Absent 'green' piece

When the participants and protesters arrive in Pittsburgh for the G-20 summit they will no doubt notice a glaring absence in what has been touted as a "green" city: a viable mass transportation system, meaning an interconnected rail system including an airport-to-city-center line. And, no, buses are not a mass transit system in themselves but a secondary and feeder system to the rail lines.

I arrived in Pittsburgh as a graduate student in 1973 and watched as the local politicians (read: county commissioners) turned themselves inside out trying to figure out what to do with federal transportation funding. Instead of building a system from the four directions into the city, they decided to build Mister Rogers' neighborhood trolley from the South Hills.

What they lacked was vision: the ability to imagine what a major city looks like when people can be moved in large numbers and not in automobiles. So now we're left with pollution-spewing buses and highways clogged with cars and no money on the horizon to take Pittsburgh fully into the green revolution.

Are the current politicians and regional planners paying attention?

MARC KAPLAN
North Fayette