2023 Pittsburgh City Council District 7 Candidate Survey
🗳 Update: The results of the 2023 municipal primaries are in! Check the county’s website to see all the details, and see below where we’ve made note of the winner. Thanks again to all of the candidates who participated in our survey.
District 7 covers Lawrenceville, Polish Hill, Bloomfield, Highland Park, Morningside and Stanton Heights
Biking and walking are not only quality of life issues, they are political issues. Elected officials determine how much is invested in our streets, and whether or not those investments make biking and walking safer and less stressful. Biking and walking are healthy, affordable ways to get around, and positively address air quality and climate change. They are good for the economy, and biking and walking infrastructure make our streets safer. If our streets are dangerous for biking and walking, the outcomes affect us all.
In Pittsburgh Council District 7, Councilperson Deb Gross is being challenged by Jordan Botta in the Democratic primary.
We wanted to be sure to give these candidates an opportunity to talk directly to the voters on these issues, so that you can better understand where they are coming from and make an informed decision for who to cast your vote for on the May 16 primary and November 7 elections.
Answers are presented in the order in which they were returned. We’d like to offer a sincere “thank you” to the candidates for participating.
1. We envision a Pittsburgh where people can thrive without needing to own a car. What role do you think city council plays in making Pittsburgh an easier place for people to live and visit without a car?
This is the right goal. You should be able to thrive without the cost burden nor the environmental burden of car ownership. City Council has land use authority, operating budget authority, and capital budget authority. Also, City Council has the ability to approve relationships with the other bodies of government. There are many ways City Council can play an active role in making Pittsburgh a city where you don’t need a car:
● Focus housing around existing public transit infrastructure: I believe that we should increase the density of affordable housing around the fixed transit that already exists, like busways, trolleys, and inclines, and around the highest frequency bus lines. Pittsburghers for Public Transit has provided an excellent map of these areas. The city could improve population density and employment in areas where public transit already exists.
● Increase the capacity in the organizational chart of the City to solve these problems. We have improved, but I believe that we could use more engineering capacity, more program manager capacity, and given the massive federal investments available on a competitive basis, more grantseeking capacity.
● Increase the allocations for better infrastructure. Work with residents to resolve traffic calming issues: The people experiencing dangerous intersections and other street related issues daily know best, which is why I maintain strong relationships with neighborhood and community groups.
● Push the county to increase transit availability: Although City Council doesn’t control PRT, City Council can advocate for increased service in underserved areas of my district.
One of the few positive things to arise out of the pandemic is the boom of residents in Pittsburgh purchasing their first bike for transportation purposes. (I am one such resident!) It’s the role of council to explore, develop, and pass legislation for biking infrastructure, to create a more friendly system for non-vehicular transit. This is done by funding studies, researching other cities, and giving leeway to experts who have considerable experience in biking infrastructure.
2. As with roads, sidewalks and public transit, biking only works well when there are complete networks of safe streets people can use to get around. What are your thoughts on the current bikeway network. What’s working? Where can the City improve?
The bike network needs better connections! It is getting closer, but there are still too many gaps. I would like to see an updated study of where originations and destinations have changed. In my district, there are things that are not there anymore and then new things that people should be able to reach safely. It is the City’s responsibility through City planning and streets management to consider how people can get the things they need on a daily basis…without a car. We should also consider how the bike network intersects with transit.
Keep your fingers crossed…the floating curb on Stanton Avenue seems to be working – putting car parking in between the bike lane and the traffic lane! That is one thing that seems to be working!
What isn’t working is the poor quality of road and bike surface. We need to maintain our streets and sidewalks to make them safe and accessible to bikes and pedestrians. The City has 1,000 miles of street and around 50% of it has not been adequately maintained. We are not even paving enough to keep it maintained, even though I am currently fighting for funding and purchase and staffing of bike lane snow clearance and street cleaning equipment. That this is also a historic moment of massive utility replacement has created really dangerous roads. The City, PWSA, and People’s Gas should be monitoring and inspecting their construction projects to ensure pedestrian and bike safety. I believe the City through DOMI should hold them accountable.
I think there are plenty of places that we have expanded and enhanced, and some areas that we can really work on. I had the benefit of taking my first long distance bike trip this summer, and I traveled from my home in Bloomfield all the way to West Newton by bike. We have some very good infrastructure which create specific bike lanes running parallel to our roads, but sometimes these are isolated along routes. Biking long term for the first time on our streets, I was somewhat confused about where the bicyclist should be, where a car should be, and where we share. Pittsburgh has 90 unique neighborhoods, and we need to create better infrastructure for linking our routes together so that intra-neighborhood travel is easier and more efficient.
3. What transportation project in your district are you particularly excited about? How will it benefit people who get around without a car?
A) Stanton Ave Phase 2 – I have allocated funds and established commitments from the Administration for Stanton Avenue Phase 2 – extending traffic calming and biking on Stanton Avenue eastward from Morningside through East Liberty and Highland Park border to Dilworth Elementary. We will launch engagement in 2023 and may be able to see some installation by the end of the year.
B) Reservoir Drive Traffic Calming –I worked for a year with stake holders on a preliminary design to improve safety and shared space on Reservoir Drive. Engagement for public feedback should be launching in Summer 2023.
C) The Willow Street Connector — the trail was paved this month and DOMI reports that it is working with the fencing contractor to establish a non-car safe passage under the 40th Street Bridge!!! This one was a long time in the making and it will be amazing to have safe and legal crossing under the bridge.
D) The Mobility Enhancement District being proposed and discussed in Lawrenceville has the potential to expedite many community requests for street safety that haven’t been granted.
After 10 years, District 7 has just begun to really expand a lot of mobility infrastructure for non-vehicular transit. I’m looking forward to expanding buffered bike lanes, protected bike lanes, and exploring new and innovative options for Bike(+) projects. I think there are a lot of exciting projects we can delve into in the next few years to make District 7 the most accessible district in the city for non-vehicular travel.
4. What’s a particularly dangerous problem or location in your district for walkers, bikers, or people with disabilities that you would like to fix?
It is difficult to narrow it down to one, but the Bloomfield Bridge intersection is on my mind as the weather gets warm. Little kids who are trying to get to the city pool wait with their beach towels at this dangerous high speed intersection. In addition to the Bloomfield pool, the rest of the park is increasingly popular and there are talks of installing permanent skate features. The increasing popularity of nearby businesses and the potential addition of 250 apartments here all
push this project to a higher priority. This intersection has lots of community stakeholders who have organized demonstrations and charrettes for a redesign. It is time for action.
As I mentioned, there are a few areas in the district that are somewhat confusing in terms of bike infrastructure. At the intersection of Liberty and Main streets in Bloomfield (adjacent to the Bloomfield Bridge) there is a small island that splits two roads and has a green painted bike lane which runs parallel with one road and intersects another. Sometimes I’ve seen cars not check when they cross this bike lane and several instances I’ve seen someone almost get hurt. I think that there are mitigative steps that can be taken to warn drivers in these circumstances to be vigilant of crossing bike lanes to ensure safety for bikers. I am not one for unnecessary bureaucracy when it comes to safety and my policy will be to expedite safety measures and conduct the studies concurrently rather than wait for studies at the expense of safety.
5. Why should people who care about safe streets for biking and walking vote for you?
I have been an advocate for walkable neighborhoods and the built environment for many years. This issue informed my choice of dissertation topic in the early 1990s, my consulting practice in the 2000’s, and my running for office in the 2010’s. In some parts of the city, projects get mired in strife. In District 7, we move projects forward. By working with residents and City departments I have been able to create consensus and move projects to fruition including: traffic calming installations on Melwood in Polish Hill; speed humps Edmond Street in Bloomfield; new four-way scramble signal at Penn and 40th; crossing guards on Butler Street; new lanes and flex posts to calm the chaotic Roup-Baum-Negley-Centre five-way intersection; street art and traffic calming at Baum Grove; speed humps in Morningside; crosswalks on Liberty Avenue; Neighborways in Lawrenceville, Friendship-Bloomfield, and Highland Park; Traffic circles on Coral in Friendship and N. Euclid Ave in Highland Park; speed humps on Heberton Ave.; crosswalks on N. Highland Ave.; re-paving and removing cars on Harrison Street; signage and lane markings at elementary schools; new signals at N. Negley and Stanton Ave.; bike lanes and speed humps on Stanton Ave…and more. You have a right to travel safely. Streets are for people.
As an occasional biker myself, I look forward to increasing my time utilizing a bicycle especially around my district to have first hand experience on biking issues. I am the candidate who will bike alongside BikePGH veterans and take a tour of our infrastructure- where it works, and where it needs attention. I will be an official who works for the people, and rely on the advice of others rather than my own volition. We need an municipal official who does the work alongside us, relies on the experience of others and undertakes first hand experiences of their own, and has the energy, innovation, and proactivity to walk (or bike) with us into the next generation of District 7 and the City of Pittsburgh.
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