The bike/ped coordinator is still garnering lots of attention. In this opinion piece in today’s Post-Gazette, the author notes how much of the media coverage has centered on bikes. He urges the city to give equal attention to pedestrians and bikes. Our take on it? what is good for pedestrians is good for bikes. But it’s really a question of dollars. The city needs to budget a lot more money for the infrastructure and activities that Mr. Patchan will be advocating for. Having had the fortune to visit Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle in the past month, it is remarkable how much thought, effort and money those cities devote to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure (roundabouts, raised crosswalks, audible crosswalk signals, bike lanes and paths, route signage, speed humps, etc). If Pittsburgh is ever to compete, City Planning and DPW need much more money in order to get the job done.

Pittsburgh needs a Sidewalk Savior to protect its pedestrians, says CHRIS ZURAWSKY

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Do you know Steppenwolf? Not the psychedelic ’60s band, although I could probably wedge into this piece an allusion to their song “Magic Carpet Ride.” I mean Steppenwolf the book, by Herman Hesse.

In that 1927 novel, the protagonist, Harry “The Steppenwolf” Haller, dreams of a battle between Man and Machine: “Cars, some of them armored, were run through the streets chasing the pedestrians. They ran them down and either left them mangled on the ground or crushed them to death against the walls of the houses. I saw at once that it was the long-prepared, long-awaited and long-feared war between men and machines, now at last broken out.” Read more»