A local newspaper editorial – as part of its “Big ideas for a better Pittsburgh” series – is advocating for permanently closing one of the three “sister” suspension bridges that cross the Allegheny River from Downtown to the North Shore.
“By closing one of them permanently to vehicular traffic to create a new space for public events, Pittsburgh can create a nationally or even internationally recognized attraction, an example of human-centered design that beautifully integrates the natural and man-made environments.”
But it would come with a significant price tag, the editorial admits.
“This is not as easy as placing a few bollards, or Jersey barriers, and calling it a day. It will require creative design to maximize the project’s potential; ongoing work to maintain and program the new, expansive public space; and, above all, tens of millions of dollars to replace state and federal highway funding for the old, beautiful span,” the editorial states.
“But we believe the efforts, and the money, would be worth it to create one of America’s, and the world’s, great urban public amenities,” it says.
Really? This is hogwash. Let’s build yet another façade in the Potemkin Village for which our political and “thought” leaders keep pushing, the hope that the latest edifice to nothingness will deliver the “renaissance” that all past village additions have not delivered?
Please.
The editorial proffers that the “solution” to pay for this latest “renaissance”-delivering scheme “is to set up a separate public-private partnership from which the county could lease the bridge — and transfer the costs. This organization could be funded, probably to the tune of $2-3 million per year, by Pittsburgh corporations and foundations, by Downtown and North Shore stakeholders who would benefit from the attraction, and possibly by taxpayers by way of the Allegheny Regional Asset District.”
Ah, yes, let’s once again attempt to tax our way to prosperity by diving into taxpayer pockets and ignoring all the tax-and-spend elephants in the room.
Let’s keep garbage collection in city government’s inefficient hands when most municipalities long ago privatized the operation and save rare taxpayer dollars.
Let’s do the same with the conveyance of water services and, just for “good measure,” poison pill in perpetuity any attempts to privatize (and, in essence, modernize) such service.
Let’s do the same-old, same-old with snow removal, hanging onto a broken system, that year after year, fails the most fundamental aspects of the chore.
Let’s continue to screw with traffic patterns, adding bike lanes with the gross duality of being little used but creating large disruptions for motorists and businesses alike and at great cost.
Let’s continue to foster the mirage that Pittsburgh Regional Transit can and will work but only if we pump more and more taxpayer dollars into a failed transit/business model whose costs long have been grossly out of whack with even much larger transit agencies.
And let’s continue the other mirage that the new midfield terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport will magically be a bold economic generator for the region and that subsidizing international airlines to fly here will do the same thing when, in reality, such flights more likely export our scarce dollars. Why else does the Allegheny County Airport Authority not produce, and shout from the rafters, supporting passenger numbers to support fallacious economic “impact” claims?
And lest we forget, let’s keep pushing for “affordable housing” programs, proven failures time and time again, that result in less housing at a greater cost.
And lest we forget, too, Pittsburgh’s utterly failed public school system with costs per pupil among the highest in the commonwealth and academic results among the lowest.
And the bill of particulars against how several iterations of our “leaders” have whistled past the proverbial graveyard goes on and on. And on.
But, golly-gee, by all means, let’s push for a hare-brained scheme to further impede Downtown traffic movement while offloading more responsibilities to local taxpayers to close one of the three sister bridges?
That’s not a “big idea.” It’s a daft idea and one that is embarrassingly and intellectually vapid.
Pittsburgh is in dire need of seeing to the fundamentals of what government should, and should not, provide. Of what it should, and should not, be. This continual engaging in fantasy “solutions” to fuel faux “renaissances” disserves Pittsburgh and Pittsburghers.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Polity (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
