Missouri Bicycle News

Below are the remarks of Tom Murphy, mayor of Pittsburgh, PA, about what multi-use trails and greenspace have done for his community. Parallels with riverfront cities with many industrial "brownfields", like Kansas City and St. Louis, are obvious:

Parks like Central Park, and Shinley Park in Pittsburgh, are parks that faced opposition and confusion as to why we were doing what we were doing. And yet, today who would think to remove those treasures from the public realm? . . .

[T]he recreational benefits [of rail-to-trail projects] are obvious. As recently as today, President Bush spoke to the need to improve the public health of America; the concern that we're getting too heavy and not having enough recreation, particularly for our children. These trails are the perfect solution to that. . . .

The trails provide increasingly alternative means of transportation. We now in Pittsburgh connect the two largest employment centers of Pittsburgh: Oakland, where our university and hospital research take place, and the downtown area of Pittsburgh. And we increasingly see people using trails as a means to commute to work, either by bicycle or walking, because they don't have to compete with traffic.

Green space: These trails also represent important green space corridors. We have seen an enormous amount of wildlife come to the Pittsburgh communities because of the addition of these corridors.

The trails have also stimulated economic revitalization—which I would be happy to show you first-hand if you would come to Pittsburgh, how the trails have acted as a catalyst for significant amounts of development.

In addition, in Pittsburgh we have used the trails both for fiber optic corridors connecting important employment centers, as well as electric line rights-of-way; so that the rights-of-way themselves act as a multi-use vehicle. And we think it is very important.

Let me for a moment talk personally about Pittsburgh. I've been Mayor 9 years. Many people think of Pittsburgh as at one time one of the most environmentally degraded areas of the country, with the steel mills. And now it is one of the environmental success stories of the country, as we have reclaimed thousands of acres of old industrial properties.

When I was growing up in Pittsburgh as a young boy, my mother always told me two things: ''Be home before the street lights come on, and never go near the rivers.'' I'm happy to let you know, Mr. Chairman, we're breaking both of those rules now. We are literally developing hundreds of acres of riverfront property, and at every single foot of that riverfront property is a riverfront trail that is opening up the riverfronts to the public, all on abandoned railroads. And it is exciting to see that use, that the rivers become a place not to avoid, but a place now where people live, work, and play.

And the public parks on the old railroads along those rivers are the essential attraction to literally thousands of new houses we are building in Pittsburgh that add value to that living. . . .

So the economic development—The $4 billion of development we have had invested over the last 8 years have been intimately connected to the trail successes that we've had.

For Mayor Murphy's complete remarks, see the minutes of the congressional hearing on rails-to-trails, June 30th, 2002. permanent link to article: "What trails did for Pittsburgh . . ."
posted by Brent Hugh at 12/05/2002 07:41:00 PM |comment on this article