Udin's district includes the entire Gateway route, and he says he's not sure why political opposition has emerged. If there are two issues which Wagner has staked out as his own, they are transit and the convention center. He put state funding for the convention center expansion into the state capital budget, and was a leading critic of the Airport Busway's design. But with the 2001 mayoral race on the horizon, Wagner's every move has political ramifications. All I have said publicly is that I have not ruled out a run at this time.
City council is a different story.
Taking his side were Ferlo and Alan Hertzberg, who oppose Murphy on nearly every issue. Wagner was unable to peel off another vote. More important, Wagner's position isn't likely to electrify the electorate. North Side organizations, including the Northside Leadership Conference, have endorsed the Gateway alternative, wooed by Port Authority promises to institute shuttle bus service to their neighborhoods and to improve three of the menacing underpasses between the North Shore and the neighborhoods. And city residents as a whole aren't likely to get excited about a light rail transit line due to open in 2005, numbed as they are by 15 years of waiting in vain for a spine line to Oakland, says Joseph Sabino Mistick, a Duquesne University law professor and former top aide to Mayor Sophie Masloff.