Pittsburgh officials hope to get private developers to create a transit link between downtown Pittsburgh and Oakland, a second large commercial zone in the area. In return, the developers will get rights to build along the route. Nobody has stepped up yet, but it will be interesting to see how this goes.

This directly relates to my post yesterday about why transit isn’t profitable now. Before, transit lines were built by developers who wanted to do greenfield development. Cars weren’t prevalent, so the only way developers could get people to move there was to create transit. This is kind of the same thing; developers in Pittsburgh would reap the real-estate benefits of their line.