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City leaders, sports team owners and developers say it's well worth the money.

Some community activists say the Port Authority would be wasting hard-to-get federal grant money on the wrong project.

Expanding the Port Authority's T line to the North Side is touted as a development engine and a step toward expanding light-rail service, possibly to the Pittsburgh International Airport. Mostly, the extension of the light-rail line is viewed as a way of eliminating parking problems for the Pirates and Steelers, attracting more transit riders and fueling development of the North Shore.

"A transportation network has to be connected," Port Authority Executive Director Paul Skoutelas said. "It has to be seamless ... and now you've got to get it across the river."

The massive project would run the T underneath the Allegheny River from Stanwix Street, Downtown, past PNC Park and ending near Heinz Field. The extension also would bring light-rail service to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, on the edge of the Strip District.

The Port Authority is nearing the start of construction on the North Side. The Federal Transit Administration has approved spending $217 million on the twin-tunnel project, and nearly $100 million more will come from other federal transportation sources. The state will pay about $65 million and Allegheny County about $13 million.

Four congressional committees involved with transit grant programs are reviewing the project. If the committees sign off, construction could begin this fall and end in 2009.

The authority advertised for bids from construction firms June 1. Bids will be received in mid-July.

Oakland community groups say the Port Authority caved to political pressures in the early 1990s to expand to the North Side rather than push into Oakland, a hub of education, culture, medicine and housing.

"It's not that we don't like the tunnel; we don't like the decision to go north before east," said Jonathan Robison, chairman of the Oakland Community Council, a federation of local groups. "But we may as well finish it up and start on a proposal to go east."

Oakland is the third-busiest transit corridor in the state, Robison said.

Jake Haulk, the president of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a Castle Shannon think tank, agrees. Oakland would have been a better use of the money.

"My argument is why not put it into something that actually makes a difference?" he said. "Why not do something to alleviate the bottlenecks we have now?"

Port Authority spokeswoman Judi McNeil said the agency proposed expanding the T in both directions in the 1990s -- to the North Side and through Oakland and Squirrel Hill. The project, called the Spine Line, lost political support and was shelved, she said.

The North Shore Connector emerged after city government pushed development in the North Side, she said.

"The city picked up the ball and ran with the North Shore portion of it," McNeil said. "Because the North Shore portion started moving and had political and community support, it moved forward."

The Allegheny Institute could be the project's most vocal opponent and has called for it to be scrapped. The institute says the project is a farce and very likely will go over budget.

Massive projects that involve boring tunnels and building complex structures are apt to bust their budgets. Among the most infamous is Boston's "Big Dig" under the South Boston and Boston harbors that ballooned from $2.6 billion to more than $14 billion.

"It's a nightmare waiting to happen," Haulk said. "They're going to claim it'll help development on the North Shore, but there's just not enough development over there to justify an underwater rail system."

The authority could not easily switch gears, using the money granted by the federal government for something else. It likely would have to give up the grant and reapply. Eighty percent of the tunnel project's total cost is being paid by federal money.

Building PNC Park and Heinz Field to replace Three Rivers Stadium and development of the land between the stadiums were the catalyst for the transit project, which the authority has been planning since 1999.

"Certainly a driving force was what was to emerge as the North Shore development," Skoutelas said.

He cites benefits to the stadiums, the convention center, Station Square, the Carnegie Science Center, Allegheny County Community College, corporate offices such as Alcoa and proposed residential buildings.

The project's estimated cost has jumped up and down in recent years as its design was developed and the start of construction was delayed. The project's estimated cost in 2003 was $390 million. It dropped to $362 million last year and then rose to $381 million. The total under consideration by Congress is about $393 million.

It's worth it regardless of the cost, say those pushing North Shore development.

"We need mass transit to make the North Shore work, to extend the Downtown," said Chuck Kolling, a lobbyist for the Port Authority, the city, the Steelers and the Pirates.

Bringing light-rail service to the North Shore would help ease the parking crunch near the stadiums, he said. Fans would be able to park elsewhere -- Downtown, Station Square and the Strip District, for example -- and ride to the games.

Once built, Kolling said, the system could be expanded to serve Pittsburgh International Airport. The Port Authority and local leaders continue to consider a light-rail expansion to the airport, but Port Authority has not approved the idea.

Haulk's major concern is the failure of high-profile mass transit projects to stay within budget. In addition to Boston's Big Dig, officials in St. Louis say a $550 million Metrolink light-rail extension could be more than $100 million over budget, and a rail extension to the San Francisco International Airport jumped by more than $300 million.

If the North Shore Connector were to blow its budget, the financially ailing Port Authority would be on the hook to pay the added costs.

"Before we'll ask a grantee to pay for a cost overrun, we'll work with them to come up with a solution to bring the project back within budget," said Paul Griffo, a Federal Transit Administration spokesman. "If there is no solution, then that cost overrun has to be paid for by the grantee."

Most transit construction projects nationwide are built within the budgets approved by the Federal Transit Administration, according to Light Rail Now!, an organization underwritten by several pro-transit groups nationwide.

Of 14 major transit projects reviewed by the U.S. General Accounting Office in a 1999 study, none of the light-rail projects went over budget. Six other transit projects exceeded their budgets.

"There's the possibility of cost overruns -- as they found out in Boston -- you just don't know what you're going to hit," Haulk said. "This thing could explode."

North Shore Connector

The Port Authority of Allegheny County offers this list of the benefits of building the North Shore Connector.

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