“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.”

Some track improvements would need done and some sidings added, I’m sure. But the cost of that, the maintenance facility, and buying the DMUs vs paving the whole thing damn ROW? Not even close! And that’s not even factoring the much higher labor costs per rider of operating a busway.

“I wonder how many of the 45,000 New Kensington area work in downtown Pittsburgh.”

Why are you thinking of this as only the people who live in the town of the terminus commuting to Downtown? That would be like viewing the T as a commuter line between South Hills Village and Downtown and ignoring every connection in between. How many people would ride from Verona to Lawrenceville? Or from the Strip to Oakmont? Or take a short bus connector from Penn Hills or the Waterworks? Those are the riders that need to be factored in when considering ridership, along with the big picture of building a transit system where one can get from roughly any point A to any point B in a reasonable amount of time regardless of mode, and rapid transit for the Allegheny Valley is a big missing link.

“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.”

Last I read, the plans for the Brilliant Branch are to turn it into a bike path. I doubt Port Authority gets anywhere with it.

“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.”

All the more reason to go with the most cost-effective form of rapid transit!