I would like to respond to Brian O’Neill’s May 8 column, “What Can 21st-Century Transit Do for The Run?” Although I generally enjoy his columns, in this one, his obsession with a roadway constructed alongside the railroad tracks to connect the Almono site in Hazelwood to the Oakland campuses blinds him to the truth that this roadway will adversely impact the communities of The Run and Panther Hollow.
This obsession puts him in the shameful company of other outsiders — from as close as Squirrel Hill and Point Breeze to as far as San Francisco and India — who want to dictate how we should live in our own communities.
I have listed 10 alternative solutions to this roadway on the website SavePantherHollow.com. If these are insufficient to the outsiders who support this roadway, then perhaps they should come up with their own creative solutions that will not negatively impact residents at all. Innovation and technology must be used to enrich human dignity, not diminish it.
Mr. O’Neill ended his article saying he prayed in a Greenfield church for the transit corridor to be built. We don’t intend to make this a holy war, but we have our own prayers. My suggestion is that he pray every day in gratitude for the benefits that Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh create for his family — while not having these universities ensconced in his own quiet North Side neighborhood.
CARLINO GIAMPOLO
Oakland
First Published: May 15, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
