BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Get involved with your borough council, go to meetings and find out how to get involved in any planning committee that may exist. If there is any interest and/or if you can get others on board with wanting to make improvements you can look into grants for active transportation or complete streets. I'd say just start getting involved and see where it goes from there.

I'd find people around you similar goals--there is strength in numbers. Maybe post up fliers in the area looking for people interested in improving those roads

being from Penn Hills Myself, and living on said road (Saltsburg) and riding said road many times a week and having been run off said road I can agree with wholeheartedly. However, what I would really like to see is a good way to get from Penn Hills to town. I keep looking at maps and they keep telling me the same thing. You can get there from here. I know Ejwme and I have conversed on this before but in the light of the talk of 7$ bus fares I find myself looking even closer for an alternate way into town.

Again I see the same thing. You can get there from here.

Sorry just having a case of the "I didnt get to ride all weekend Mondays"

DB

HAH!!

Ok - I should have said what I've done so far. I now go to my town council meetings, I'm involved in the Penn Hills CDC, the head of the planning department and I are on a first name basis and talk regularly about what I can do, and I've located dbacklover (go Penn Hills!) and am working on finding the others in my area...

I mean what else! Like how do I find out how much it costs to put in a bike lane? Does some kind of traffic study have to be done? What would that cost? What would the repainting cost? How do I find out about precident concerning a bike/walk lane on a municipal road (an any litigation risk to the municipality that could add - I can just see a bike/ped/car three way Flipflop catastrophe and someone decides it's the municipality's fault because of the lane markings)... Any municipalities that have done this before (suburban)? Does Bike PGH ever partner with any municipality to get it done, or just lobbying?

In short, lobbying only gets me so far, but they're broke, and I'm impatient and energetic (an annoying combo, I'm sorry). I'm looking for legwork to do. I'm looking for funding to hunt down (in addition to Safe Routes To Schools, when it passes, we're working on an application for that, but I'm not sure this can be part of it because there's no schools on that road). I'll write proposals, I'll talk to civil engineers, I'll coordinate resources. I just don't know which ones, and have no go-by to follow.

dbacklover - once I get saltsburgh, I'll work on frankstown Or if you'd rather, I can work on Frankstown first? We need a trail on THIS side of the Allegheny, and there's a little used railroad line there (climbs over ARB and then over Lincoln - what a hill! I see trees growing from the tracks all along), maybe a rails AND trails initiative? I don't know where it dumps out.

But I think a bike lane, even just one, in Penn Hills would REALLY shake things up. Show suburbanites it's not just for city hippies, show other municipalities strapped for cash that there's something they can do to make their residents lives easier and nicer. Am I pie in the sky dreaming, or can this be as simple as getting the right paint in the right place?

I was in Washington DC this weekend and was amazed

at the towns surrounding it (germantown, rockville)

that have shared mixed use paths connecting

everything. It would be like Freedom Road in

Cranberry having bike trails connecting the grocery

stores to the houses. pretty rad.

there are also tons of these in the eastern and southern suburbs of my hometown (rochester, ny) many of them take advantage of the natural bike lane the old erie canal towpath creates from east to west. its actually possible to ride 30 or so miles through the suburbs from one side of the city to the other without ever being on a road.

that said, i think you should reach out to national organizations that may have some studies to support all the benefits that these lanes can bring to communities (things people who hate bikes will still like , such as higher property values and more money in the town's coffers). i would think bike-pgh could easily point you in the right direction for who to talk to at the regional or national level about getting this type of supporting material.

Nice. Rochester and DC, I'll look in to that, and take any other pointing I can have. It'd be lovely to have a network connecting all the suburbs (and that might point to other funding sources than my poor little municipality, I feel like I'm asking Mother Hubbard to buy a cadillac). I was just thinking small and local, but I'll keep it in mind and explore more Thank you guys! (and keep it coming!)

Penn Hills should be thankful for your efforts; they ought to be the first year-round users as the civic employees of a broke borough. Instead of tooling around in "company" cars burning gas bought on borrowed hopeful tax receipts of future administrations' millage increases.

Why are local governments so obtuse? Elect them and suddenly you are a peon of no account as they begin to live the life of royalty, I mean elected class. A bike lane should not be this difficult and the federal funding for the research and subsequent paint to lay the line ought to be sitting ready since government has no answer better or as efficient as yours.

On this day after the Port Authority route changes, my quick search of Google Map directions for public transportation options says for me to walk from my East End home to my work at CHP. 55 minutes for the trip on foot; some transit plan. They better be ready to buy some striping.

With the Port Authority narrowing their service to some mysterious few individuals and wreaking fare havoc on the rest of the Allegheny County population, my four years of bike commuting seem increasingly like the best option since day one.

Not just for post-apocalyptic or societal fringe mobility anymore!

Penn Hills likely does not pay for the upkeep of every road in the town limits. Some of it is state money, some federal.

Of course, state funding for highway and bridge money is in the same straits as transit money, and for the same reason, Act 44 of 2007 failed.

But keep on insisting on having the bicycle voice be at the table when decisions are being made about road repairs, developer projects, etc. If that voice is a half dozen of you who, jointly or individually, are regularly present, so much the better.

Talk to everyone you see who rides a bike, and get the word out!

Stu, you reminded me that Saltsburg is mostly State route 380 (from Frankstown out to Plum, Frankstown to Verona rd is just PH road). I guess that means that PH crews couldn't just go out and paint the lines a little differently. It was recently oil and chipped (all of it at once) - I'll see if I can tell who paid for it and who performed the work. They do it every year, so it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

@ejwme - The County has a study that is just now kicking off that needs input like yours, and the involvement of a few people from various communities to help guide the County in the development of an Active Transportation Network.

PM me with details on how to reach you. We can put you on a steering committee (more work/more involvement) or just make sure that you get an invite to the public meetings (less work).

This is a great time to have askedthe question.

Anyone else want to help shape biking/walking options in their community?

I wouldn't mind throwing my hat in on behalf of the west. I'll pm you my info. Probably see you at noon Weds.

@Swalfoot: I know I personally want to see Saxonburg Blvd. to at least Dorseyville improved as a bicycling corridor.

I suppose my biggest thing right now is for the county to identify what roads make or "would make" the highest traffic bike routes and that those roads should be improved (bike lanes, separated near-parallel paths) for bike travel.

Saxonburg Blvd, Fox Chapel Rd, and PA 910 would be the main routes in my area growing up that I could see could stand for some bike-related improvements. The latter of which already has great wide shoulders that would just need to be maintained better.

Turns out there's also an offroad trail along Plum Creek from Verona/Oakmont in to Penn Hills (maybe all the way to Plum? I couldnt' find an end on google) so maybe an off road rout exists, but I heard it's polluted and floods - I'll see if I can find it and get the full story.

@Ejwme

I would really like to know more about this trail since I am pretty much right between verona and Plum I have to think it is somewhere near me.

BTW was that you the other day walking your bike on saltsburg?

dback - I don't know if it was me, I've got a yellow helmet and a blue bike. If it was longer ago that two weeks, I wouldn't have had my green crate on the back. But if it was like a month ago, I did walk up a stretch in front of the library because I was defeated by the hill (bike repaired, in better shape, can bike it now!)

I've done some snooping - turns out that trail is an unofficial trail, it follows the old Plum Creek Branch of the Allegheny Valley Rail Road, abandonned in 1934 or 1922 (I found conflicting information, rails should be pulled but land is still owned by the new AVR). In the past AVR has stymied rails to trails along this stretch specifically, though there are no rails there currently (according to a few internet sources, I need to double check). But a friend that lives in Verona says that it definitely goes all the way to Friendship Park. This stretch of former railroad would include an abandonned tunnel under the Bessemer-Unity RR as well (which is being used as a private storage shed? there are some weird web sites listing this stuff). I was thinking a rails AND trails thing, but there are (theoretically) no rails there. So I'm not sure how to best approach AVR so that they're happy and we get our trail.

I realized that this could link up with the Greenway that is in the works between Greensburgh (maybe also Five Star?), Monroeville, Turtle Creek, and some other municipalities in that area, maybe even linking Allegheny river to Monongahela. Then I had a vision of the GAP ending in an Alternative Transportation Beltway linking all the suburbs of Pittsburgh, with proper bike/mixed use lane spokes leading down town. But a good kind of Beltway. How cool could that be? That'd be national news.

But I still want proper lanes painted on Saltsburg. We need *both* on/off road options.

wow, how interesting I had never heard of it before. You have a lot of enthusiasm, which is what these projects need. If you can get other people interested too that would really help get some momentum going for any of the ideas you mentioned.

The GAP has had success with promoting the trail as economic development. Check out the trail town website for ideas. http://www.trailtowns.org/

There are a lot of people who have to get on board with these kinds of infrastructure changes/improvements. I'm optimistic that as we get good data and can learn from past projects we can get things done faster. Hopefully. Some of the GAP connections had been 20 years in the works.