Drivers, using the quiet Polish Hill neighborhood as a cut through, frequently blow stop signs on the way.  After being rebuffed by the city for months, neighbors painted DIY bike lanes, which caused more drivers to actually stop at the stop signs. The city says they are illegal, and now plans to remove them, and paint them to code.

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By Diana Nelson Jones / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Polish Hill is one of the most spirited do-it-yourself neighborhoods in the city. In large numbers on each other’s behalf, residents turn out to clear snow from sidewalks and city steps, to clean up litter and plant flowers.

It may have been in the same spirit that four newly painted crosswalks, each of slightly different width, recently appeared at the intersection of Melwood Avenue and Finland Street.

Originally reported on the Polish Hill Civic Association’s Blogski, this do-it-yourself solution to a traffic problem is illegal, but some residents are delighted that if the city wouldn’t help slow down vehicles, someone did. The civic association reports that intersection is “one of the problem spots … where residents have been suffering the impact of speeding and careless drivers for years.”