Thursday, December 14, 2006
By Diana Nelson Jones, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A Carnegie Mellon University report released yesterday shows that Pittsburgh leads many cities its size in collisions between pedestrians and vehicles and recommends that the Better Traffic Committee of old be resurrected.

Councilman William Peduto said he will include that recommendation in his legislation for pedestrian safety, the Safe Streets Initiative, at next Wednesday’s City Council vote.

The report traced the effectiveness of the Better Traffic Committee, which was formed in 1925 and disbanded sometime after the 1960s, but was short on current data to show which intersections are the most hazardous to pedestrians and why.

Joel Tarr, a history and policy professor whose class produced the study, said his appeals to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation for data, and appeals on his behalf from city and county officials, went unanswered for months. “This project has been hampered by our inability to obtain data” regarding injuries, he said. “We hope to obtain it in the future.”

The CMU students surveyed other students, faculty and staff to determine the most dangerous campus intersections, among them Forbes at Morewood Avenue, Fifth at Morewood, Fifth at Devonshire Street and Forbes and Craig Street. They selected three Downtown intersections known for pedestrian-vehicle collisions — Sixth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard, Liberty Avenue and Sixth Street and Stanwix Street at Forbes.

Mr. Peduto said his idea came from discussions with Mr. Tarr surrounding the April death of a student who was crossing Forbes Avenue. They also discussed the project with doctors at Children’s Hospital who have been tracking the locations of car-pedestrian and car-bicycle accidents.

Mr. Peduto’s Safe Streets Initiative sets forth a plan to have a private company install cameras at hazardous intersections that would record the license plates of drivers running red lights. The drivers would be fined $100 by mail.

The company would pay to install the cameras and receive a set monthly retainer, said Mr. Peduto.

Revenue from the tickets would establish a trust fund to be used for traffic-safety upgrades, he said, citing success of similar programs in other cities.

In their report, the CMU students recommended countdown timers so people would know how much time they have to cross, as well as painted crosswalks.

(Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626. )porn black movies buybuy porn videos chineseonline buy disney pornporn force muscle buyrights porn buy digitaldvds online buy pornporn buy moivesporn online buy Map