Hey PennDOT, DON'T Fix West Carson Street

May 29, 2013

Mr. Dan Cessna
District Executive
PennDOT
45 Thoms Run Road
Bridgeville, PA 15017

Dear Dan:

About the proposed West Carson Street rebuild: Having attended the December 7, 2011, presentation in the West End and talked to project engineers, then reviewed both the preliminary plans in March 2012 and the final plans, I have but one thing to say on the project:

Unacceptable.

As I understand it, the motivating concern on the project is a failing bridge over Chartiers Creek. In short, I think you should replace the bridge and do nothing else. What I do not want to happen is to spend $20 million on a rebuild that does not work, and then not be able to do anything to reverse the error for 20 years because “we just worked on that.” In other words, leave West Carson in its broken condition until an acceptable project plan is developed. This is not it.

I suppose I must explain my conclusions. First, I am aware that this stretch of West Carson, between the West End Circle and McKees Rocks, has not seen any significant work since the trolleys and the Point Bridge were pulled out in the 1950s. However, as a regular user in several modes – driver, motorcyclist, transit user (daily trips to Robinson and Moon on the busway), bicyclist and pedestrian – I can state unequivocally that the new design is a waste of money. Aside from new pavement and drainage, there is nothing to make the road any safer for anyone. It will remain an unenforceable, cars-only speedway.

As a cyclist, I am hoping to be able to bike as easily and comfortably to McKees Rocks as I can now do to Millvale. That cannot happen in this design. Sharrows do not work at 35 mph, traffic speeds on West Carson routinely exceed 50, and will continue to. That is a deadly combination. Do not do it.

Look at The Waterfront in Homestead. That design works there and would work here. Put a sidewalk and a bi-directional bike lane on one side (the river side), and two traffic lanes. That’s all you need, except for the junction at the West Busway and at Corliss Street, where I agree you need a left turn lane. Everyplace else from Stanhope to the West End Bridge, that turn lane is completely unnecessary. You far more need to provide the future constant stream of cyclists and pedestrians a safe place to move, than a turn lane anywhere other than those two spots.

Again, if you cannot consider doing the above, do nothing but fix the broken Chartiers Creek bridge.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Stuart M. Strickland

Towards another bicycle parking facility in Downtown Pittsburgh

We could use another major bike parking facility downtown. There are a few racks here and there, but I am thinking about taking this to a new level: Repurpose that vacant storefront in the Union Trust Building at Fifth and Grant.

Until not long ago, it was an upscale men's clothing store. I do not quite know why it closed. Perhaps it was the lack of other nearby retail, or maybe because of it, as Macy's is almost across the street. In any case, the space is just the size for storing a couple hundred bikes. It is also right in the middle of a very dense employment district, with several large buildings nearby that have no or nearly no bike parking facilities. BNY Mellon 2 a block away does, but that cannot be used by anyone else.

I work directly across Fifth Avenue in the Frick Building, 20 floors full of office workers with no bike facilities at all, nor any obvious place to put them nearby. For a while, I was tying up my low-end bike in an old "toaster" rack on the portico of the City-County Building, diagonally across Forbes and Grant, but even that is undersized, insecure, and subject to pre-emption by events. If even 10 more people tried to tie up there, from Frick or City-County or the Courthouse, that would be overcapacity. More recently, I have begun locking up a more expensive bike to a sturdy railing in a parking garage on Cherry Way, but the strong smell of stale urine in that corner hardly makes for a warm welcome each day or a reassuring feeling upon departure. For all that, it too can only hold about 20 bikes.

The Union Trust corner storefront is an odd shape, with an even odder split level section, and window fronts that take up a lot of square footage. With a little thought and inspired architecture, that spot could handle a couple hundred bikes. Maybe on hooks? I don't care specifically how; that's a design issue best left to the experts. I would rather address establishing that the need exists, or inducing it, and initiating discussion of initial financing and ongoing operations. Yes, I do think there is a market for storing 500 bikes.

One thing such a space would do is provide legitimacy. Sure, here and there we can ask for and get a smattering of bike racks, and Bike-Pgh has done a wonderful job of getting hundreds of these installed throughout the city. These are excellent for the quick shopper -- the ice cream cone, the cup of coffee, a quick lunch. Less obvious is the need to tie up a nice bike for 10 hours straight, for all-day workers. Or 100 bikes. Or 500 bikes. Putting a formal bike parking facility in a high visibility location like this promotes the concept itself. In short, just having it there establishes the need.

There would be startup costs: Design, legalities, renovation, equipment purchase, installation. There would be operating costs: Leasing, electricity, communications, security. I am not trying for an exhaustive list so much as to acknowledge that they exist, and somehow must be paid for. Nor is it untrod territory, as we already have something like it on 7th Street. I suspect it will not pay for itself, at least at first, and perhaps not ever. It's a problem, but solvable. What's it to the city to be able to accommodate 500 cyclists? What's it to PAT to either accommodate cyclists who bus their bike downtown, or who bike all the way downtown so as to free up a seat for someone who cannot bike in from a bikeable area? Would the owners, property managers, and tenants of the Frick and Union Trust Buildings, the William Penn Hotel, the Courthouse, BNY Mellon 1, and Macy's, kick in a few bucks apiece to make it easier to tie up there? Can those called for jury duty be assigned temporary access for the few days they will need to be in town? All of these could be asked. Should be asked.

Amenities? We at least need a spot to tie up a $1,500 bike with the reasonable assurance that it will be there to ride home, with all the pieces still attached and intact, nine hours later. Video record everything from several angles 24/7/365 so any attempts at wrongdoing will be captured to pass along to law enforcement. Maybe this will not guarantee no thefts will occur, but it can make it a lot harder to get away with. Let's also have, at minimum, some tools available so minor repairs can be made. I would like to see a fully operational bike repair shop there, too, but I at least need to be able to pump up a low tire at 8 p.m. after the shop staff has gone home. I would like to be able to wipe the chain grease off my hands before I walk into work. No toilet necessary, just a unisex sink with soap.

Pittsburgh is not the first place to do this, nor would this be the first place in Pittsburgh. But it may be the first at this level of seriousness, a public accessible central storage facility. Could it be expanded to handle a 1,000-bike jukebox? Shower facilities? Cleaning and detailing service? Maybe. Let's learn how to walk before we try running, though. We more need to accommodate the growing bike population than someplace to purchase an Ermenegildo Zegna shirt.

Mild rant about driving

N.B.: This started off as a post on the Bike-Pgh message board, where the topic concerned a child who was run over by a woman in an SUV. The conversation was going on about the relative merits of various shapes of cars, when my contention was that if the driver was not driving at all, there would not have been a kid run over.

*

Not enough attention is being paid, IMHO, to my contention: Why EVER drive? What made this trip, or anyone’s trip in a car, necessary? I’m sure a few trips can only be accomplished by using an automobile, but the more you try not to, the more you find out that indeed it is possible.

Change some things.

* Choose not to shop at a place that can only be gotten to by car.
* Choose to plan expected trips, like shopping, such that you only need to do it once every two weeks instead of weekly or almost daily.
* Choose to commute by bus, carpool, bicycle, feet, or some combination thereof.
* Better yet, telecommute when at all possible so you don’t lose valuable time at 100% capacity doing something useless like merely getting there. Demand it, when the job allows it.
* Downsize your fleet. Your household only needs one car, tops. I’m making it work in McCandless, have been for 20+ years. Stop thinking “I own a car” and rather “My household has a car, shared among multiple drivers.”
* Stop making trips to “pick someone up” when they can walk or bike or bus.
* Decide that Suzy and Danny *can* get to piano lesson on their own. Think “they’re already 10″ instead of “they’re only 10″.
* Cease to tolerate bad driving behavior. Call people out on it. If you want to stand at red lights with a baseball bat and take out a windshield or two of drivers who don’t yield to pedestrians, it might be worth the court battle and media coverage.
* When cycling, TAKE THE DAMN LANE. Refuse to concede to having to hug parked cars (with doors opening), the curb, etc. You are MUCH safer smack dab in front of someone’s steering wheel than off to the side where they *think* they can get past you.
* Buy bus fare. I didn’t say ride the bus. (Well, I did, earlier, but this is different.) Buy a monthly pass. Then another. Figure out how the system works without having to figure out fares. Make it work. The more people they have paying into the system, whether they ride it or not, the more likely they will keep routes in place and maybe even expand service.
* Learn how to use the buses’ bike racks. Bike to the bus, use the bus to get past the suckiest traffic, then bike the rest of the way to your destination.

I was at the park for that little gathering. I rode from McCandless, up by CCAC North, by way of downtown where I work. I took a bus to the busway’s Homewood station and biked to Reynolds & S Lex. Then I rode back downtown, using Fifth, taking the lane (nearly) the whole way. (One spot, I let a bunch of cars and a bus past. One.)

Stop driving. I’m serious. Figure out how. Make it work. I don’t care what you’re driving. When we stop driving, we will stop running people over. It’s that simple.

Dirty Dozen 2012 (written Nov 16, 2012)

It felt good to marshal this year's Dirty Dozen. The DD is a bicycle race, but it's not speed that matters, but hill climbing. Points are scored by the first three male and female riders to get to the top of 13 hills (12 this year) of gargantuan proportion. Each is scored separately. At the end, he and she with the most points wins. Top three of each gender get a prize.

Marshaling is traffic control. Each group ride is a little different, but they all have in common the need to keep people safe and keep traffic moving. In DD's case, riders flow as tight packs most of the time, so marshaling means corking auto traffic so a large, tightly packed group can clear an intersection. It is safer for all involved if the pack can travel as a pack -- something cars do not do -- so we bend the law to accommodate this.

Let me make that more clear: Safety first, and that includes the traffic rules. Let me make that even clearer: It is more important to keep groups of riders safe than it is to obey the law. When a pack of 50 riders -- or 150 riders -- comes through, marshals hold car traffic stopped for a half minute, poor babies.

Don't care for that? Too flippin' bad. A half minute a year, if you have the luck to be right there right then. A truck stuck in an intersection will slow you down more.

But I digress.

But I don't. Because that's what I did. At four corners, widely spaced in distance and time, I held up traffic for one minute so that these bunches of riders could safely traverse one traffic light.

As late as Friday, I had not committed to assisting, but when the rest of the family said they had other plans, I emailed my offer of help. My plan was to leap out of bed by 6 and get on the road by 7:45 to get to the marshals' meeting at the Highland Park Oval by 9. But with one delay after another, it was 8:30 before I got out the door, then had no fewer than five mechanical or safety problems in the first 1/2 mile of the trip. It had snowed overnight, so roads and trails were slick. I turned back. I saw no point in pushing 100% for 14 miles for a meeting I would miss most of, only to turn right around and chase halfway back from whence I came.

Two hours later, I was ready for another go. The snow had stopped, streets were clear, and earlier mechanical issues were mainly behind me. After verifying that Hill 6 (usually 7) was next, I aimed for there. I arrived just as the first riders were clearing the top. I found the head marshal and rode with him (ahead of the pack) to the first corner where they needed help, the lower Perrysville-Federal intersection. Once clear of that, I helped at the Sixth Street Bridge and Fort Duquesne Blvd corner.

From there, I just rode with the pack, as it wasn't possible to get much ahead of 200 cyclists riding through downtown, and other marshals took care of other corners. At the base of Sycamore Street, I split off, and headed well upstream of the riders, but in doing this, essentially got lost in the Banksville-Dormont part of town. More by chance than design, I happened upon another marshal I know well (Dan B), who suggested I man one corner on the South Side, 18th and Sarah, but I was far enough ahead of the pack that I actually had time to get some lunch.

On the way, I also took in a pleasant little *level* ride through the Wabash Tunnel. Someday, hopefully soon, all cyclists will be able to do so legally. I did not see a single car in the tunnel in the five minutes it took me to travel it.

I took a few horns from disgruntled motorists at 18th and Sarah while I held the light. Part of my job. Safety first.

Lastly, I rode out to Hazelwood to handle Second and Elizabeth. This one was tougher. By this point in the ride, nearly at the end, riders were sparse in number and widely spaced. There was not a "critical mass" (lower case) of riders, as there was at 18th and Sarah, so I had to intervene several times. While traffic on Second was busy, it was predictable. Less predictable was traffic coming northbound on Elizabeth. Nearly everyone was making a right, but not all. Situated as I was in the intersection, I could easily see that the front car was making a right, but I could not see if the second or following cars were also turning. One time -- JUST one time -- I let someone make a right on the green, only to discover the second car in line was going *straight*, but at that same moment, a rider came through, and seeing me having the intersection corked, rolled through the red, and I couldn't get the second driver to stop. No collision, but I was shaking. Thinking about this later, one of the following should have happened: A) Prevent everyone on Elizabeth from moving, even right turns; B) Police assistance; C) Someone to assist me; D) Not handled the corner in the first place, since there was a light.

As if that was not bad enough, a church on the opposite corner was holding a church service just then about to get underway, so there were a lot of cars pulling up in front and parking. One person opening a car door very nearly doored a rider coming by. This had nothing to do with me, but it was less than 100 feet away. It coincidentally occurred less than two minutes after the prior incident, so I was not having a good state of mind about then.

Eventually the clean-up van came through, signalling the end of the riders, so I packed up and headed back home.

Would I do it again? Definitely. But next time, I will try to get to the marshals' meeting beforehand to ensure that the best corners get coverage, and let others slide that perhaps might do better unmanned.

1 unicycle, 5 buses, and a new year

What better way to ring in a new year than to take an epic trip on a unicycle?

For 40-ish years, Pittsburgh cyclists have ridden a group ride called the Icycle Bicycle Ride. No matter how rotten the weather, they ride. The 2013 version offered a very cold morning, a little bit of overnight snow, but a lot of refrozen slop from the several snowfalls last week. No trails were clear, so the ride itself stuck to city streets, for the most part.

I actually showed up to ride on my unicycle, but a flat tire prevented me from starting with the group of over 100 riders. Earlier, I had been able to ride the three miles into West View, but air was leaking out so fast I couldn't even make it two blocks across downtown. Fortunately, someone at the ride had a patch kit and tools, so I was able to patch the tire in about five minutes, without even taking the wheel off. In that brief time, though, the riders took off. No matter; on a 24" uni, I was not going to be able to keep up with them anyway.

Undaunted, I took off down East Carson Street for about 15 blocks, riding alone. When it became clear I was not going to see anyone else, I opted to go off course and explore the city, as best I could. I had already ridden two buses to get to the ride -- one from West View, one from town to the ride -- and now took a third to get back into town.

I wanted to participate in the various photography games on the Bike-Pgh message board, since I so rarely have the wheel with me. Since one of them involved getting a bowl of soup, I wanted somehow to get a bowl of soup and the wheel in the same shot. A second game, Wheelset of Fortune, required I find a "parking chair", a Pittsburgh oddity whereby someone holds a parking space by placing an old chair in it. While I found neither of those in the central city, before the day was out, I was able to get both.

What made the day was being able to combine using the wheel with riding buses. As with the bicycle, which has to ride on the front of the bus, I used my personal transportation to augment the transit system. Or is it the other way around? Whichever, I bring the wheel on with me, storing it right alongside me in the seat. On a quiet day like New Year's, there are usually not that many riders, so it was fairly easy to wedge it into a forward facing seat with me. On busier buses, in the past, I would store it under a side-facing seat, and hope a wheelchair rider did not get on. I've taken it on fully loaded buses with standees, for which I stood astride it (not on it), trying and usually succeeding in not clobbering anyone's shins with the pedals, and taking up no more room than I would without the wheel.

Five buses: West View to town, town to Second & Hot Metal Bridge, ECarson & 13th to town, Federal & North to California & Charles, and finally, from Bellevue to West View. In between, I rode the wheel. The longest piece was from Calif/Charles to Bellevue, almost six miles. But all the pieces together totaled almost 16 miles, not bad for not having been on the thing in the better part of a year.

Unfinished post: The cause of the cause of death

N.B.: Perfection is the enemy of the good, and because of that, I have not posted at least four I've started in the past month. So, this one is the opposite, an obviously incomplete first draft, written in a single ride on a very fast O12 McKnight Express bus. It will probably take longer to type it than it took to write it. (It did, by about 3x, even without research.)

* * *

The Cause of the Cause of Death

This past week in Pittsburgh, a 53-year-old woman was struck and killed as she crossed the street. Three vehicles hit her. In a 25 mph zone. In a painted crosswalk. In broad daylight. How does this happen? Yes, the accident reconstruction experts will evaluate the cause of how this woman was killed, but nobody is looking at the cause of that: Why did this woman have to cross the street, and why were three vehicles there to run her down?

Actually, four vehicles were involved, including hers, as she was walking from the parking lot she drove to from her home that morning. It was easy to locate her home address and see what transportation choices she had. To say the least, it is enlightening.

The closest road to her home that has any bus service is _[Road A]_, requiring a walk of about a mile on _[Road B]. While I am not intimately familiar with that side of town, a quick look at _[Road B]_ on StreetView shows no sidewalk but a fairly wide shoulder, a couple feet of it actual pavement. No serious hill, moderate traffic speed (supposedly, posted [35 mph, check this]). It would have been physically possible to walk to that bus stop, but not at all pleasant, similar to my 0.8-mile hike on Perrymont.

More enlightening is that  _[Road B]_ itself used to have transit service, but no longer does. In fact, there was a bus stop only a few dozen yards from her house. Checking my bus schedule archives, and doing a rough sketch of her theoretical transit commute back then, she would have had a ___-minute, [one?]-ride trip [, requiring __ transfers]. This compares with my typical ride on the Perry Highway bus, which got me into town from about as far out, roughly 10 miles, but with one transfer I could actually get there faster. But the point is, she used to have a very short walk to a bus [that got her all the way into town].

[assumption: TDP consolidation] Port Authority revamped the entire route system in 2010, consolidating lots of suburban routes. Because of this, her right-past-the-house route was eliminated, requiring her to travel that [mile] to the remaining route. So she lost her quick and easy bus stop, and it was easier for her to drive the whole way than to figure out how to get the mile down the street. That poses the question, why are there not sufficient park-and-ride spaces available to make that option viable?

[need to research] Let's also look at the reasoning behind the consolidation. Port Authority's consultants, the Nelson\Nygaard firm, looked at the ridership and productivity on each route prior to making the changes that were adopted. How useful was this route in the overall scheme of things, back in the day? [If a transfer was necessary, how easy was it to do that? Was transit really an option, even with a bus stop yards away?] Or was this a route that never should have existed in the first place, one of many routes put there because of supposed demand that never materialized?

[assumption: Route cuts] Facing an enormous deficit, Port Authority eliminated 15% of its service in March 2011, on top of a 15% cut in 2007. In this case [verify this], she lost the quick and easy route in the March 2011 cuts. Here, I put the onus squarely on state GOP leadership for the past 10 years not to come up with a funding mechanism that kept the buses running. With transit cuts came more people driving, and hence more people crossing streets from parking lots.

Short answer: No bus to ride, and/or not easy to ride, so she drove. The bus would have dropped her off at ______, a very different walk from that from the parking lot on Smallman by 14th Street.

A similar analysis should be done for each of the other drivers. Why was anyone driving? The box truck I'll give a pass to, as he was on a multi-state commercial delivery. Everyone else, though, potentially had a transit and/or bicycle option. Not only should she not have been there to run over, there should have been nobody there to run her over.

Moral of the story: Lack of transit funding helped kill this woman. Get more people out of cars and into the transit system, and fewer people will die in crashes.

Soupaneuring Week #1: Subway in West View

Week #1, Subway in West View. The day did not go well, so I was lucky to be able to pull this off at all. The original plan was to take off before dawn to pick up and drop Tag-O-Rama tags, and nab a better one for Wheelset of Fortune, then catch up on some writing while I had a bowl of soup somewhere, for a bike game hat trick, as well as get together with (an)other cyclist(s) for a group construction project. It didn't happen. By the time I was ready to go out, it was raining steadily, and I was ready for a nap.

With failing light but a break in the weather, I opted for the three-mile trip into West View, where several choices of both fast food and decent restaurants awaited. I opted for Subway, which had a choice of just two institutional soups. I chose the broccoli and cheese, with a side of a white macadamia nut cookie, and chocolate milk. Total outlay, less than $5. I worked on my writing project as I dined, then with it fully dark, returned the three miles home. Total, about 6.1 miles. It also continues an uninterrupted string of going someplace purposeful at least once each week since January 1, 2012.