Photo credit: Pittsburgh Steps Blog

Living Cities Citi Foundation to help city address infrastructure funding gaps in our public steps

Mayor Bill Peduto just announced that Pittsburgh was selected for a city accelerator program that focuses on figuring out how to find viable and sustainable ways of funding public infrastructure.

The City chose to focus on our 700+ city-owned steps, an important and necessary component of our pedestrian infrastructure. Given our funding and capacity challenges, a sustainable program to fund the maintenance, improvement and expansion of public steps has never really been developed. Additionally, due to their uniqueness, there are very few replicable models from other places to learn from.

According to the City’s application, “improving the steps will increase walkability through the city, and preserve an asset that generations of Pittsburgh residents have used to get to schools, work and shopping districts.”

The support of the $1,155,000 from the City Accelerator program will help get to the root of the issue, which could also become a best-practice protocol that other cities can use. The City says that “ensuring [steps] are well-lit and in good repair will require some creative thinking” and partnerships and a need to “take a comprehensive planning approach…to increase the flow of monetary and management resources to projects.”

We look forward to what they come up with.

Find out more about the program here.

Join us at the Women & Biking Forum on Saturday, April 2nd! Hosted by BikePGH’s Spinnsters, this forum aims to bring women together to celebrate bicycling, and to develop strategies to break down the barriers to bicycling that specifically affect women. Women and trans* identified people welcome to this day of workshops, keynote speakers, luncheon and more!