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater.
Once there was a lively little Slovak neighborhood at the north end of the 16th Street Bridge. Today almost nothing remains of it except one crumbling abandoned church (most recently used as a daycare center); the rectory, now divided into apartments; and one substantial building between them, hideously deformed by an addition that must have been designed to express the builder’s seething hatred of beauty and proportion.
North Catholic High School in Troy Hill was built in 1940. Its greatest claim to distinction is the set of unique reliefs by Charles Bradley Warren illustrating “The Pursuit of Knowledge.” “Unique” is a word thrown about with little regard for its etymological meaning, but here it seems descriptive. Where else will we find any similar combination of Catholic iconography, Art Deco style, and scientific progressivism? The reliefs are a little grimy from decades of heavy industry in the valley below, but they have lost none of their power to astonish a first-time visitor to Troy Hill.
No, old Pa Pitt has not reversed one of the photographs. These are two different reliefs over doors on opposite sides of the building, identical except that they are mirror images of one another. In each relief, the monkish scientists gazing into the distance are turned to face a stunning view of the Allegheny valley and the city of Pittsburgh.
“Romantic” is a vague term, but in the Allegheny Cemetery there is a certain class of tombstones for which no other adjective seems appropriate. Asymmetry and an imitation in stone of forms from the vegetable kingdom are their distinguishing traits.
The Wilkins family monument crosses the line from simple romanticism into morbid romanticism. It depicts the Wilkins family as a tree trunk, with each deceased member as a branch cut off from the trunk. The metaphor, if carried to its logical conclusion, suggests that the family is extinct, leaving nothing but a dead stump. But someone must have paid for that monument, which is really quite colossal in person.
There are, of course, no famous Troy Hill Clydesdales, but these horses and this wagon visited long enough to enliven a September parish fair in Troy Hill. Here we see them with St. Anthony’s Chapel in the background.
Can you imagine Pittsburgh with a comprehensive metro system to rival Montreal’s or Washington’s? How much do you think it would cost? How much do you think the contract would be worth to the lucky bidder?
Father Pitt expects to win that bid, because he will undercut any competitors’ bids so severely that they will be forced to admit defeat.
Father Pitt will give you a complete metro system for nothing. Free, gratis, without charge.
How can he afford to do that? Is he wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice?
Well, of course he is, but that is not strictly relevant. Old Pa Pitt can give you a metro system for nothing because only he knows the secret. You can have a metro that would be the envy of any comparable city if you will but open your eyes and see that you already have it.
Old Pa Pitt is a busy man these days, what with dusting two and a half centuries’ worth of accumulated detritus just in case Chancellor Merkel should decide to take a white glove to his shelves. This is his excuse for not yet having released his plan for rapid-transit development in Pittsburgh, which he had nearly finished months ago. This was the map he had prepared:
Click on the image for a PDF map.
One of the main planks in his rapid-transit platform was to make the rail system easier for novice riders by replacing the arcane route numbers with colored lines, as most rail-transit systems in this country have done. He had prepared a map that showed Routes 42S and 42C as the Red Line, Routes 47L and 47S as the Blue Line, and Route 52 as the Yellow Line.
You may imagine his considerable amusement, then, when the Port Authority released a Transit Development Plan a little while ago, in which—among other changes—the rail routes are now designated by colors rather than by numbers. Routes 42S and 42C will be known as the Red Line, Routes 47L and 47S as the Blue Line, and Route 52 as the Brown Line.
The coincidence in color choices is less extraordinary than you might think. Until a few years ago, although the lines had been designated by route numbers, the system maps had always shown Routes 42 as red lines and Routes 47 as blue lines. Why brown, of all colors, should represent the Allentown Trolley is a question Father Pitt prefers not to waste too much time pondering. President Zuma is reputed to be unusually fastidious, and there is scrubbing to be done.
But the Port Authority’s plan only goes halfway. Pittsburgh’s busways are the other half of the system.
Other cities like Boston and Cleveland have integrated “bus rapid transit” lines into their rapid-transit system maps. Yet those are halfhearted affairs, mixing with street traffic and subject to many of the inconveniences of ordinary buses.
Pittsburgh, almost alone in North America, has built real metro lines for buses. There are no at-grade intersections at all; the buses have their own track from one end of the busway to the other. These high-speed transit lines deserve to be recognized as part of the Pittsburgh Metro. And marketing them that way would make them both easier to use and more attractive.
In a few days, Father Pitt will release two more maps. One will be an updated map of the rapid-transit system as the Port Authority sees it (update:now posted here). The other will be an updated version of the ideal Pittsburgh Metro. Watch this space carefully.
This is the face of a Middle Eastern trader as imagined a century ago by sculptors who had doubtless read the Arabian Nights in the popular Victorian translation. It adorns what Pittsburghers know as the Gimbel’s building, because it held the Gimbel’s department store for more than fifty years.
