A wag with whom we regularly converse has some follow-up thoughts on last week’s “At Large” advocating for the privatization of the underused I-279/I-576 High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes with the perpetually problematic access gates:
“If memory serves, over a decade ago there was a proposal floated to turn I-80 in Pennsylvania into a toll road. There is some provision in the federal interstate highway laws that disallowed turning a highway built with tax dollars into a toll road.
“The only workaround that the proponents of the toll road could come up with at the time, was to repay the federal government’s portion of the cost of constructing the road — and even the legality of that idea was deemed to be questionable.
“However, there would be no legal restriction in turning the HOV lanes into [an exclusive] busway. The fact that the Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s (PRT) Ross garage is a few blocks from the northern terminus of the HOV lanes would also lend itself to justifying the conversion.
“If a way can be found to widen the road to accommodate two-way traffic, then the problematic gates could be eliminated.
“In reality, the best-use case would be to just do away with the HOV lanes entirely and add an additional lane in each direction to the existing main lines.
“Having said that, it would not surprise me to see somebody float the idea of turning it into a bike trail or tearing all of the concrete out and turning it into a greenway.”
All that said, and as last week’s “At Large” noted, the absolute worst idea would be to convert the HOV lanes to a light-rail route to the North Hills. Light-rail has proven to be the most costly, yet least efficient, mode of public transit in America.
Still, local jurisdictions push light-rail because the federal government always has been all too willing to fund the lion’s share of such projects. That allows local officials to brag about the low or no cost to local taxpayers. And pols can brag about how they’ve brought home the proverbial bacon.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
