Geographic Mysteries of Pittsburgh
America's proposed high-speed rail network does a good job of graphically representing the Pittsburgh perspective on regional connectivity. The Chicago octopus stops in Cleveland. I'd bet that suits Cosmopolitan Pittsburgh just fine.
5 comments:
Just because we want to be a Mid-Atlantic city doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the fact that we are in geographic proximity to the Old Northwest. The fact that neither Buffalo nor Pittsburgh connects to Cleveland is criminal. If we're going to shoot for the moon, we might as well attempt to create some semblance of a "national" network by connecting the East to Chicago by high speed.
Why isn't there any proposal to link Cleveland to Buffalo and Pittsburgh in Erie? A three-year old could connect those dots. You could then travel from Chicago to NYC/Philadelphia/DC. Having made the Cleveland to Erie drive, I can confirm that all of the east-west rail lines and right of ways are there already.
I guess that's why planning degrees don't require logic coursework.
You make a good point about not having the Clevburgh connection as a gateway from the east coast to Chicago, but I think it's likely that anyone going from NY or Philly to CHI would fly rather than take high speed rail. High speed rail makes a lot of sense to connect the cities and regions that are 200 to 300 apart, thus eliminating the need for smaller regional jet service, while expanding the geographic area where one could have a reasonable commute to from their place of residence(assuming the trains are With a Clevburgh high speed rail connector someone in Pittsburgh could work fulltime in Cleveland, and vice versa. This would be neat! A Phillyburgh connection could do the same, but only if it was a Maglev line that was faster than 200 mph.
Pittsburgh has historically been the connector to the west from the northeast. Lewis and Clark started their journey from the point, right? But with both air travel and now high speed rail the trend has been against Pittsburgh being a connector of the future. Besides Chicago, the two regions which stand out on the high speed rail map are Atlanta and Raleigh, especially Raleigh, which, if ever connected to DC via high speed rail, would see it's stock surge with all it's research and health care, and tech assets, not to mention it's low cost of living.
I understand that you start somewhere, and if a Pgh-Cleveland connection is a good idea then it'll probably develop, but it sure seems like Pittsburgh-Cleveland (and Houston-Dallas, and Jacksonville-Orlando) would make the network more valuable.
Schultz, you bring up a really good point. The time argument is a strong disincentive to a truly "transcontinental" railroad. That being said, if the money is right, a high speed rail trip from, say DC to Indianapolis or a place like that might be more efficient for the passenger than flying and getting laid over.
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