More bike lanes set for Downtown, East Street
Bicyclists navigating Downtown thoroughfares should have another dedicated route to avoid cars and trucks by late 2017.
Pittsburgh City Council on Wednesday authorized spending nearly $837,000 on two bike-lane projects, including a Downtown connection between Grant Street near the Monongahela River and Point State Park. The other will extend existing North Side lanes on East Street from Suffolk Street about a mile north to Mount Pleasant Road, near Interstate 279.
“These types of trails get bikes off the street, which is what I hear from a lot of drivers who are frustrated by cyclists,” said Councilwoman Natalia Rudiak. “This gets cyclists in their own lanes, so to speak.”
About $600,000 in federal grant money that the city sought for bike infrastructure will cover most of the tab. About $200,000 from the city will cover the rest.
The bigger-ticket Downtown project should help both tourists and commuters cut an easier,
safer path through the congested area, said Eric Boerer, advocacy director for the Bike Pittsburgh nonprofit group. Supporters said the link will be especially helpful to visitors who pedal into town on the Great Allegheny Passage, which connects Cumberland, Md., and Downtown.
For now, those inbound cyclists reach the end of a dedicated path at Grant Street after following the Hot Metal Bridge and the Eliza Furnace Trail.
“There’s hundreds of thousands of people using the gap trail and coming into Pittsburgh, and they’re spending millions of dollars in our region,” said Mr. Boerer, whose 2,500-member organization has backed both bike-lane efforts. “… We want to bring them — and their spending power — into Downtown and into the neighborhoods.”
City officials will seek bids for the Downtown work, which will plant the cycling lanes on Fort Pitt Boulevard, probably on the north side of the roadway, said Patrick Hassett, assistant public works director.
He said the lanes will hang a right onto Stanwix Street, then a left on Penn Avenue to the state park. Precise cycling configurations for those streets are still in the works, with the overall project — including bollards to separate cyclists from heavy traffic — expected to be done by fall 2017.
“Creating a network that takes you across the southern end of Downtown and then through Downtown will help people get to their jobs more easily and safely, in theory taking more cars off the road in the process. That’s a big part of it,” Mr. Boerer said.
Plans for the extended bike lanes on East Street, where traffic is lighter, don’t include bollards. Bethel Park-based Parking Lot Painting Co. will handle most of that work, which should be complete by the end of 2016, Mr. Hassett said.
Adam Smeltz: 412-2632625, asmeltz@post-gazette.com, @asmeltz.