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Pittsburgh's Money
Pit
The Wabash Tunnel was burrowed through
Mount Washington in 1903 to link the southern portion of George Gould's Wabash
Pittsburgh Terminal Railway with the new terminal complex in downtown Pittsburgh.
The 3450 foot tunnel was the city's first major transportation tunnel built
through the mountainous barrier of "Coal Hill".
The Wabash
Railroad operated for only
four years before going into bankruptcy. In 1917 much of the railroads
property was bought by the Pittsburgh and West Virginia Railroad. In 1925 a
landslide did major damage to the north portal and the connecting bridge
structure. Repairs were made and passenger service through the tunnel continued
until 1931. Occassional freight service continued until 1946, when the Wabash
Terminal in downtown Pittsburgh was destroyed by fire.
The often abused and unused Wabash Tunnel
became a lure for other doomed transportation projects. In 1931, Allegheny County
bought the tunnel for $3,000,000 with the intention of converting it into a traffic
tunnel to relieve some of the growing congestion at the Liberty Tubes. A $5000
feasibility study was commissioned in 1933 to determine whether the tunnel was
suitable for automobiles. Old stories say that railroaders had to lay low when
passing through the unventilated tunnel. The problem of ventilation and the cost
of addressing the issue were enough to scrap the project.
The tunnel, closed to all traffic in
1946, remained dormant until the Port Authority purchased the property in 1970.
The following year the transit authority began a $6 million project to ready
the tunnel for "Skybus," an ill-fated rubber-tired automated people mover system.
A demonstration project of the Skybus system was built in South Park. If
successful, a bridge would have been built across the Monongehela using the
original Wabash Bridge piers to get the system into downtown. In the end, cost
and politics doomed the project in Pittsburgh.
Between 1994 and 1997, an additional
$8 million in renovations were made to the tunnel by the Port Authority, this
time in conjunction with plans for a major busway to serve the western
suburbs and the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. As with Skybus, this project
envisions the construction of a new bridge across the Monongahela River,
possibly using the old piers from the Wabash bridge.
In 1996, a $3.1 million contract was
awarded to demolish the Skybus runway system and install new paving and drainage
inside the Wabash Tunnel. In 1998, a new portal building was constructed at the
west end of the Wabash Tunnel and the existing portal building on the city side,
visible from downtown on the face of Mt. Washington, was rebuilt. Ventilation,
electrical and communication services were also updated.
By the end of the 20th century, with
millions of dollars of renovations again performed in anticipation of the
tunnel's rebirth, no final decisions had been made on the new Airport Busway
project. Ideas were still being submitted, debated and challenged in court.
Only one thing seemed certain, and that was that as long as the Wabash Tunnel
occupied a space in the Pittsburgh landscape, it would draw the attention
of those with grand schemes and grand dreams. It had become one of Pittsburgh's
biggest money pits.
Over the years, several off-the-wall
suggestions had been forwarded on ways to use the Wabash Tunnel, other than
as a way to throw away good tax dollars. There was once a proposal to turn it
into cocktail lounge known as "The Cave." In 1974, an avid bowler asked the
Port Authority if he could use the tunnel to set a world record for bowling
the longest strike ever. Others jokingly consider it the largest indoor
bird sanctuary, for pigeons at least, this side of the National
Aviary.
Finally
... The HOV Lanes!
In 2000, plans to link the Wabash
Tunnels to the new Port Authority's $275 million West Busway were dropped.
The Money Pit had claimed another victim. All of the tax dollars spent on
planning and related construction had been wasted. As the Wabash waited
patiently for it's next victim, plans were introduced to open the tunnel
to vehicular traffic during rush hours as a HOV accessway into and out of
downtown Pittsburgh to relieve congestion at the Liberty and Fort Pitt
Tunnels.
In 2003, the Port Authority awarded
an $11 million bid to build ramps to link the tunnel to Carson Street across
from Station Square and to Route 51 at the southern end. As Pittsburghers
patiently awaited the inevitable bad news that the project would be somehow
abandoned, the unthinkable actually happened! |
