I got this in the mail yesterday from Tonya Payne, my council person.
Dear Resident,
As you may or not already be aware, the intersection at Fifth Avenue and Robinson Street is causing some confusion and concern. The problems at this location include illegal left and right-hand turns being made from the center lane, failure to stop at the stop sign to the right of the intersection, and general confusion about the design of the intersection. It is to this avail that I would like to give the residents a chance to voice their concerns with those involved in the planning of the intersection, as well as public safety officials.
I have scheduled a community meeting to discuss these issues on: Monday, August 3, 2009, 6:00 pm a Carlow University - St Agnes Center (Old St Agnes Church) 3215 Fifth Ave
Representatives from the following places have been invited to attend the meeting:
PennDOT
City of Pittsburgh Transportation & Engineering Department
Police Bureau
Zone 4 Police
Allegheny County Port Authority
If you or your neighbors have concerns, and more importantly some suggestions for this intersection, please join us at this meeting to share your thoughts and solutions. I look forward to working with you, and all involved, to create a safer, more accident free, and more livable community.
OK. so this is one of the situations that we've been talking about where public meetings have happened, things were promised, and when it was installed, the promised things weren't there. for instance, i was at the last public meeting for this whole BOA Bridge replacement project (which this intersection was a part of), and they promised that at the slip ramp there would be a button that peds (or bikes) could push that would cause the overhead lights to turn red, making the cars stop. what was installed you ask? an intersection with no crosswalk (at least for a few months - it's already worn away), an overhead light that constantly flashes yellow, and pedestrians trying their darndest to get across the intersection, with nobody ever yielding. as far as robinson st goes, people were concerned that it would still serve as a cut thru and that drivers would be making the illegal right in order to get to the BOA. the engineers said it would be fine.. blah blah blah...
now if it's your job to design roads as a traffic engineer, does it make you feel like poop if the things you've designed cause confusion and angry residents.
and if these engineers actually lived in this neighborhood (like i do) would they have designed it the same?
/endrant
kudos to tonya payne for calling this. i wonder how many people are going to show. my guess is not many, so i'd suggest we also use this opportunity
Tonya Payne is full of empty promises when it comes to these sorts of things. We were working with her to get the intersection at 29th and Liberty fixed and she promised to come take a look at the intersection herself, missed two appointments then decided that it was enough to install pedestrian cross walk signs and call it a day.
We have moved on to getting news coverage and I am in touch with Mr. Patchan who says he is working on it.
I am hopeful.
Good luck.
The use of "avail" confuses me in the 3rd sentence.
I would be there, but have child duty that night. Maybe I'll just bring them along.
another thing about this intersection and area is that just past robinson st, there is a de facto bike lane. before the project happened, there was no parking in this section. now, people park (for free) there, despite there being a no parking sign down the road. the troublesome thing is that they begin parking around a curve, and the sightline is really bad and so when you round the bend, the parked cars come up quick. i inquired about it, and it turns out that there is a chance that motorists removed the no parking signs here so that they can park for free. what jags. or they were never installed.
this is what i'm talking about.
Free parking, where there was no parking before the project. those little signs down the way are where it says no parking with the little arrows pointing both ways:
the sight line:
This morning there was a [non-PAT] bus parked and idling in the bike lane going up Greenfield Road in Shenley Park (going towards the stop light). The guy parked right around the corner, so as I'm chugging up the hill, I had to stop, unclip, wait for the cars to pass and go around him. I gave the driver a dirty look and he didn't look to pleased with me either. The bus was parked directly between two of the painted bike symbols. I should have wrote down whatever company name was plastered all over the bus and call someone, but I'm guessing nobody would care.
There is a law against parking in a bike lane, isn't there?
I'm not sure there there are laws. Since Pittsburgh never had true bike lanes before very recently, I don't believe there are any laws addressing them.
There is a website, http://pittsburgh.mybikelane.com/, which is a place to post pictures and license numbers of people parking in bike lanes. So far it has only been me posting there and then only a few times because I don't typically ride where there are bike lines but, with more bike lanes in Pittsburgh, I might expect more activity.
if parking in a bike lane is a crime, then what is up with beechwood blvd?
removing signs are nothing new. I worry more about truckers removing weight limit signs from bridges.
dwillen - it is illegal to park in a bike lane. the thing to do was to call it in to the company.
re: beechwood. it is not a standard bike lane and does not follow the national standards. part of that is due to how long ago it was designed. we got the city to redesign it along current standards, but it was installed wrong - as the old design. really, we never win.
Erok, I don't know of a law against parking in a "bike" lane, unless there's a no parking sign. I looked again and I still don't see it in Chapter 33. It's not illegal to park in the outside lane of a multi-lane surface street, either.
But there is a law against idling a diesel truck for more than 5 (or 15, if there are passengers) minutes.
http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/DEPUTATE/airwaste/aq/cars/idling.htm
I am curious to know how many citations have been issued.
Oh, yeah, I will attend Monday night. I will try to be civil.
Yeah, 5th Avenue bike lane parking seems to be getting more popular. There are typically at least half a dozen cars when I ride through around 8:45 at the start of the lane.
What's the road surface like under those cars? Last time I saw it, it was potholes and broken glass. Who wants to ride on that? As it is, the outside lane is cut up so badly that whenever I ride down that hill I'm practically riding on the lane line.
Even if I was going 10 mph or so, which would be difficult, there's lots of room in the left lane for motorists to pass safely.
And the drivers who park there must be walking some distance to their destination, so they're getting exercise they otherwise wouldn't.
IMO, this is nothing compared to the problems on the uphill side. I'd far rather dig up that 9-10 feet of asphalt and move it over to the uphill side for a legal bike lane to solve the uptown-to-oakland conundrum.
I go down Fifth every work day. I never even suspected that WAS a bike lane. I stay out of the door zone and take the right traffic lane. I'm very slow, but there are two downhill lanes and plenty of room to pass.
its not a lane, i said it formed a defacto bike lane
Usually, I bike through that intersection quickly and don't get a chance to witness any misbehavior. But I figured I had a duty to be an informed whiner, so I sat there today for 15 minutes to count cars and take notes, from 9:53 to 10:08.
I saw no pedestrians or cyclists crossing this intersection. It was raining, the intersection is ped-unfriendly, and there's not really any place that anyone would want to go to or from, so that's not a surprise.
I could only estimate the number of cars travelling inbound on 5th avenue and continuing either through, or down the ramp to the Blvd of the Allies. They came in platoons, while all the interesting stuff was happening at the stop signs. I estimated approximately 130 of these.
At the stop sign on Robinson inbound to 5th avenue, I counted 21 cars. Of that 21, 7 came to a complete stop before proceeding. 14 rolled through it, none slower than a fast walk, some at approximately 20 mph. Of the 7 that stopped, the number that did so when there was no oncoming traffic down 5th avenue was 0. In other words, all the drivers treated this as a yield sign.
While illegal, I can't say that it was unsafe, and there really should be a yield sign there instead of a stop -- (except that if there was a yield sign the motorists would treat it like a yellow light and go faster).
At the stop sign from 5th Avenue onto Robinson, I counted 21 cars. 4 came to a complete stop before turning right, 16 made a rolling right turn. Most of those slowed to a brisk walking pace. There was no conflicting traffic at the intersection, so there was no "reason" for the 4 to come to a complete stop. I think that the stop and the slower speed in general, as compared to the other stop sign, can be explained by differences in the geometry of the intersection and the nature of the destination.
The interesting sign was the one for through traffic onto Maurice. I counted 3 busses making a left turn onto 5th, which they are allowed to do. Though in order to do so, they have to make some gawdawful maneuvering contortions that only work because there is almost never any conflicting travel from Maurice to Robinson.
I also counted 4 vehicles making an illegal right turn in order to reach the ramp to the Blvd.
In addition to those 4, I saw two really interesting maneuvers. I witnessed one driver go legally straight through onto Maurice, then turn around, make a right turn into the bus lane inbound on 5th, drive down a block, pull a U-turn in the road and then come back inbound on 5th to the ramp to the Blvd. I think he was following a GPS. Google Maps recommends something impossible which might be the reason I saw the driver of a black VW drive down to the end of the Robinson-5th interchange, realize he was stuck, throw it into reverse and back all the way up to the "busses only" interesection, followed by the illegal right onto the Blvd ramp.
Out of all these illegal, aggressive, scofflaw motorist behaviors, I have to admit that I saw nothing that I would call truly unsafe in and of itself. You could stand on the "broken windows" theory, I suppose, or you could count cars for a longer period or at a different time of day.
did you try to cross the intersection at the slip ramp? that's when most of my problems, or problems that i've seen have happened. also, later in the day, when people are going home, it's much crazier. regardless, it's confusing.
What, you mean walk up the sidewalk from town (or get off the bus) and then try to get up Robinson St? Yuck. You'd have to go up to Craft, cross at the light and double back.
I think I understand why the intersection is designed to prevent people from getting from Robinson to the Blvd of the Allies. But I also understand why people want to do it. I wasn't paying attention to that project, but it seems to me that this all could have been avoided with a traffic light.
the residents on robinson st were really concerned that people would use it and the pitt upper campus as a "cut thru." that's why people are making the illegal right, or the u turn after the median.
the interesection that i'm talking about is the off ramp from 5th to the BOA
Oh, you mean just getting from one bit of sidewalk on the south side of 5th avenue to the next bit! Hmm. Yeah, I can see the problems there. I also am surprised there hasn't yet been a car crash with an oncoming bus.
I would imagine that a legal turn from Robinson to the BOA would increase some traffic there, but by a large amount? Maybe after Pitt games.
yeah, that spot. i think that it would be a ton of traffic. i live at the bottom of the hill on fifth, and people park on my street to take the bus either up to oakland, or to town.
