AirtimeAficionado t1_j5px2uc wrote on January 24, 2023 at 7:16 PM

Reply to comment by MWBartko in A T line from Pittsburgh International Airport to the Allegheny County Airport by MWBartko

Yes, but the issue is ridership that would unlock federal funding for the project. There is no hard and fast rule, but to be eligible for federal funds, there would need to be an absolute minimum of ~30-40,000 daily riders for a light rail expansion of this length to even be considered (and really a ridership of 50-75,000 to be seriously considered) against other projects.

The parkway currently sees a daily vehicle count of ~100,000 at the Fort Pitt Tunnel. Given the configuration of these communities (sparse suburbs), it would be nearly impossible to capture more than around ~10% of this traffic (because people cannot walk to stations and there are only so many parking spaces that can be made per station and when you are relying on people to already drive to a station it is a hard sell for them to then wait for a train when they could just drive at that point). This would equate to around 10-15,000 daily riders (at the high end), which is well short from the 30-40,000 that is for the most part needed to be considered for funding.

The only hope for this project ever getting off the ground would be if the Airport Authority were convinced it could substantially impact their operations (which might be likely given staffing concerns) and is necessary. The Authority has generated huge amounts of funds through its fracking agreements in the past decade (what is paying for the upcoming ~$1.5 billion renovation of the airport), and it could potentially have the funding needed to majorly fund a line like this in the future regardless of estimated ridership figures. This is a bit of a long shot but would be the only real way it could happen any time soon, and would likely be dependent on County Executive leadership in the future making it a priority.

ktxhopem3276 t1_j5q7a3t wrote on January 24, 2023 at 8:18 PM

Those numbers seem a little off to me. San Diego received funding for a 11 mile extension with 20,000 riders for a cost of $2 billion or $100,000 per rider

AirtimeAficionado t1_j5qiw9l wrote on January 24, 2023 at 9:29 PM

The numbers vary a lot on census trends/weight of the region— even though I believe a lot in Pittsburgh, we have had a long period of stasis in our population, and likely will not see huge changes (barring anything huge) for a while, and therefore thresholds that are looked at are a bit different. San Diego is a growing region and has different outlooks than Pittsburgh, which play a role in all of this. They also have different state funding structures, as well as many other contributing rail projects in the state of California that may have played a role in project approval.

ktxhopem3276 t1_j5qmmib wrote on January 24, 2023 at 9:52 PM

Yeah but I dont agree that 30,000 is an absolute minimum. I prefer an estimate like $100,000 per rider and $100 million per mile construction would require 1000 riders per mile. Busier lines can cost more to construct and lines that are cheaper to construct won’t need as many riders so it is a handy little rule of thumb to go by.

If you want a similar sized city Portland is the closest to Pittsburgh. They spent $1.5 billion with 50% federal and 25 % state funding for 7.3 miles with a projected ridership of 17,000 puts it at $88,000 per projected rider. Sadly that lines projections were two high and actual ridership has come out to be around $200,000 per rider. Some agencies are better than others at estimating and the San Diego line had near perfect estimates.

Here is a great article with a lot of data. It discusses heavy rail in big cities first which is obviously not comparable to Pittsburgh but later in it gets into light rail in other cities

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/the-u-s-gets-less-subway-for-its-money-than-its-peers