BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

There are large parts of Brighton Heights with ample on-street where you could leave your car (there are also parts where you would not want to do this).

It's a simple (and fun!) downhill to the North end of one of the trail spurs in the city.

Here's an example starting from McClure.

From the trail you can get anywhere on the city trail system and Bike Pgh has a map for getting around on city streets.

I haven't biked out of the city yet, so I'll leave those directions to someone else.

To rough it out, very generally, once you get to the west side of the city, route 30 from about Imperial, PA is not a bad road, you can take it all the way to East Liverpool, OH.

As far as getting from town to Imperial, your best bet might be to nicely ask if some native could escort you that far. It's not impossible, but you could avoid a ton of frustration. And make some friends.

Going out of East L, OH, you'll need to pick your way on some back roads to avoid what becomes the 30/7/11 divided highway, like rt 267.

At some point 30 drops off the divided highway and becomes 30/45, take that all the way to Lisbon. Then continue on 45 to Salem.

From Salem, just go on 14 and you're arrowing straight for Cleve. 14 gets really jacked up around Streetsboro, but there are plenty of little side roads to pick your way around that cluster.

After that you're into the exurbs and things get really unpleasant, but I think your best bet would be to get to the Cuyahoga Valley trail as directly a possible, like 303 to Peninsula. I think you can ride that rail trail all the way to downtown, that would need to be verified. But I can't think of any other way I would even suggest riding from the 'urbs into town.

I'm thinking you will be right around your 140 mi. est.

Also, when you're up there, check out the Tremont neighborhood just south of downtown, a cool hood. I don't know if killer little non-chain restaurants are your thing, but if you want some good eatin while you're there, that's where they are.

Thank you! This looks very useful - Salem looked like a midpoint. I was so glad to get responses so soon today - I'm working on the route today.

If you are going to start from the Imperial area, you might consider parking at Robinson Towne Center, a major regional shopping complex out that way. A lot of folk use it for a park and ride option. Otherwise, if you want to do it legally (and safely) Route 30 is not all that far from the Airport (Pittsburgh International) remote parking lots -- $5 a day or so. It's tough to get directly to Route 30 from there, but you could head east or west a ways (5-10 miles) and then head south to pick up Route 30.

Sara - what, deprive our visitor of the climb up the Allegheny Plateau? (hee, hee).

...deprave our visitor...

Fixed that for you.

I would consider going up the Ohio Valley, then the Beaver River valley - flat.

Google bicycle directions Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Great green lines for bike paths. None went all the way through, but you could pull the route onto the bike paths and see how Google says to get between them.

There was a thread here where two guys laid out routes they used to get to Cleveland.

They used roads that were different from one another the whole way, but the two routes were very close to one another on the map and looked very similar. Couldn't find the thread, though.

I found this thread (love the title):

http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/dropped-by-a-horse-and-buggy#post-12364

Ohio DOT seems to have some info for bikers:

http://www.dot.state.oh.us/services/pages/bike.aspx

A Delorme Gazetteer Ohio Atlas would be a wise investment - cut out the pages you need to save some weight.

The Ohio & Erie canalway trail is the one that will take you through the exurban nastiness right into downtown.

http://www.ohioanderiecanalway.com/Interactive%20Map.aspx

curious, when are you planning to go?

Mick - "you got a pistol in there?". hilarious.

Thanks to everyone who is posting. Keep those suggestions coming.

I was wondering about going up along the Ohio, so I'll look into that link.

I have a Delorme computer program that I use to plot routes and print out maps. Contour maps rule.

I saw the Ohio and Erie Canalway as a big help.

Trip up is planned for 5/24-25.

The destination is Lakewood first,

R&RHoF next day (5/26).

Rt 65 along the Ohio is a definite no go, very hazardous. 51 is do-able, but not very pleasant. Better off cutting cross country.

Ohio River Boulevard/Rte 65(north side of Ohio) and Route 51 (south side of Ohio River) are both less than ideal. If you are willing to deal with about two miles of real highway riding, we can get you almost to the Ohio State line within the river basin, but off those roads. General route:

From town, look at Brighton Road (northside), to left on California, weird wiggle on Benton/Termon (above the McKees Rocks Bridge), left on California, straight through to end at Hazelwood, left on Hazelwood, imm. right on Route 65/about a mile and a half of crap riding (with construction on half of it now), Right onto Beaver (diagonal road) through Sewickley, wiggle at Red Belt to get Duss/Merchant/??? into Ambridge....

We'll work on options from here. How do you feel about hills?

For the folks on the board; I am thinking of sending him along the Tour de Sewickley Route to Brush Creek Park in Beaver County.... thoughts from there?

Thoughts:

From Ambridge, back across to 51 for a couple of miles to Aliquippa, then over the ridge (moderate extended climb) to the Shippingsport nuke plant and back across the river to pick up 68 west into Ohio and East Liverpool. dhd led us that way for last year's Minerva Cheese Ride, and it was a very nice route.

From Brush Creek, you could take the reverse of the WPW's old Fall Rally century route to East Palestine, OH, and make your way north from there.