Commuting by Bike: You Rock, Bike Guy!

Mike Edwards of Pittsburgh Downtown Partnerships is an old hand at commuting by bicycle and he does it year round. Last year on his way from Mt. Lebanon to his office downtown, he saw a sign at an intersection on Rt. 51 he passes daily. It could have been for him, he says, or one of the crew of regulars who ride that way daily. The sign read, simply and admiringly,  “You Rock, Bike Guy!”

It could be a sign, in another sense of the word, that things are looking up for bike riders in the region.

High gas prices this summer and an increasing awareness of the environment have helped to create a surge in bicycle commuting across the country and biking through scenic Pittsburgh is evolving into a mainstream mode of transportation. That, and the addition of a new bike safety director (see recent Pop Story here) not to mention more bikers on the road, are more encouraging signs.

Remember: for every biker you see, that's one less car on the road.

Healthy Habits Die Hard
Matt Smuts works for the Urban Redevelopment Authority and, like Edwards, has been biking to work for years. In fact, in the past 12 months in his current position, he has never driven to work at all though he occasionally takes the bus.

Smuts’ commute from his home in Hazelwood is approximately four miles, conveniently along the Eliza Furnace Trail. “I have always taken the opportunity to ride to work,” says Smuts. “It’s fun, good exercise and cheaper than driving, not to mention that it reduces carbon emissions. At work, we have a steel railing out back that people lock their bikes to. There actually is a shower in the basement of our building, but it isn’t used very much and I'm working on trying to get something that’s a little more easily accessible and available to anyone who wants to ride.”

Smuts feels that motorists who have to share the road with cyclists have learned to tolerate bikes more than when he was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh. Today, he gets less negative feedback and sometimes even has neighbors cheering him on his way home when he’s climbing up the steep hill to his house. (We should all be greeted so warmly on our return from work.)

Commuting After Dark
Emily Jackson, 27, agrees about Pittsburgh motorists. She frequently bikes home at 10:30 at night from her job at Enrico’s Tazza d’Oro in Highland Park, but doesn’t get too harassed, at least not compared to what it was like in Georgia where angry motorists threw beer bottles at her.

“Pittsburgh motorists aren’t so much angry, they just get annoyed if my bike is in their way,” says Jackson, who owns a car but doesn’t drive it very often. “It’s just much easier to bike – it’s more of a lifelong habit for me. I save gas plus the wear and tear on my car. I moved to Pittsburgh in 2005 and this is my first time living in a metro area."

For night biking, Jackson has front and rear blinking lights on her bike. Although she's had some close calls, she shrugs them off, since she wasn’t actually knocked off her bike. She still chooses to ride, noting that she would never get her parking spot back in Bloomfield now even if she drove her car again. With no trail to Highland Park, she bikes on city streets to and from work but uses all of the Pittsburgh trails for pleasure rides.

Come on and Take a Free Ride
For any number of reasons, more people than ever are cycling as an alternative to driving. Veteran cyclist, Brian Janaszek, 35, has been commuting to work by bike for nearly eight years. Biking from Morningside to his job at invivodata on the South Side, his ride is about 6 miles and usually takes around 30 minutes.

“I enjoy being on a bike and the nice transition between work and home. It gives me a chance to unwind and get some exercise in, plus the economic benefits are nice,” he says.

At Carngie Mellon University, Francisco Guzman, a researcher from Mexico, enjoys biking the 3.5 miles from Edgewood to the campus. He is one of many students and professors who bike, happily, to the school. In Monterery, Mexico, he says, no one bikes on the roads. "It is not bike-friendly," he says emphatically. In comparison, he finds Pittsburgh to be quite bike-friendly.

Bike This Way
The mindset is gradually changing on biking to work in the city and although his commute from Washington’s Landing (right on the bike trail)  to Downtown is only two miles door-to-door, Larry Murdock is glad to have others share his passion.

“With biking, it feels more like vacation than commuting. Pittsburgh is biker-friendly and I enjoy it because biking frees up time that would be spent driving and it lets us get rid of a car,” says Murdock, who works for Transtar, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel.

At ThoughtForm, a design firm located on the Southside Trail near the UPMC complex, a number of employees--like Jonathan Hill--enjoy the great convenience of biking the trails to work. Traffic? Not an issue for the most part. (Read a recent article about employee bike commuting on their website by clicking here.)

Traffic poses a challenge for Mt. Lebanon resident Kim O’Dell.  She knew biking would be a great form of exercise when she started commuting by bike to her job at the Heinz Family Foundation downtown this past year, but riding in traffic took some getting used to.

“I was afraid of the traffic on W. Liberty Avenue, and Mt. Washington seemed too daunting to me, so I rode down Greentree Road to the West End Circle, then across the West End Bridge,” O’Dell explains, adding that it made her commute almost twice as long at 8.5 miles. “For the first time last week, I rode the W. Liberty and Mt. Washington route. While it was physically easier than Greentree Road, the traffic on W. Liberty was still pretty scary.”

 Still, she gets up early to beat rush hour, and perseveres. “I’m fortunate to have lockers and a shower in my office building, plus a boss (Teresa Heinz) who wanted the office to be as exercise-friendly as possible. It’s an amazing cardiovascular workout and I get to see so many things in certain neighborhoods that I would never see if I were driving a car,” says O’Dell. “I am gaining a whole new respect for some of the Pittsburgh neighborhoods through my bike rides.”

Peter Greninger, who works at REI on the South Side and has been commuting by bike several days a week since the store opened in 2005, is convinced that Pittsburgh has made tremendous advances in becoming a biker-friendly city in a very short period of time.

“In the past few years, we’ve started seeing bike lanes installed and the trail system improved, which has provided safer routes around town,” Greninger said. “I’m grateful for the work Bike Pittsburgh has done to make our city a better place to ride. I recommend that every cyclist become a member so that our collective voice can be heard.”

Want your voice to be heard? Check out the Pop City Bike Forum on October 23rd by clicking here.

To receive Pop City free every week, click here.

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Joann Cantrell is a trade magazine editor and a freelance newspaper writer who has enjoyed bike riding since childhood.

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Captions, from the top:  The Eliza Furnace trail; Matt Smuts; Larry Murdock; Kim O'Dell

Photographs copyright Brian Cohen