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Choo-choo: A Norfolk Southern train in Allegheny Commons Park, between West Ohio and North Avenue bridges.
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Brian O'Neill: Two visions for trains collide in a North Side park

Brian O'Neill/Post-Gazette

Brian O'Neill: Two visions for trains collide in a North Side park

Raise the bridges! No, lower the railroad!

That’s the argument on the North Side as tens of millions of dollars are set to be spent to allow Norfolk Southern to run double-stacked trains through the wide, walled ditch in Allegheny Commons Park. About 25 to 35 long trains have been rumbling through that 15-foot-deep cut each day for more than a century, but the railroad currently diverts all its double-decker runs to its tracks running along the southern side of the Monongahela.

Raising the bridges at West Ohio Street, North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue should shave two to three hours of transit time from the freight runs between New Jersey and Chicago, and allow it to run 15 to 25 more trains a day through the park, the railroad says.

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What looks great in the railroad offices doesn’t look the same way to the people who regularly walk the sidewalks and drive the streets. Raising the bridge at North by 2½ feet and the one at Pennsylvania three inches higher than that would mean the existing slopes of the streets would have to begin much farther back. That means two-tiered sidewalks, with street level above some existing doorways.

Barbara Simpson, of Observatory Hill, listens as Todd Willoughby, Principal Design Engineer at Norfolk Southern Railroad,  explains the Pittsburgh Vertical Clearance project at their public forum for the project at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh on Tuesday June 26, 2018 in North Side. Norfolk Southern proposed 9 ventricle clearance projects in Pittsburgh that would raise bridges in order to create a more efficient route for their double-stacked trains.The company held a public forum to hear feedback and comments from the communities that would be impacted by the projects.
Ed Blazina
State, city join North Side efforts to change Norfolk Southern plans to raise bridges

John DeSantis, a member of the Northside Leadership Conference’s bridge committee, said railroads have been getting special treatment in this country for almost 200 years. To the railroad, “it’s my way — or it’s my way,” he said. “And it always has been.”

The crux of the argument here is whether it’s feasible to lower the tracks. Norfolk Southern is undercutting, to use the industry term, beneath the Columbus Avenue bridge but says that’s not feasible in the park because that would disturb the integrity of the ancient retaining walls and exacerbate existing drainage problems.

Mr. DeSantis and his neighborhood allies don’t believe those are insurmountable problems. If the railroad began undercutting north of Pennsylvania Avenue, it could continue southeast all the way to Federal Street and get the necessary clearance, he argued.

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With four parallel tracks through the park, the railroad could even lower the middle pair and leave the outer lines as they are, he said.

“They want the inconvenience to be on the city,” he said of Norfolk Southern decision-makers, “not on them.”

Rudy Husband, spokesman for the railroad, said in an email that he’d like to see an engineering report that could back up the idea that undercutting is a viable option. That’s “our preferred method to achieve clearances. ... It is generally cheaper than bridge replacement. Unfortunately, that just won’t work through the park.”

The North Siders counter by asking the railroad to show its proof: “If you’ve got an engineering report that shows where all these obstructions are, we’d like to see it,” Mr. DeSantis said. 

The West Ohio Street Bridge in the North side will be closed for the next two years.
Adam Smeltz
North Side bridge replacement on track for 2019

Bridge reconstruction would be covered by a $20 million state grant and $10 million from Norfolk Southern, so it “should be viewed as a net positive” that the city is getting old bridges replaced without nicking its budget, Mr. Husband said. Construction is expected to begin next year and be complete by 2020.

Mr. DeSantis said if the city were to decide where to spend $20 million in state infrastructure money, these would not be the first spots. He expects the higher elevation of Brighton Road and North Avenue will lead to more rainwater runoff on side streets and alleys, and worries that the higher elevation of trains will be both noisier and uglier.

Mr. Husband said he’s spent a lot of time in that park over the years and finds both adults and kids enjoy watching the trains, so he doesn’t expect Mr. DeSantis’s height objections to be universal.

Neighborhood bridge headaches aren’t new. The city has shut down or demolished at least five bridges — two pedestrian and three vehicular — on the North Side in the past two decades. The one over the tracks at West Ohio Street is the latest casualty, shutting down in January because of its deterioration. It’s expected to be out two years. The pedestrian bridge that crossed the tracks a bit farther north has been out since 2002 and won’t be replaced until the end of 2020.

The irony is that Mr. DeSantis, with a home across from the park, is a model train buff with one of the country’s most celebrated collections of early 20th century toy trains. 

“I like the sound of trains. But the average person who goes to a park doesn’t go there to see lots of trains going by. It’s why the cut was created in the first place.”

Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill

First Published: April 15, 2018, 11:00 a.m.

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Choo-choo: A Norfolk Southern train in Allegheny Commons Park, between West Ohio and North Avenue bridges.  (Brian O'Neill/Post-Gazette)
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