Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #rvpgh
Most recents (1)
I talked busways on Saturday. Let’s talk about the “T,” Pittsburg’s light rail. It’s a bit of an oddity. In the 1910s, long before scooters and TNCs, interurbans — electric rail lines between cities — were a disruptive transportation technology. The T is one of the few survivors. 
Pittsburgh had multiple interurbans; what is now the T extended south to Washington, Donora, and Charleroi, serving a series of small towns. They were connected to a large urban streetcar network to run into downtown. Before cars, this was the way to get around this rural area.
Pittsburgh kept streetcars into the 1960s — far longer than most US cities — but then replaced most of the network with buses. But these old interurban lines survived because they tunneled through Mount Washington and the area they served was relatively affluent and influential.
