(The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published the following story by Joe Grata on its website on April 17.)
PITTSBURGH — Responding to outcry from Robinson residents, planners of a proposed magnetic levitation train line have developed an alternative route that would reduce the impact on the township but increase it elsewhere.
Residents will have an opportunity to view the new alignment Monday.
The new route would affect nine municipalities that were previously untouched or only lightly touched by the 18- to 20-mile route between Downtown and Pittsburgh International Airport.
The newly affected areas would be Carnegie, Crafton, Collier, Green Tree, Ingram, North Fayette, Rosslyn Farms, Scott and Stowe.
The latest version of the plans will be shown between 5 and 8 p.m. at the Wyndham Hotel, 777 Aten Road, Moon.
The new alignment would increase the estimated $2 billion cost by another $500 million for the developer, Maglev Inc., and its public partners, the Port Authority and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
The project team developed the alternative route and performed a new environmental analysis as a result of public opposition coming mainly from Robinson.
“The impacts are significant,” authority engineering-construction manager Henry Nutbrown said yesterday.
The new path “would affect three historical properties and more residential and commercial properties” than the Robinson alignment, where the guideway for magnetically levitated and propelled trains would require cutting a 250-foot-wide, 35-foot-deep swath through the heart of the township.
The Pennsylvania Project, as the maglev venture is known, is competing with a Baltimore-to-Washington, D.C., high-speed maglev proposal for $950 million in federal demonstration grant money. Congressional leaders who control transportation purse strings claim maglev should also include a West Coast project, presumably between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, if federal funds are released at all for such a high-tech undertaking.
A primary requirement is for a system whose maglev trains could reach a speed of at least 240 mph, a requirement that means about nine miles of the guideway must be constructed in a relatively straight line.
The new alignment follows Route 60 (Airport Expressway) and the Parkway West to the West End Circle, where it makes a 90-degree turn and parallels West Carson Street toward Station Square. It heads Downtown, where a station called a magport would be built below Mellon Arena.
The tricky — and expensive — part of the new route would be in Green Tree. Instead of going through Green Tree, maglev would go under it.
Nutbrown said a 4,700-foot Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad Tunnel would have to be acquired and enlarged for the maglev guideway heading in one direction.
A separate tunnel would have to be bored under the borough for the guideway in the opposite direction.
“The tunnels would require a lot of space because of the air pressure” created by trains entering and leaving tunnel portals at 100 to 120 mph, Nutbrown said.
PennDOT, the Port Authority and Maglev Inc. said the draft environmental study, which began in the summer of 2001, should be finished by the end of the year. Public hearings on the latest findings and recommendations will likely be held in July.
The airport-to-Downtown line, plus purchase of the train equipment and building a maintenance facility, represents the first stage of what is eventually to be a 54-mile high-speed maglev demonstration project. Later stages would extend the line to magports near Monroeville and Greensburg for an additional $1 billion total.
Tentatively, riders would pay $5 per segment, so a trip from Greensburg to Pittsburgh International Airport would cost $15, but would take only 25 minutes.