How a group of Pitt Students Organized for change

GUEST BLOG POST BY: Jacob Evangelista, Complete Streets at Pitt

Here in Pittsburgh’s East End, you can’t go very far without seeing a university. With Pitt, CMU, Carlow, Chatham, Duquesne, and Point Park having a combined student population of around 80,000, universities comprise a significant portion of the city’s population as a whole. The life of a university student is in many ways very different than that of a professional or person with a family. As students often have more free time and more opportunities to engage in community, they are much easier to organize and mobilize for a cause. Here at the University of Pittsburgh, student activists play a wide variety of roles in Pittsburgh politics, from voter registration to lobbying and community development. Many Pitt & CMU students get involved with others in their field through student organizations.

I am the Vice President of Complete Streets at Pitt (CSAP), a student organization dedicated to making the Greater Oakland area more walkable, bikeable, and transitable for the Pitt & Oakland communities; an organization centered around academic activism. We have worked on a variety of projects around campus, most significantly raising awareness of traffic issues through vigils for victims of traffic violence on campus, which has led to real infrastructure improvements on campus, in only its fourth year.

In the fall of 2023, during my freshman year at Pitt, I joined CSAP to become more involved and pursue my passion for city cycling. As a relatively new organization, we began the year slowly by refurbishing an old ghost bike honoring Rui Hui Lin that had fallen into disrepair in South Oakland, just off campus. However, that all turned around when Emily Watson, a member of the UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) community, was killed on Terrace St by a driver. We were able to use each of our members’ skills they learned in the classroom on the ground to build momentum for changes with the intention of honoring Watson’s death, preventing further incidents of traffic violence.

We held a vigil to raise awareness of the danger around Terrace St. on Pitt’s Upper Campus. One member who was involved in media through the student radio station contacted local media organizations to reach people around the Pittsburgh area. I, a political science major, led communication with city government officials. A member who would commute on that road every day shared his experience, from an engineering student’s perspective. We were all able to bring something to the table and elevate the message, but for a while, our work seemed fruitless. The city did not dedicate any funds to the capital budget the following year. The university did not do anything. The hospital did nothing.

CSAP eventually put Terrace St. onto the back burner.

Terrace St Gets Much Needed Safety Improvements

Tragically, almost exactly a year later to the day, Jessie Maroney, a member of the Pitt community, was also killed by a driver less than a block away on Terrace St. CSAP went back to work and planned a vigil within the week. This time, with nearly identical circumstances and drawing on experience from the previous year, our message reached further. Councilmembers Strassburger and Charland spoke at the vigil on how important this issue is to them (Councilwoman Warwick gave her regards as she was held up on her way).

The University of Pittsburgh nearly immediately released a statement saying they would fund a traffic study because of the deaths that we, as students, made the higher-ups unable to ignore. The University finally started to fulfill its obligation to protect its community while on campus. After the study was released, the city took immediate action, skipping community input, making haste so no one else would die. During planning, due to our action, the Department of Mobility & Infrastructure requested input from CSAP Board Members.

Today, the final steps of construction have just finished up. Terrace St is now a model for potential redesigns around Oakland, including a climbing protected bike lane to separate slower bike traffic from cars, a parking-protected bike lane on the flatter section, as well as sharrows where a dedicated, separated bike lane would not fit. Check out the Engage Page for more details.

Beyond Terrace St., CSAP’s Work in Oakland 

After Terrace St., CSAP continues to advocate for changes around Oakland. Namely, a project we held last spring that showed the danger of Bates St. to residents and city officials. We held a 24-hour watch party to collect data on who is using Bates St. and how, hosted a town hall community meeting, and gathered public opinion data through a survey. We worked with our Registered Community Organization, the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation, as well as other neighborhood groups, such as the West Oakland Block Club, to write a Capital Budget Request letter to our council member. While the Mayor’s preliminary budget does not include any dedicated funds for Bates St,, we built momentum so we can continue to advocate for improvements to the Mayor and Council to include in the final budget. 

While advocacy work seldom yields results this quickly, it is encouraging to achieve some wins like this. It shows what is possible. Tragically, it took the deaths of two in our community, as well as more in previous years. Ultimately, if it were not up to CSAP’s advocacy on Terrace St. or Bates St., we would most likely have no infrastructure changes for years. As Pete Buttigieg wrote in his memoir, Shortest Way Home, “The unique thing about [universities] is the substance of their work. And if their intellectual endeavors are connected in the right way to the life of the community, the results are so profound that I now believe that a mayor who is granted one wish for any feature to add to her city … should find the answer obvious: pick a world-class research university.” Universities can add so much to their communities; CSAP’s work is a perfect example of this.

It’d be far from the truth to say we did it alone. We received a tremendous amount of support from the Urban Planning Club, Student Government Board Campus Operations & Innovation Committee, CMU Transportation Club, Pittsburghers for Public Transit, and many other organizations. Bike Pittsburgh was particularly helpful in the role that Seth Bush played as an advisor to us in both of these projects. He showed us what steps we could take and connected us with decision makers who could make a difference on Terrace and Bates Streets.  The work we do is far from in a vacuum; students are major powerholders in Pittsburgh, so students who leave their classroom and work together to make change in their communities have numerous opportunities to put what they’re learning in class into action.