Pittsburgh’s Monongahela Incline has carried riders up Mount Washington since 1870 and still operates as part of the city’s regular transit network

Most people think of public transit as buses, subways, and trains. What Pittsburgh has is more unusual: a small cable car that goes straight up a hillside, carrying office workers and tourists in the same seat, every single day. It’s the Monongahela Incline. It opened in 1870 and still runs today as part of the city’s regular transit network, not as a museum piece for people to look at.

That difference is important. A study published in the Journal of Heritage Tourism, by researchers Abhishek Bhati, Josephine Pryce, and Taha Chaiechi, looked at how industrial railway heritage attractions evolve from working transport lines into visitor attractions, and what factors help them succeed as heritage tourism sites. The Monongahela Incline is a working example of that idea.

A ride with a view


The incline itself is a short ride. The track climbs up the side of Mount Washington for some 635 feet, and the ride takes only a couple of minutes. But that short climb offers a wide skyline view of Pittsburgh. Below you, the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers merge to form the Ohio River at the western tip of downtown Pittsburgh, a spot locally known as "The Point." It’s the kind of view that people usually pay extra for. Here, it’s part of your regular transit fare.

A city that needed a lift

Pittsburgh was booming in the 1860s. The steel mills and factories drew thousands of workers, many of them German immigrants who had experience with cable-hauled railroads in their home country. The steel mills and factories drew thousands of workers, many of them German immigrants who had experience with cable-hauled railroads in their home country. The trouble was the land itself. Mount Washington rises steeply above the rivers, and workers who lived on top had no easy way down to the mills each day. The answer was a mechanical ramp, a rail car hauled up a steep grade by a cable. It was designed by engineer John J. Endres. The Monongahela Incline opened May 28, 1870, and is widely regarded as the oldest continuously operating funicular in the United States. Pittsburgh once had 17 of these inclines built on its hillsides. Only two are in operation today: the Monongahela Incline and its slightly younger neighbor, the Duquesne Incline.

From steam engine to electric motor

The incline has not remained the same machine for over 150 years. It was steam-powered at first. It was converted to electric power in 1935, which made it run more smoothly and be cheaper to maintain. It also came close to disappearing altogether. By the mid-1900s, cars and better roads gave people other ways up the hill, and ridership on most Pittsburgh inclines declined. Many of the city's original 17 inclines closed for that very reason. The Monongahela Incline was saved when the Port Authority of Allegheny County, which has since been renamed Pittsburgh Regional Transit, took over operation in 1964.

Officially historic, unofficially ordinary

The incline's age eventually earned it formal recognition. National Park Service records date the Monongahela Incline's addition to the National Register of Historic Places to June 25, 1974. In 1977, three years later, it was named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a distinction usually reserved for machines that changed the way people worked or traveled. That same year, the Duquesne Incline received the same recognition.

Why this appeals to younger riders

Younger travelers are not usually interested in old machines. But the above-cited heritage tourism study provides a clue as to why this one does. That same body of research ties the success of heritage rail attractions partly to authenticity, keeping the experience tied to the site's original use, rather than turning it into something staged only for visitors. That’s in line with what younger travelers often say they want from a trip: something they can actually do, not just look at from behind a rope barrier. It is the experience of sitting next to someone on their daily commute up a hillside in a 150-year-old cable car.

What a ride looks like today

The transit agency says it runs about every 15 minutes for most hours of the day and every day of the week. Fares are the same as any other ride on the city's buses or light rail. Fares are the same as any other ride on the city’s buses or light rail. Over half a million people ride it each year. Some of them are commuters going back to Mount Washington, while others are visitors who came just for the view from the top of Grandview Avenue.

The Monongahela Incline was not preserved by being locked away. It was preserved by staying useful. More than 150 years after it first opened, it still does exactly the job it was built for: getting people up a steep hill, quickly and cheaply. That, more than any plaque or landmark title, is perhaps the real reason it has survived this long.