In October of 2018 a conference will be held in Pittsburgh on transit use, mobility, and development near transit stops. The website for the organization involved with the conference notes that its conferences–this year’s will be held in Denver–“showcases the link between land use, transit, and development”.
The Port Authority commissioned a study in 2014 by the Urban Land Institute that mentioned increasing its efforts on transit oriented development–the current PAT CEO stated in the article on the conference that “For a lot of years, the Port Authority viewed its work as taking people to work and back and thank you very much, and it sat on some very important assets, particularly land, and so once it was clear that those assets needed work, things started to happen, and the Port Authority is dedicated to that.” The Port Authority has a document that provides guidelines for transit oriented development.
Back in 2008 when the Transit Revitalization Investment District (TRID) concept was relatively new a study on development near the light rail stations in the South Hills (Dormont and Mt. Lebanon) was undertaken to see the potential for high density development near the light rail stations. That found both communities were high volume users of transit, but population loss was evident and occurred at greater rates near the stations than the community as a whole.
As we pointed out then, if there was a great demand to live near transit, developers would rush in to develop property owned by the Authority. This is supposed to be the year when development at the Castle Shannon trolley station is to begin, and the Authority already expended $3 million with a consultant to carry out station improvement projects and identified sites that are “prime for development”. Can the conference provide more insight that what already seems to be present?
