Pedestrian safety a challenge in busy Oakland

Freshmen are schooled in it during orientation each year.

Some campus police even receive specialized training.

Day after day, in their patrol cars, on their motorcycles, bicycles and on foot, officers do outreach in traffic safety — sometimes giving polite reminders, other times admonishments and tickets. The goal is ensuring that the throngs of cars, trucks and pedestrians that fill Oakland each day can co-exist.

Investigators have not yet said who they suspect was at fault in a Port Authority bus accident on Jan. 18 that killed pedestrian Barbara Como, 20, a University of Pittsburgh senior from Chester Springs, Chester County, months shy of graduation.

But it has served as one more reminder for those navigating busy Oakland streets that tragedy can be a footstep away.

Pitt, Carlow University and Carnegie Mellon University have tens of thousands of students and employees among them them but generate only part of the congestion along Fifth and Forbes avenues. Hospitals, retail buildings and sports venues, including Pitt’s 12,500seat Petersen Events Center, are all traffic generators, day and night.

“There’s a lot of people, a lot of cars coming in that are unfamiliar with Oakland because they’re visiting hospitals, they are visiting campuses,” said Andrew Wilson, a spokesman for Carlow.

On that campus, getting to classes in the A.J. Palumbo Hall of Science and Technology can mean crossing Fifth Avenue at Craft.

Further up Forbes and Fifth, students at Pitt routinely mingle with traffic as they switch from classes to the William Pitt Union, to dorms and parking garages. It’s a similar scene at Carnegie Mellon.

Pitt’s main campus, by itself, has more than 41,000 students and employees, according to the university’s 2019 Fact Book.

Among the safety efforts there are social media messaging, traffic enforcement and monitoring of traffic equipment by campus police, Pitt-hosted events, including bicycle safety day and Pitt shuttles equipped with technology to monitor driving habits such as speed and braking, spokesman Kevin Zwick said.

In partnership with the city, work has begun on a nearly $24 million project to rebuild Bigelow Boulevard between the Cathedral of Learning and the William Pitt Union, improving safety by reducing traffic to one lane in each direction, moving crosswalks, adding protected bike lanes and other enhancements to discourage jaywalking.

A community relations officer who counted traffic and pedestrian issues among his duties is now devoting 100% of his time to that area, Mr. Zwick said.

Safety improvements also have been made to the portion of the Forbes Avenue corridor that runs though Carnegie Mellon.

On that campus, officers assigned to the university’s traffic safety and enforcement unit receive specialized instruction.

“University police are trained in speed enforcement, and the force includes an officer with an extensive traffic enforcement background,” university spokeswoman Julianne Mattera said. “Police address traffic safety on each shift, which has helped reduce injuries in and around campus.”

“CMU police also focus on specific locations in an effort to avoid crashes,” she added. “Additionally, they conducted a pedestrian safety initiative at the start of this school year to address jaywalking.’’

Memories in Oakland are still fresh from a 2015 accident in which Susan Hicks, 34, assistant director of Pitt’s Center for Russian and East European Studies, was killed when her bicycle was struck by a car near the corner of Forbes and Bellefield avenues near the university campus.

David Witherspoon, of Beltzhoover, admitted responsibility for causing the chain-reaction crash and was sentenced in 2017 to five to 10 years in prison. Witherspoon, 49 at the time of the crash, had synthetic cannabis in his system and was driving with a suspended license when he hit another car, prosecutors said. The impact pushed that car into Ms. Hicks, who was pinned and killed, investigators said.

On Jan. 18, Ms. Como was at the intersection of DeSoto Street and Fifth Avenue when an inbound Port Authority Route 83 bus struck her about noon. Officials said the bus operator will not be driving pending completion of an investigation by city police and the Port Authority.