Sad but true. Especially because Oakland, a huge employment center with its cluster of hospitals and universities and tech, is served by bus not rail. Bus service is good but could be much better. The fast, limited-stop East Busway barely brushes the edge of Oakland (though it's terrific for "dahntahn" and Shadyside and East Liberty and Wilkinsburg), and the regular buses seemingly stop every few feet and take forever. I don't know the status of the bus rapid transit (BRT) lanes that are perennially proposed but seemingly never built between Oakland and downtown. Oh, what a mistake Pittsburgh and many other cities made in ripping up streetcar lines.
It is under construction.
Year 2026 for "completion." Mass Transit Magazine
Great to hear! GNB was my wife’s former hometown station…
It's about time. When you consider that that was once part of the busiest railroads of the world, it is incredible that service has been reduced to just a single daily trip. I do wonder why they need to make $200M in "improvements" to add just one little train to a multi-track mainline?
High Level Platform on two of the terminating tracks at Pittsburgh for the single level Pennsylvanians to berth in. Funding is partly from this package and partly from Amtrak's general ADA budget.
Only the track capacity component needed by NS needs to be completed AFAIK.
Basically, the NS held this service hostage with the Commonwealth so it could get the free money to upgrade their own services. I am for necessary upgrades and look forward to the additional service (2+ years from now) but for this investment these trains had better be on time 98% of the time. But, actually, currently the Pennsylvanian is a fairly good on time performer. For eample the last 30 days 43 has been on-time or early into Pittsburgh half of the time, but more than 15 minutes late only 3 times. Into Harrisburg, 42 has been on-time or early 16 times and late by more than 15 minutes again only 3 times. For Amtrak on a heavily used freight route, that ain't too bad.It's about time. When you consider that that was once part of the busiest railroads of the world, it is incredible that service has been reduced to just a single daily trip. I do wonder why they need to make $200M in "improvements" to add just one little train to a multi-track mainline?
I don't believe this will ever happen, certainly not before new long distance equipment is in service.
Numbers like that may be typical for states to trade to freight railroads for new or improved passenger service. Virginia is the example I know, and there were about three of them, before the later agreement to buy tracks. The outcome was good, in my opinion, but rankled me a bit.It's about time. When you consider that that was once part of the busiest railroads of the world, it is incredible that service has been reduced to just a single daily trip. I do wonder why they need to make $200M in "improvements" to add just one little train to a multi-track mainline?
Pennsylvania had an interest in improving freight service going back to the bankruptcies of the 1970's. When Oregon DOT began doing rail planning, we picked up on that and looked for projects that would benefit both freight and passenger service. My successor as ODOT rail planner came from Pennsylvania, and he took on freight issues that needed attention.
