I don’t think they are against light rail DMU at this juncture. It sounds like they haven’t done a thorough study besides napkin calculations.

“The project will begin planning with a proposal to utilize the current AVRR right of way as a transit-exclusive facility to minimize delays and traffic congestion between stations (freight rail operations could continue at off peak hours or overnight hours so as not to conflict with transit service). As the line currently carries very light industrial freight traffic, both light rail and bus modes can be further studied in this corridor to see which is warranted as the best solution. Cost estimates for the purposes of this high-level look have used busway-type cost ranges as a starting point. This plan could also look into the possibility of a transit-only connection to the Turnpike. “

I wonder how much deferred investment there is if they don’t use it much. I don’t know what speed it’s rated for or what it would cost to bring the rails up to speed to be competitive with a busway. Are there any double track sections for passing? Also they would need to budget a place to store and maintain the trains. I wonder how many of the 45,000 New Kensington area work in downtown Pittsburgh. Even if the whole project cost only $250 million they would need a ridership of about 2500 to justify the capital costs and then operationally it would cost a lot to run for not a lot of riders with how office buildings downtown are being converted to housing lately. PRT will have to look very closely at the cost and ridership projections to determine if it is a wise investment given how little money they get from the state and federal governments.

The busway option would be more convenient for servicing oakland but slower than the train for downtown. On the other hand 13 miles of busway would probably cost a billion dollars and seems excessive considering it’s not congested or part of the core network. Prt is probably interested in the possibility of a phased approach to the busway in which they focus on the bottleneck at Verona and Oakmont. Outside of those towns there are hardly any traffic lights or impediments that would justify a dedicated right of way.

the sprinter in San Diego is 22 miles and with 5000 daily ridership and got a lot of bad publicity for how it requires a transfer to get anywhere popular. San Diego is about twice the size of Allegheny county and is able to beat us out on the federal funding competition. They revived a billion federal dollars that was matched by the state and county for a total of $2billion to build a 11 mile light rail extension for 20,000 daily risers that received a medium-high rating from the FTA . It seems like cities the size of Pittsburgh are getting shut out from the large chunks of funding that go to rail projects. The larger ridership, larger population growth and willingness to raise taxes to match federal funds is a factor in pittsburgh being at a disadvantage to other cities.