BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

uggh.

I want to run this past some of my number-crunching transit friends. I'm tempted to believe this, esp. considering that I know the juice to run some of the line comes from coal-fired plants, and fairly small amounts from a company that owns a nuke plant.

We have in the past had people on ACTC who were stringently anti-rail, but I never saw numbers to back up their claims, until now. OTOH, in 25 years of operation, Port Auth has never really used its big rail yard by the East Busway, and so runs empty trains all the way back out to South Hills Village after morning rush, and the reverse in mid-afternoon. That's gotta count for something.

Thanks for finding this!

Not to mention spending hundreds of millions in digging a tunnel when there is a perfectly usable rail bridge at 11th. Or the unused station at penn station.

It seems that their probably needs to be a big infusion of money to bring everything up to date. New trains, better routing and switching.

Seems like they refurbished a lot of trains recently.. This is dissapointing.

Yes, all 85 rail cars are either new or refurbished as of 2004-05.

No, the Ft Wayne RR Bridge wasn't usable. There would've been a nine-digit refurbishing cost to make it so, and in light of all that and still not owning the bridge, they decided to go underground. I think the tunnel was a good idea. I also think the Pittsburgh media machine has demonized the tunnel project.

Not using Penn Station, though, is entirely under their control, and just plain stupid, IMHO.

Really, if talking about this sort of thing is your baby, we need you on ACTC. We should have 10 on the Rail committee, and have only 3.

perfectly usable rail bridge at 11th

cant use the Fort Wayne Bridge because freight runs overhead, and the unknown buried treasure that reside under penn station, liberty ave and 11th street which would undoubtedly bring calamity to all - a real career ender.

At least with the chunnel, people can move on...

In any event... You cant hitch our nation's transportation issues to one mode: rail, bus, car, bike. Regionally diverse multimodal transportation networks is the way to go.

Incredibly basic example, but as history goes: Give rural people $2 of quality roads, while providing a $1 for transit and a $1 for roads in urban settings, instead of $1 for rural roads and $3 for urban roads. Folks in rural settings will give urban districts their mass transit so long as urban districts don't steal funds from rural infrastructure.

It looks like a big part of the issue is that "KWH/ seat mile (Efficiency of Vehicle)" is twice as much as a lot of systems, and even worse than, say, Kenosha's which is running PCCs. That's definitely an area to look into.

Of course, a lot of miles traversed by the T's seats are non-flat, which might have a poor effect on their efficiency.

On that note, I'd guess that since Pittsburgh is dense, hilly, and not built for automobiles (some of my favorite things about it) that the local average carbon emissions for a single-operator vehicle are significantly higher than the nationwide average.

So still take the T if you already were!

Oh, and sloaps: we as a country already have a political system strongly biased toward rural areas.

If we gave rural areas as much for transportation as we do for cities we'd be massively underserving the 80+% of us who live in cities.

@alankhg rural bias: yeah, I know. Though the 80:20 ratio from the last census doesn't adequately define the suburban "gray" area between. That's where the problems of modern surface transportation in urban areas exist, which is what rural folks are incensed about - rural not being suburban that is.

if it doesn't, the T should use regenerative braking. surely that would cut into the KWH/seat issue, especially through our hills.

"On the other hand, a bus ride here is 5x better than driving alone."

You're comparing passenger miles vs seat miles there.

0.197 (bus) vs 0.964 (car)

passenger mile vs passenger mile doesn't look as good

0.718 (bus) vs 0.964 (car)

I think the source of the region's electricity is a canard. If the T didn't run, those coal-fired plants would keep going. Only some natural-gas on-demand plants would be idled.

bd- good catch.

I actually managed to catch a T train this evening when I rode out to Carrick and didn't feel like riding back along Brownsville Road. Finding a nearby station from there was relatively difficult, I'm glad I have a smartphone. Eventually I found McNeilly Station, but not before I had to ride on Saw Mill Run Blvd. for a harrowing quarter mile or so. So this was around 6:15pm, and I realized "crap, I'm in the midst of the evening 'peak time'". Well the T conductor didn't seem to mind, so I jumped on.

It got me thinking about a couple things. One, this station was pretty hard to access and had nothing in the way of bike parking or even auto parking. Though, this didn't stop one intrepid bike commuter from locking his bike to a nearby railing. My concern is that if the Port Authority won't allow bikes on the T when most people use it, could they at least provide adequate parking at their stations?

Also, unrelated transit query, was what I did actually kosher or was it just a friendly/apathetic T conductor? That is to say, do the 'peak periods' only apply appropriately to INBOUND during the morning rush and OUTBOUND during the evening? If it were the latter, I suppose what I did was acceptable because I went INBOUND during the evening, but does anyone know how the policy works in this regard?

Disappointing.... at least it's still better exercise to T-and-bike than to drive.

AFAIK the peak hours are just by time. The irony is the longer trains during peak (end of peak anyway) are roomier than start of offpeak.

Working with the Port Authority on getting bike racks at all the T stations and busway stops has been interesting. When money is available, they are willingto put them in. However, few cyclists use them, which serves as a disincentive for the Port Authority. In a survey of seven bus stops along the West Busway recently, there was one bicycle locked to a rack -- or to anything else. Every station had a rack, mind you. But only one of them had a bike in it. Same thing can be said for the East Busway. Someone on this board recently noted that there were bike racks at Hammet Station, but lamented that he would be uninterested in locking his bike there all day. That hardly incentivizes the Port Authority to put in MORE racks in MORE locations.

Well the busways differ in the simple fact that even during the rush hours there is a(n increasing) chance that the bus you wish to board will have a bike rack on it and you will be able to take your bike with you into town. Obviously that's more appealing than leaving the bike parked at the busway station.

However, I don't think the T vehicles will be getting outfitted with bike racks, so the only option to mix-mode bike and T is to either (a) park the bike at the station or (b) ride into town during non-peak hours. Let's face it, most employers won't probably let people go with the latter, so most are stuck leaving their bikes at the T stations. So I would say T stations should have priority to install bike parking over busway stations, but what do I know?

And like I said before, even at the out-of-the-way McNeilly Station I saw a bike parked there. Granted, I think it was a mountain bike and it could have just been a kid going to the Penguins game, but it was a parked bike nonetheless.

A third option for some is to get a folding bike. Those are now allowed on the T during rush hours.

It might be worthwhile to survey some T stations during the workday and see how many bikes are locked up despite the scarcity of racks, just to gauge demand.

Maybe as an experiment, they could find the T station with the most bikes locked to railings, then install a few rentable bike lockers and see if they get rented.

Yeah, I have a folder, since I have a ride at each end of a one-way commute.... locking would not work.

@Impala26

The peak time when bikes aren't allowed ends at 6, that's why the conductor didn't bother you.

I will be curious to see if the numbers change after the schedule changes that just occurred. They seemed to be curtailing some of the more wasteful times/routes and inefficiencies that had been carrying on for a while.

When to tunnel is complete, the above ground stock yard there has enough room for more than 30 vehicles (If I recall correctly) and will allow for even more efficient parking of them.

Penn station isn't really a good option since it goes single track for a small section there, which is a nightmare in terms of overhead for operator traffic. I have been impressed they have been handling the Wood street cross over so well with gateway closed.

At the SHV garage, there are always at least 3-4 bikes during any moment of peak hours, and at least 1-3 on weekends and off peak. And those are just the ones right at the station. Despite a several thousand spot garage, there is not a single rack nearby…

No, the peak time is weekdays from 6-9 AM and 4-6:30 PM, per the Port Authority's site. So the conductor was being nice.

Yeah, the peak times were listed on the fare box on the train I rode as well. My simple point was that I am of the opinion that reverse trips during the peak times (outbound in the morning, inbound in the evening) would have much less passengers, so there's no reason a bike couldn't fit on one of those trains in particular.

I understand why PAAC has that policy, during those Peak Direction times those trains are PACKED, it wouldn't even be logistically possible to fit a bike into one of those trains sometimes how the people are packed in like sardines.

Another issue of debate here that rages in mind mind is that, by providing bike parking, does this actually encourage people to use bikes or just make the bikers who park anyway happier? I feel like bike parking does encourage more biking in business areas, but I'm not sure about intermodal transportation models like this.

I'm sure Stu has a thought about this...