Activists created a temporary safe connection for bicyclists where the bike lane ends at 16th St

A couple weeks ago a driver struck a woman riding a bicycle on 16th St as she attempted to navigate the official connection between the end of the Penn Ave bike lanes and the start of the Smallman St bike lanes, leaving her in critical condition. The route directs outbound bicyclists to make a right onto 16th St, then a left onto Spring Way, followed by a left onto 17th St where one can pick up the Smallman St bike lanes to continue east.

In response to the crash, a new group of bike activists calling themselves Pittsburgh Bike Jam, organized an action at the intersection to highlight how disconnected the most popular bike lanes in the city are to where people need to go. By literally blocking cars, they created a temporary safe connection for people attempting this maneuver. Recently, the Pittsburgh Bike Jam created “human protected bike lanes” in Downtown in an attempt to prevent drivers from illegally parking in them and to highlight the need for better bike lane protection.

Since the City first installed the Penn Ave bike lanes about a decade ago, there has been talk of completing the connection to Bloomfield and Lawrenceville. However, very little has been installed, leading BikePGH to launch our Safe Trips in the Strip campaign. Thousands of Pittsburghers travel to and through the Strip every day on their commutes and for shopping and visiting. Yet roads in the Strip remain some of the most confusing, aggressive, and dangerous.

We sat down with Armin Samii, one of the attendees of the Pittsburgh Bike Jam to ask about the 16th St action. You can follow Pittsburgh Bike Jam on Twitter and Instagram.

Can you briefly describe the Action?

We had about 20 bicyclists show up for the action. Some bicyclists acted as corkers, whereas others were riding the official route between Penn Ave and Spring Way. Whenever a rider needed safe passage across 16th St, the corkers blocked off traffic to allow the bicyclist to pass safely. We blocked traffic for about 30 seconds at a time, then allowed traffic to flow normally.

What were you trying to accomplish?

We wanted to show just how dangerous this section is. The only way to safely cross was to block all four lanes of traffic until the bicyclists had safely reached Spring Way, so that’s what we did: gave bicyclists one hour of safe travel between the Penn Ave and Smallman bike lanes.

How did the police presence affect these goals?

The police opted to block off all traffic across the 16th St Bridge and down Penn Ave. They were there before we arrived, they kept their distance for about 15 minutes before blocking off traffic after about 30 minutes. Their blockade had the inadvertent effect of showing us just how many options drivers have: Google Maps showed no impact to traffic conditions caused by their blockade. Perhaps a safe bike route between Downtown and Lawrenceville would have a similarly negligible impact?

How did drivers react?

We were honked at, yelled at, physically threatened, and even had one driver push his car into us. Despite him trying to run us over, a nearby officer yelled at us for “bullying” him — while the hood of his car was literally pressed against my bicycle.

Be sure to check out this video of the action from BurghBlog.