Pittsburgh has gone to great lengths to improve the quality of life and safety of recreational and commuter cyclists. In fact, we are now 28th on
Bicycle Magazine's list of best American cycling towns, thanks largely to the efforts of Pittsburgh's bicycle advocacy organization
Bike PGH. After a year and a half of planning, deliberation, and engineering, 5 new miles of bike lanes and sharrows are scheduled for installation today, hopefully guaranteeing Pittsburgh's continued rise up the list in 2011.
Some of the improvements being made today include the completion of the Forbes Avenue lane connecting South Braddock to the CMU campus via Squirrel Hill, a new lane going up Dallas Avenue through Wilkins Avenue and then through Shady Avenue, and a new sharrow on Hamilton Avenue in East Liberty. The new lanes and sharrows will be painted with specialized thermoplastic, a material which can last up to seven years.
The process of installing new lanes and sharrows is
more complicated than one might expect, so these 5 new miles, and seven more planned for installation before the end of the painting season, are hugely rewarding. Bike PGH and the City must work through a lengthy process of identifying the best streets to improve for cyclists, two engineers must design the new lanes, the final plans must be approved by the City, and the actual installation involves contracting with a third party pavement marking company.
According to Scott Bricker, executive director of Bike PGH, every addition to the bike route system creates synergy for Pittsburgh's cycling community. "Once we get the roots of our bike route system in place, we're hoping that more and more people will ask for bike routes in their neighborhoods and it will help people advocate for further implementation," says Bricker. "The things you see going in New York City and San Francisco, where they're physically separating the street from bike lanes takes lots of studies and engineering know-how, and we're just not there quite yet, but we want to get there."
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Writer:
John FarleySource: Scott Bricker, Bike PGH