While nothing is certain until it happens, we can look at history to get a glimpse of what we can expect. The north expressway through East Street was on the books for a half century or more. The Mon-Fayette took around 60 years from first efforts until its near completion now.
Occasionally, a project can get fast-tricked as with the "Airport Busway," since renamed more appropriately as the West Busway. In that case real estate speculator, Jack Buncher, got his friend Tom Foerster, Chairman of the Allegheny County Commissioners, to fast-track the project which went from not being on the Port Authority radar to being its most urgent project. Buncher wanted to get $ 4million for a left over rail right-of-way from Corliss to Carnegie.
The Port Authority took it through eminent domain for $2 million and Buncher sued. They settled out of court for $7 million. The same federal funding could have built rapid rail from Steel Plaza into the Airside terminal at the airport. But there was a fly in the soup. MagLev, a magnetic levitation system that was proposed to go from Greensburg to Pittsburgh and then up the middle of a new turnpike through the West End of Pittsburgh out to meet up with the Airport Expressway.
MagLev
Inside word was that Mellon family money was behind the MagLev project in expectation of a return of $ billions from the federal government. While the experimental project has sat still in the years since and even went through bankruptcy a while back, it has not been dissolved and taken off the books. It is still on the Allegheny Conference Agenda waiting for the right situation to take off again. This is much the same as has been the case with a number of other major transportation projects over the past century.
So, what could breath new life back into MagLev at this point and get the federal government to pony up the money to get it under way, full speed this time. Well, we have a President of the United States who wields power without regard to the policies and official processes of the federal government. He bills himself as a transactional president -- give him something and in order to get something back in return.
On October 25, 2025 the New York Times published that Timothy Mellon, a billionaire recluse heir to the Mellon fortune, donated $130 million to pay for military salaries at Trump's request. A long time backer of Trump, that is very likely only a small down payment for a much larger return in the way of federal financing for MagLev.
But that is not all that is in the cards. Trump, who is enamored with high tech enterprises, has made a point of having the federal government obtain a partial ownership of commercial efforts that receive federal funding. Since the backers of MagLev have nothing to lose by giving a share of the business in return for massive funding, that can be expected to sweeten the pot before it is publicized.
Fast-tracking MagLev
What would fast-tracking MagLev entail and on what timeline? First engineering would need to be done, but as with the demolition of the White House East Wing, Trump has a penchant for not waiting on a little thing such as final plans. Even before engineering and testing of the technology, as with the White House, a place for the project needs to be readied. That would put acquisition of the right-of-way and clearing out the people living there. With I-279 the process of clearing out the East Street Valley began in the 1960's well before the plans were finished and the interstate highway opened before 1990.
So, we should expect that fast-tracking MagLev could have preparation to build a turnpike through the west neighborhoods of District 2 to be early on the to-do list. Since the Allegheny Conference sets the public policy, it looks reasonable to observe that the deterioration of Sheraden Park and the surrounding neighborhoods fit well with the way East Street and the lower Hill District were left to become derilect and then leveled to make way for the Conference Agenda projects.
We don't know what Trump will do. We don't know what the rest of City Council will do, since it wouldn't affect their districts. We do know that for MagLev to move forward, a turnpike through the west end of Pittsburgh out to the Airport Expressway would need to be finished with a wide center median first. Should MagLev prove to be unworkable in the end, we will be left with the new turnpike just as we now have the Airport Expressway with its wide median in the waiting.
What does the future hold?
Nobody can predict the future with certainty, but we can read the tea leaves and get a good idea of what to expect.
Magnetic levitation is a somewhat promising technology, but not as with the MagLev project on the Allegheny Conference Agenda. It would be 30 feet in the air on stilts and require that its track be heated all winter long because there must not be any chance of precipitation, condensation, or frost to build up on its track. It would not be possible to take advantage of the high speeds possible by traveling through evacuated tubes where a lack of air resistance would enable ultra high speed travel faster than by jet aircraft.
But we must remember that even if it doesn't make sense, the purpose of the Conference Agenda is to make dollars for the players who pay elected officials to advance its items. This is why there need to be City Council members who understand this and are willing to stand up for the betterment of the City and its residents.