The city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County hope the chance to lease and develop land between Oakland and Downtown can entice private companies to help build mass transit.
That's what officials from Port Authority, the county's Department of Economic Development and consulting firm Lea+Elliot told about 55 potential developers during an online presentation Monday, emphasizing how buses, light rail or automated people-movers could relieve traffic congestion and free up available real estate in Oakland.
"This is not simply a transit project, or just a real estate project, but a combination of the two," said Sanjeef Shah, southeastern and international director for Dulles, Va.-based Lea+Elliott, project consultant. "(Oakland) needs real estate development to meet demand, and transit development to make that real estate viable."
The city-county Transportation Action Partnership is seeking input from local industries on the feasibility of a Downtown-to-Oakland connector and Oakland transit connector. By offering companies the opportunity to develop parcels along the way and possibly giving them a portion of fares in exchange for designing, building and operating the system, officials hope to pay for a major transportation project without having to seek government money, Shah said.
"The biggest part of it is sharing all of this information we've gathered with private industry, and drawing from them their ideas of what works and what doesn't," said Yarone Zober, chief of staff to Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and co-chair of the partnership. The studies and information the partnership gathers will be included in the MovePGH transportation plan being assembled to centralize the city's road, bike, pedestrian and transit efforts, he said.
Studies the county completed last year favored an elevated, automated people-mover system connecting Carnegie Mellon University, parts of the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Technology Center along Second Avenue.
Future branches would connect to Shadyside, Hazelwood and Terrace Village. Transit from Oakland to Downtown could be an extension of the light rail system, or an extension of a people-mover from Oakland through Uptown, the Hill District or the Second Avenue corridor. A $500,000 grant from Heinz Foundation paid for the studies.
Most of the city-, county- or Urban Redevelopment Authority-owned property available for development is at the technology center site or in Uptown, said Dennis Davin, the county's Economic Development director and another co-chair of the partnership. The county is seeking comments from developers through April, and will use those comments when asking state legislators to enable the formation of public-private partnerships.
State Sen. J. Barry Stout, minority chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said the possibility of such partnerships has come up before.
"The big thing is that you have to have a funding stream," said Stout, D-Bentleyville. "You have to have some kind of toll ... some way of making a return on investment to bring in developers."
