Category Archive: Transportation
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Duquesne Light Company Announces Bridge Lighting
December 10, 2001
Pittsburgh, Pa. . . . . Duquesne Light, the Electric Distribution Company for Pittsburgh, PA, USA, announced in November 2001 a major grant to INTA member Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation (Landmarks) to design and install a lighting system for the first of 13 downtown bridges, the Roberto Clemente Bridge. The Foundation will be working with Allegheny County (owner of the bridge), the Riverlife Task Force, the City of Pittsburgh, and many other organizations to develop and install a successful system.
In 1984 Landmarks successfully lit the oldest bridge in downtown Pittsburgh, the historic Smithfield Street Bridge, designed by Gustav Lindenthal and built in 1884; the celebration included a huge Roman Candle fireworks waterfall and the lighting has received much acclaim.
Efforts to illuminate Pittsburgh’s bridges dates back over 70 years. In 1929, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the invention of the Edison electric light bulb, the Duquesne Light Company strung the three sister bridges (6th, 7th and 9th Street) and the Manchester, Point, Smithfield, Panhandle and Liberty bridges with garlands of electric bulbs.Sixty years later, the Greater Pittsburgh Office of Promotion revived the idea with two nights of a demonstration lighting of the Fort Duquesne and Sixth Street Bridges in 1989 and Regatta weekend, a few years later, saw the West End Bridge lit in a demonstration culminating in another cascade of fireworks.
Now thanks to Duquesne Light’s generous contribution, the Roberto Clemente Bridge will be fitted with a state-of-the-art lighting system to showcase its strong architectural features. Once lit, the bridge will form a highly visible linkage between downtown and the Northside neighborhood, home to some of the cities most popular destinations including the Andy Warhol Museum, the Carnegie Science Center, PNC Park, and Heinz Field.
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation will oversee the project and spearhead the efforts to complete the lighting of as many as twelve other downtown bridges.
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Pittsburgh’s Clemente Bridge is first to get a lighting sponsor
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
By Mike Bucsko, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Duquesne Light Co. yesterday agreed to pay for decorative lighting on the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
It’s the first of what the city hopes will be a long line of benefactors paying to light more than a dozen bridges that line Pittsburgh’s three rivers Downtown.
During a news conference at the Renaissance Hotel, DQE Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Morgan O’Brien said he was unsure of the project’s cost because it would depend on the lighting design chosen. Duquesne Light is a subsidiary of DQE, a Moon-based holding company.
Riverlife Task Force Co-Chairman John G. Craig Jr. estimated the cost for the design, installation and lighting of the bridge to be $300,000 to $500,000.
Craig, who is editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said electricity would be the smallest expense.
The lighting project is a combined effort of the Riverlife Task Force, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Allegheny County and the city of Pittsburgh.
The planned illumination of the Clemente Bridge will include lighting along the top and bottom of the span so the design and form of the structure will be visible to pedestrians on the Allegheny River walks, as well as to motorists and pedestrians on the bridge, said Haldane Hilbish, the lighting designer.
Though the design is not completed, only fine-tuning remains, Hilbish said. The goal is to have the lighting in place by the April season opener for the Pirates at PNC Park, he said.
The bridge, formerly known as the Sixth Street Bridge, will not have a string of lights like the Smithfield Street Bridge but will be illuminated by white metallic lighting similar to street lights that will accent its structure, Hilbish said. The lighting will be installed along the vertical steel suspenders that hang from the bridge’s main supports, as well as from supports beneath the structure.
The lighting design selected for the Clemente Bridge will be duplicated on its so-called “sister” bridges at Seventh and Ninth streets, once sponsors are found to pay for the lighting, Hilbish said. The goal is to have uniformity in the illumination because the bridges are identical, he said.
“We don’t want to create a carnival Downtown,” Hilbish said.
The Clemente Bridge and its two sibling bridges were built in the 1920s. It is the fourth bridge at that location since 1819, said Arthur Ziegler, executive director of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation.
Craig called the lighting of the Clemente Bridge a “demonstration project” that could be used as the kickoff for efforts to light the 14 bridges that ring the Downtown area.
City Councilman Sala Udin, who has been instrumental in the effort to light the city’s bridges, called them “engineering marvels and works of art” that should be illuminated for the world to see.
“I will not rest until all the bridges in Downtown Pittsburgh are lit,” Udin said.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. © Pittsburgh Post Gazette
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City bridges slated for light-up project
11/27/2001
Tribune ReviewPreservationists, planners and business leaders will gather at the center of the Roberto Clemente Bridge at 11 a.m. today to discuss a joint effort to illuminate the city’s bridges.
“I think it’s just sort of a grand, picturesque scenario,” said Rod Frantz, acting manager of the new Bridge Lighting Initiative. The nonprofit group – a partnership of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, the Riverlife Task Force and Duquesne Light – is set to start a fund-raising effort to light all 13 of the city’s bridges over the next six to eight years.
The first to be lit will be the Roberto Clemente Bridge, which Frantz said should be aglow by April or early May. Duquesne Light is covering the undisclosed cost.
The Smithfield Street Bridge is already lit up, but this project will take a different approach to the work, Frantz said.
He said the work will feature lighting of the Clemente Bridge’s superstructure and its underside, plus using a palette of colors to animate the entire bridge, which spans the Allegheny River from the North Side to Downtown.
The group plans to hold public hearings soon and meld recommendations with those of the architects, lighting designers and artists submitting bridge lighting ideas to the Riverlife Task Force.
“We should really celebrate (the bridges), because we have more bridges than any city in the Western world other than Venice, Italy,” Frantz said.
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
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Officials to unveil plans for bridge
11/23/2001
Tribune ReviewCity of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County officials say they’ll shed a little light next week on their plan to shine some light on the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
The bridge is one of three bright yellow “sister” bridges linking Downtown to the North Side, and the closest of the three to PNC Park.
The Riverlife Task Force, a 40-member, privately funded group looking to promote riverfront development and aesthetics, last month said one of its goals would be to creatively light the city’s bridges.
At a news conference scheduled for Tuesday on the bridge, officials from the task force, city, county, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and Duquesne Light Co. will detail their lighting plans.
The bridge is closed when the Pirates and Steelers play at home and has become a popular pedestrian link to PNC Park and Heinz Field from Downtown parking lots.
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Study reveals history of Route 28-Archaeologists to report findings to PennDOT
11/12/2001
By Brandon Keat
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
When archaeologists are in the field, some days they find gems, and some days just stones.
But even when the artifacts they unearth are not especially valuable, each excavation adds layers of information to the historical record.
The initial archaeological investigation of the Route 28 corridor recently was completed, and the firms that did the digging have prepared a report on what they found on and under that patch of ground.
The report will be analyzed by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in Harrisburg and be used to determine the path of the road’s expansion and to decide which portions of the corridor – if any – need to be further excavated or documented.
The archaeological study of the corridor from the Heinz plant on the North Side to the 40th Street Bridge at Millvale was done by the engineering firm Michael Baker Jr. Inc. and by the urban archaeologist firm Christine Davis Associates.
From spring to fall of 2001, they studied historical records to learn about the area and dug excavation pits.
Christine Davis said her company dug 15 “backhoe trenches” about 13 feet deep.
“You don’t know what you’re going to find,” Davis said. “There’s many, many times that there’s nothing found.”
When her firm excavated the site of PNC Park, workers found a wealth of valuable artifacts, but the Heinz Field site right next door yielded almost nothing of interest.
David Anderson, an archaeologist for Michael Baker, said, “We really didn’t find all that much (in the Route 28 corridor).”
He said this is partly because the site has been so disrupted over the past 100 years.
What they did find, either through excavations or research about existing structures, are buildings and artifacts related to a former Millvale brewery, the Croation enclave that was centered around St. Nicholas Church along Route 28 and an older, mostly Irish, community called Duquesne Borough.
David Anthony, historical structures specialist for PennDOT, said other noteworthy structures on the site are the former American Brewing Co., which is located in what now is the Millvale Industrial Park.
Baker’s excavations revealed a large subterranean brewery vault.
Built in 1866, the building operated as part of the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. after Prohibition before becoming a meat-packing plant from 1930 to 1961.
The site currently houses a wide array of businesses, from an artist’s studio to a fence company.
On the other side of Route 28, the pre-Civil War hamlet of Duquesne was well situated, with access to the Allegheny River, the Pennsylvania Canal and the Pittsburgh and Butler Turnpike – what would become East Ohio Street and then Route 28.
The remains of Thomas Carlin’s foundry and coke ovens, which operated from 1890 to 1915, also were discovered by the archaeologists.
The town also became an important railroad interchange.
“You had a major transition from this little riverside village to this major (railroad) round house and foundry,” Davis said.
“It was one of those communities that started as a small village, then became an industrial area and then was wiped out by construction (of the current Route 28 and by railroad expansion). ”
The study also identified buildings associated with the area’s Croatian community, including St. Nicholas Church and the Marohnic Book Store, founded in 1893 to sell religious literature written in Croatian.
Anthony said the archaeological and historical report prepared by Davis has been sent to the Federal Highway Administration, which will in turn pass it on to the state museum commission.
He said the reports will be made public by the end of this year.
At that time, the public and interested organizations such as the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, the Preserve Croatian Heritage Society, Preservation Pittsburgh and the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation will get to weigh in on the plan.
Those groups, along with PennDOT, the museum commission and the highway administration will decide on a mitigation plan – what will be done to preserve the historical resources in the path of construction.
“Most of the time, we’re on the same page,” said Pat Remy, PennDOT environmental manager for District 11, which includes Allegheny County.
Sometimes, roadways are rerouted to avoid destroying historic resources.
More typically, structures to be razed are documented with drawings and photographs, and artifacts are removed and given to museums or other interested parties.
“In a case like Route 28, there may not be any other alternative than to build it where it is,” Remy said. “It may not be the best alternative. It may be the only alternative.”
Remy said archaeological excavation of government construction sites began after the federal National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was passed.
Other protection laws followed, and their effect came into play in PennDOT projects beginning in the 1980s.
“People are surprised what we have to look at to get a new bridge or road,” Remy said.
“There are laws protecting all cultural resources at a state and federal level, and even a local level, so we have to assess that on all our projects.”
Davis said PennDOT seems to take the laws seriously.
“PennDOT does a good job about coming in early and getting it done,” Davis said. “They do a really good job when it comes to cultural resources.”
Davis said that even if the Route 28 excavations did not reveal anything of major significance, valuable information still was gleaned through the study.
“It’s this little part of history that’s gone and through this work can be brought to life again,” she said. “It’s one little piece of history that’s been lost and now we can have it back again.”
This article appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. © Tribune Review
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Surface Transportation Policy Project and Zero Population Growth Testimony
Remarks of Ronald C. Yochum, Jr.
Assistant for Public Policy and C.I.O.
PHLF
August 18th, 1998My name is Ronald Yochum from Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation. I am here today to thank the professionals at the Surface Transportation Policy Project and Zero Population Growth for their comprehensive and factual study on the Southern Expressway.
I would like to comment on the two premises of building this highway:
- The highway will bring development to the region.
- The highway will give better access to the region.
Quite frankly, the premises are flawed.
First, on development. No permanent or new jobs will be created in the City by this highway. For example, according to the Urban Land Institute, a typical metropolitan area in the United States, such as Cleveland, Ohio, may capture as little as 4 percent of new development within the city or older suburbs. The vast majority of new development (96%) is on farmland.
I see no concrete data on employment. I see no concrete data on companies that will relocate here from outside of our region. I see no concrete data on retaining a viable population in our city as opposed to populating our precious farmlands with thousands of cardboard-cutout houses. The only thing that I see here that is concrete is the highway.
The total $3 Billion, 200 Million dollar expenditure of this highway, if invested at a conservative rate, could employ over 2,600 high-skilled workers with an average salary of $42,000 a year from age 21 until retirement.
Where is the logic here? Highways are not generators of wealth for depressed communities. Highways bypass depressed communities to go where the money and the educated work-force is. Think of I-279 and Cranberry Township. Think of the economic wealth that is there. It wasn’t generated. It wasn’t created. It was transferred directly from the Pittsburgh Metropolitan area in a phenomenon called “urban flight”. Do you see any transfer to the North Side or East St. Valley? NO!
Stable communities south of Pittsburgh including Brentwood, Whitehall, Baldwin, Mt. Lebanon, will suffer population loss on a scale unprecedented in their history. As a result of the highway, there will be a vicious circle of diminished property values and higher taxes. Why? The most affluent residents will migrate to the new suburbs, new residents will choose not to live in dying communities, property values will decrease due to lack of demand, and property taxes will rise because there will be less tax revenue due to urban flight and the decrease in property values. After all, the public infrastructure does not shrink proportionally with the decline of population. Just ask the Mayor why he recently tried to create a special fee for garbage removal, a service that traditionally was paid for by your property and wage tax.
And the trail of destruction doesn’t just stop at the older suburbs. Just outside our County lies precious farmland. Thousands of acres of this farmland will be tilled under and planted with suburbs in place of crops while the heart of our great city loses more if its lifeblood population. Fragmentation of our community will become more evident with greater distances between homes, work, recreation areas, schools, race, class and income. The highway’s impact is wholesale destruction disguised as progress. We are killing our city’s, we are killing our older suburbs, we are killing our farmland.
I’ve heard the comment that we cannot prosper in the world economy without good highway access. What does that mean? This region right here built our country. This region right here was responsible for supplying our soldiers and allies in the effort to defend our great country from tyranny in World War II. Today, our City is a leader in the high technology field and computers. Today, our City is one of the world’s premier medical center. All of this occurred without relying on the overabundance of highways that bypass our city. We have rivers, we have rail, we have air. And today we have many highways to service our city. We do not have to build more roads with the empty promise of more prosperity. In fact, San Francisco experienced a commercial and residential revival only after the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down! This flies directly in the face of the current philosophy. Our infrastructure is in place, but it is in need of extensive reinvestment. We must improve and maintain our existing roads which over 36% of are considered in “poor” condition. Improvements in alternative transportation methods, such as light rail to the East End, would alleviate much of the need to build “traffic-reducing” superhighways.
Hand in hand with improvements to our infrastructure, we must improve the overall competitiveness of our City by working with companies that are located here. We must find creative ways to keep existing businesses from leaving while bringing in new businesses. We have acres of undeveloped land right here in our City. Redeveloping existing abandoned industrial sites such as the former J&L site on the South Side, the Metal Source site in Manchester, the Strip District, and other commercial areas should be priority # 1. We should be focusing our resources on restoring our neighborhoods and vitality to our cities and older suburbs.
We need to spend $3.2 billion on education, skill training, infrastructure enhancement, neighborhood restoration, and tax reduction instead of new, unnecessary highways. That will make us healthy and prosper.
We must invest our limited resources intelligently.