Peduto pitches gondola connecting the Strip, Hill District, Oakland

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said he plans to transform the city’s Parking Authority into a “mobility authority” that would promote and invest in all modes of transportation, including gondolas, marinas and autonomous vehicles within the city’s borders.

Peduto, who appeared Monday on a panel of experts discussing Pittsburgh’s potential for future growth, said the city has a critical need for continued investment in public transportation, as well as parking.

The authority wouldn’t necessarily fund such things as gondolas, but it can serve to expedite public/private partnerships that would foot the bill. A gondola is an enclosed cable car and aerial lift.

“This is really about how do you get from the Hill District to the Strip District,” the mayor said. “There used to be an incline that did that. There’s now an opportunity to potentially put a gondola there that could also then take you to Oakland. How can you connect different parts of the city in the most efficient, effective and equitable ways, and we don’t have the vehicle to deliver that right now, pun intended.”

Peduto added that he wouldn’t turn down a new incline.

“If someone were interested in investing in the city of Pittsburgh to build an incline, I would certainly have that meeting,” he said.

He said he hopes to change the authority over the next five years, and it’s too early to say whether the authority would divert parking taxes and revenue to alternative projects. Parking Authority Executive Director David Onorato could not be reached for comment.

“Today, we have multiple modes of transportation that we need to not only plan for, but to find ways to partner with private enterprise to expand accessibility,” Peduto said. “What a mobility authority would be able to do is to build off of the parking assets and look at additional investment in marinas and different modes of transportation such as gondolas, autonomous vehicles and any other type of inner-city transportation.”

Panelists participating in the forum hosted by the Downtown Community Development Corp. at the Union Trust Building, Downtown, listed transportation, planning, the increasing value of property in Pittsburgh and a trained workforce as key elements in promoting growth.

All predicted that a development boom surging through the city in recent years would continue.

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald described transportation, particularly mass transit, as a core issue. The county and city are partnering with the Port Authority of Allegheny County on an express bus system from Downtown to Oakland, but Fitzgerald agreed with Peduto that other modes of transportation must be included in future plans.

“Figuring out how we’re going to invest, what we should invest in and how are we going to pay for it, that’s going to be a question,” he said.

Peduto predicted critical “pinch points” from outlying counties, who belong to the 10-county Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission. The commission is a regional transportation planning agency and decides what projects are funded.

“When critical votes come up where we flex funds for highways to support public transit, we’re voting against our own future,” the mayor said. “We are having rural votes that are insisting that money only be used for highway and not be used for public transit, even though people in those counties rely on public transit to get into work.”

He said leaders must work together and remember that Pittsburgh is the economic heart of the region.

“For the next 50 years, we have to figure out how to bring people into the city to work, and not concern ourselves about bringing back the mills and the mines,” he said. “We have to rethink what this region looks like. We have to rethink what its potential can be, not simply be wedded to what the past was. For the city of Pittsburgh, that means we have to create our vision for transportation, a metro urban transportation system.”

The panel also included John Jackson, senior vice president at Cushman Wakefield | Grant Street Associates Inc., a commercial real estate firm; Cheri Bomar, executive vice president and general counsel for Hardy World, a private equity real estate development firm; and Racheallee Lacek, a Realtor with Piatt Sotheby’s International Realty.