Transit-Accessible Pizza?
While looking for A: a good excuse to ride Pittsburgh's "PRT/T/Trolley" out of town a bit onto the more interesting parts of the line, and B: find a non-touristy, transit-accessible lunch spot, we first needed to hitch a ride.
Our hotel was just a short walk to the T's North Side station, which is where we hopped on car no. 4219, a Siemens SD-400 that was built between '85 and '87. These cars are only used here, St. Louis, and Valencia, and these include the obscure quirk of having both high AND low-level doors on them. The PRT Board has voted to replace these cars in the future, but funding for transit projects seems to be... "challenging" these days.
Now, regarding the pizza, we ended up at Conti's Pizzeria & Pit, which quite literally shares that handrail with the T's Killarney station in the South Hills suburb of Castle Shannon. They served up really good NY-style pizza, and we were even gifted a fried cheese appetizer that accidentally got made from an earlier order!
Along the way of getting here, this car goes up and down some STEEP (11%) hills, winds itself through some hairpin curves, has miles of street-running, and then heads into a decidedly interurban-style line, where the cars were running north of 45mph! Within a relatively short amount of time, this system packs quite a bit of variety, and is well worth a visit if you haven't already.
Transit-Accessible Pizza?
While looking for A: a good excuse to ride Pittsburgh's "PRT/T/Trolley" out of town a bit onto the more interesting parts of the line, and B: find a non-touristy, transit-accessible lunch spot, we first needed to hitch a ride.
Our hotel was just a short walk to the T's North Side station, which is where we hopped on car no. 4219, a Siemens SD-400 that was built between '85 and '87. These cars are only used here, St. Louis, and Valencia, and these include the obscure quirk of having both high AND low-level doors on them. The PRT Board has voted to replace these cars in the future, but funding for transit projects seems to be... "challenging" these days.
Now, regarding the pizza, we ended up at Conti's Pizzeria & Pit, which quite literally shares that handrail with the T's Killarney station in the South Hills suburb of Castle Shannon. They served up really good NY-style pizza, and we were even gifted a fried cheese appetizer that accidentally got made from an earlier order!
Along the way of getting here, this car goes up and down some STEEP (11%) hills, winds itself through some hairpin curves, has miles of street-running, and then heads into a decidedly interurban-style line, where the cars were running north of 45mph! Within a relatively short amount of time, this system packs quite a bit of variety, and is well worth a visit if you haven't already.