Bike/Pedestrian Infrastructure Innovations shine at Hazelwood Green

The redevelopment of Hazelwood Green provided a rare opportunity to design and construct a new urban right-of-way from scratch and reconnect a neighborhood’s street grid.

Thanks to partnerships with Almono LLC, DOMI, BikePGH, and Port Authority these streets went above and beyond City requirements. Lytle Street, Beehive Street, and Eliza Street demonstrate best practices for mobility in the public realm.

Come see for yourself

Join the project team and stakeholders for hot chocolate and a walk, bike, or drive along Lytle Street to celebrate a new standard for complete streets in the city.

Lytle Street Opening
Date: Thurs, Jan 30, 2020
Time: 3:30pm
Location: Hazelwood Avenue at Lytle Street

Innovations in Hazelwood Green

Lytle and Beehive Street accomplish many firsts for Pittsburgh: protected sidewalk-level bicycle lanes, chicanes with alternating on-street parking, raised intersections, floating bus islands, and an emphasis on green infrastructure and landscaping. These street design guidelines and traffic calming tools are being increasingly deployed at an increasing pace in cities across the country – Boston, Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin – and have been in use in Denmark and the Netherlands for decades.

“Hazelwood Green has set a new standard for how bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure should be built in the city. Getting these streets right from the get-go means people of all ages and abilities can comfortably and safely choose to get around on foot and bicycle, keeping more cars off the streets and freeing up valuable space for people.” – Scott Bricker, BikePGH Executive Director

These streets are designed for a target speed of 20 miles per hour. This means that rather than relying on the operator (the driver) to voluntarily maintain the speed limit, the design – the shifting center line (chicane); narrow travel lanes; and raised, textured crosswalks – will prevent and discourage drivers from speeding. 

As part of an overall TDM (transportation demand management) and monitoring effort, two permanent bicycle and pedestrian counters – Eco-Counters – were also installed on these streets to count movement and direction and inform future mobility investments, programs, and strategies. These Counts can be monitored here.

Lytle Street is the continuation of the existing Lytle Street in Hazelwood’s Scotch Bottom – the two will connect between Hazelwood Avenue and Tecumseh Street in the future.

Fun Fact: Beehive Street is named after the world’s largest concentration of beehive coke ovens that occupied the site at the turn of the 20^th century. Familiar to many in Pittsburgh, Eliza Street is named after the Eliza Furnace.