That's the rub: the commuting patterns in the Pittsburgh region don't really fit the existing tracks. Employment is broadly distributed, with downtown only accounting for a small portion of the workforce. Aside from the 28 corridor up the Allegheny, the main commuter trunks don't match up with existing tracks for the portion of the region that actually goes downtown for work. There's no duplicate for the traffic down 279.
Sad but true. Especially because Oakland, a huge employment center with its cluster of hospitals and universities and tech, is served by bus not rail. Bus service is good but could be much better. The fast, limited-stop East Busway barely brushes the edge of Oakland (though it's terrific for "dahntahn" and Shadyside and East Liberty and Wilkinsburg), and the regular buses seemingly stop every few feet and take forever. I don't know the status of the bus rapid transit (BRT) lanes that are perennially proposed but seemingly never built between Oakland and downtown. Oh, what a mistake Pittsburgh and many other cities made in ripping up streetcar lines.
"[A]t Forbes Field, already the National League's oldest ballpark in 1960, there were no such things s luxury or loge boxes - just boxes, reserved, general admission, and bleachers. Nor were there ads on the field's ivy-covered red-brick walls, exploding scoreboards, or any major street signs telling you how to get there. No need - people knew where Forbes Field was and
generally arrived by streetcar, bus, or on foot, since parking was limited." (Jim Reisler,
The Best Game Ever: Pirates vs. Yankees, October 13, 1960)
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