On Monday night, I attended public meeting at the ice rink in Schenley Park. As I was there early, I had about 20 minutes to talk one-on-one with Public Works Director Rob Kaczorowski about snow, bike trails and bike lanes. I told him that I was generally pleased with their efforts to clear the bike trails. Typically, a few days after the snow, cyclists get impatient with the snow on the trail and start calling or e-mailing the city's 311 line. Shortly thereafter, whether through the prompting or merely as a coincidence, the trail gets cleared. Kaczorowski indicated that the trails are at least on his radar and he does direct his people to attend to them. The way the plan is supposed to work is that the clock starts when the snow stops. Then, the crews are to have the streets cleared in 24 to 36 hours. That's primary, secondary and tertiary roads (including trails) cleared in just under two days. Again, my experience on the Eliza Furnace and Junction Hollow Trails bear this out for the most part.
What I thought was more important to mention was the issue of bike lanes. The snow in the street gets cleared but it looks like that snow is being plowed into the bike lanes. Simply having the trucks make another pass 3 feet closer to the curb would go a long way towards addressing that issue. Kaczorowski indicated that it is a training and culture issue and he is working on getting his trucks to provide "curb to curb service", that is, to work towards clearing the entire street rather than just clearing a single travel lane and calling it good.
Additional people arrived, about evenly divided between City representatives and concerned citizens which speaks to either the light publicity for these meetings or the general apathy of the public towards the implementation of the city's snow emergency plan. I won't go into details about the bulk of the meeting mostly because my interests were focused on cycling issues and I had addressed those already.
Something someone else mentioned and that I had missed was the state of a specific section of the Eliza Furnace Trail. Even though most of the trail had been plowed, the section from PNC Firstside, behind the 2nd Avenue parking garage and to behind the County Courts behind the jail had not been touched. Kaczorowski indicated he thought that section was the responsibility of the Parking Authority and after the meeting he confirmed the location specifics with me and indicated he would talk to them about having that taken care of. Perhaps even overnight.
I stayed home sick the next day so I wasn't able to check the next morning as to whether Kaczorowski was good to his word but this morning when I rode in nothing had been done.
As I was taking a photograph of the unplowed trail, a Pittsburgh Parking Authority salt pick-up truck with a plow pulled into the parking garage. I was taking another picture of the plow when the driver came over to see what I was doing. I explained that I had been talking to the Public Works Director and he said that he would get the section of trail plowed and I was documenting that it had not been done and the irony of a Parking Authority plow sitting there not plowing.
The driver said that this plow was broken and they were trying to fix it, agreed that that section of trail should be salted but said that he couldn't get his truck in there and turned around. I countered that I knew that there was equipment available that was small enough to plow that section because I had seen it clearing other sections of the trail and sidewalks.
He then tried to invoke the "9/11 law" in explaining why he came over to check up on me taking a picture of his truck. I explained that there is no such law prohibiting anyone from taking pictures in a public place. He said that his managers had told him so and I said flat out that they were wrong. He didn't press the issue.
We're suppose to get another few inches of snow starting this afternoon, which may render the entire exercise moot.
