BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

We put in many requsts last year to repave this street. Stoked it's finally happening. The part that's already done is a beautiful thing.

i make sure every leisure ride i go on takes me down that repaved stretch of ellsworth, it's so pretty. and i was just riding down the to-be-paved stretch the other night and admiring how bombed it looked. i can't imagine a worse stretch of road that's better-traveled. glad to hear they're getting to it!

i can't imagine a worse stretch of road that's better-traveled. glad to hear they're getting to it!

I can! Baker Street in Morningside approaching the zoo.

Second Baker. Also the worst place to be on a weekend, people pull into and out of the zoo with total disregard for right-of-way rules there.

Baker's a mess, but how about Negley in between Baum blvd and Penn? Bad traffic with merging/splitting lanes, pedestrians, and on top of that the edge of the road is extremely uneven.

I'm not familiar with that bit, but I'll check it out this evening if the rain holds off.

The road edges are often bad on city streets. I'm not sure why, but there must be something about the road bed that telegraphs a long crack to the surface a few feet out from the curb.

And the asphalt gets ruts from heavy vehicles which leaves a hump just to the right of the tire track, and that in turn gets broken down and turns into little potholes. I noticed this again on Liberty Ave this morning, in Bloomfield -- the pothole line runs right through a good chunk of the dwindling sharrows. It would be a crappy place to ride even if it weren't in the door zone.

The answer is to stay away from the rough road edge. Don't ride in the potholes, broken glass and sewer grates. Almost all the multi-lane roads in the city have lanes which are too narrow to share with anything bigger than a Mini, so you should be well out into the lane anyway.

...there must be something about the road bed that telegraphs a long crack to the surface a few feet out from the curb...

Trolley tracks that got paved over.

Also add to list: Brighton between Marshall and W North Ave.

whoa. the old trolly tracks are what cause that, huh? i saw them yesterday, and was a bit sad

Well, trolley tracks, sure, but seams in underlying concrete - that is a biggie.

Mick

What a different city Pittsburgh would be if they would have kept the trolley tracks.

As late as the early 1980s, Penn Ave through Point Breeze still had tracks in the street, though hadn't seen a streetcar since 1967. And was brick, come to think of it. Just think how much fun it must've been to ride a bike along Penn, dodging not only traffic but hummocky bricks and trolley tracks.

Yeah, those might've been the days, but I'd rather have paved streets and buses with bike racks.

I live in Shadyside, and ride Ellsworth every time I leave the house. The previous round of repaving (last month) had two interesting side effects. (Interesting to me, anyway.) One, the rough street surface caused some (but by no means all) drivers to slow down. On a mountain bike usually going 12-18 mph on Ellsworth between Aiken and Amberson, these cars didn't catch up to me (until perhaps after the end of the construction). How's that for traffic calming?

The road work also exposed some of the old streetcar tracks (speaking of trolleys). Just patches here and there, but definitely recognizable as such. They were also exposed on Forbes Avenue between Murdoch and Northumberland, and the current work on Ellsworth between Morewood and Neville also has some trolley tracks peeking through the pavement.

And was brick, come to think of it.

Wow, Penn ave was brick. i would love to know how much slower people traveled on the road then, and how many more crashes there are now.

i bet the effect was immediate. i rarely ride that stretch of penn. too scary, especially with reynolds or hamilton as alternates

Summers of 1982 & 1983, the outbound Parkway East was shut down entirely out to GbgPike. (The GbgPk off-ramp was actually an on-ramp.) Penn through PtBrz was a MAJOR thoroughfare. If people could move at all, they were hauling serious ass, just like today. It was fun trying to get all four tires on the tracks to smooth out the ride some. Even more fun in rain: No traction!

Now (then) add bicycles to the mix. Can you see how far we've come? Can you also see where the general mindset of Pgh eastern suburban drivers came from?

There's a house on Chislett Street that has exposed trolley tracks leading into the driveway. Pretty cool, I think...

Chestnut St. in Deutschtown still can satisfy your brix-'n'-trolley-trax needs. You can also find some hanging out in McKeesport.

Back to the thread subject at hand. Boy it'd be nice if whoever's leading the next Critical Mass could head us down Ellsworth. I was kinda hoping we'd do it last month. But with more of the street done now, it's gotta be smooth sailing.

Hint hint.