BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

It blows that like half the threads on this forum are now car advisories

Not sure if it's due to more riders or more aggressive driving

Totally unsubstantiated pet theory: there's safety in numbers. Less numbers right now means less safety.

If that has any validity at all, it suggests that we don't just need to recruit people to riding, we need to recruit them to all seasons riding, too. And we need to keep on the city about making that easier.

+1 i was on a short ride last night between 7&9pm, i saw atleast 10 poeple in commuter-mode.

betweent he price of gas & parking, 2013 may be the year the city "blows up" with commuters. once things are too big to be ignored, they must be addressed.

this woman was an outlier. she was trying to either hit me or get as close as she could. 99.5% of the people out there aren't like this (even when they aren't paying attention or don't understand what they should be doing)

unfortunately we are in the same position as gazelles on the savannah. the lion gets another shot whenever it loses. the gazelle doesn't.

here's another lexus outlier incident, tonight @ 5pm riding home along main st. Guy in his mid-late 40s or older, brown hair but balding driving a silvery beige lexus license plate HMX-0847. He's holding the horn while driving really close to me along Main st (the part between howley and penn, then again from penn to geneva). I turn and give the "what" hand gesture, he honks more. I turn and flick him off, he flicks me off. I turn onto geneva, he guns it while holding his horn, to get where, the 30 feet between me and the car ahead going 10 mph?

I stop at my house, drop the bike off and helmet, then decide to WALK down to butler to see if I see him. There he is making the turn, when I took a pic of his license plate.

Super aggro for no reason. dude needs to join a gym or get laid or something. Now I'm super amped, guess its time to ride hard.

When a motorist does something dangerous and pisses me off, I find that I am able to ride really really fast.

colin's gazelle metaphor is making me think of that Battle at Kruger nature video where the water buffalos get really pi**ed off and recover one of their own from a pride of attacking lexus drivers

2 things:

1)

I am going to invent a Freddy Krueger glove

to wear while riding. As it stands I generally

just smack cars that are super close but it

would be sweet to just shred them. "I was

just letting you know that I am here and my

glove happens to have razors on the fingers...

sorry, shouldnt have passed so closely!"

2)

I think that the city has already blown up

as far as commuter and functional riders.

Cburch can probably vouch for this, but 10

years ago if you commuted you knew or knew

to see most people on bikes. Seriously.

I had heard tales of bicycling in Pittsburgh 10+ years ago. I agree with Steevo. I have heard of bicycling in the 90s described as being like the wild Wild West. There are a lot of commuters now. I also endorse the Freddie glove. I think there was a similar thing on "enter the dragon" that would be a sweet thing to have handy. Get it.

I don't remember drivers having the giant heads of steam, hostility and aggression when I was bike commuting ten years ago...but then again maybe I'm doing that rose-colored glasses thing and blocking out all the bad stuff.

Yeah when I moved here in 95 it was me, the messengers and maybe 10 other people that I saw ever. And when I was working as a messenger a couple years later it was still that way.

Hell when I moved back here in 05 it was still just a handful of people. The last 7 years have been INCREDIBLE. Back then I would have barely noticed what happened to me this morning.

^I'm guessing your account of back then is much more accurate than my experience in 2001 wussily commuting from Shadyside to North Oakland (although I did blithely ride down Centre in rush hour every morning--and I was new to riding in traffic and had no idea what I was doing).

I'm sorry about the Lexus psycho--ugh.

I rode basically every day in 93/94/95, I think a lot of these stories are of the "I used to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow" variety. I don't doubt there are a lot more people riding now but there were plenty of bikes around Oakland/Shadyside back then. At least 5 people in my office at Pitt were regular bike commuters. Some drivers were pricks then, some drivers are pricks now.

The operative words being "Oakland" and "Shadyside".

I don't think that's surprising, considering those areas likely still have the highest concentration of bike commuters. Also, I didn't have much of a reason to venture out of the East End so I don't really know what was going on elsewhere.

Come to think of it, the year I lived in Sq. Hill on Alderson St. it really *was* uphill both ways. Although I was a wuss and didn't ride in the snow.

I saw like 10 riders on 5th Ave in Shadyside coming home today. Still baffles me how many people ride it voluntarily when there are so many parallel streets that don't have lights or traffic.

As biking becomes prevalent and fully accepted as part of the transportation system and everyday life, the most hard core change resistant motorists will become more extreme and aggressive in their behavior until they are forced, by one means or another, to accept the change.

I greatly vicariously enjoy the mirror incident. I guess we need to keep an eye out for these Lexii.

Entitlement is a pretty hot buzzword these days, it seems like that is the feeling we are dealing with, with these asscakes.

[edit: The good news, we are there, the tipping point, we are almost through the wall. Keep going.]

Edmonds, I think the term you are looking for is "extinction burst."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_(psychology)#Extinction_burst

@edmonds59 and pinky -- that pretty much sums it up perfectly.

Even from the time I started riding, commuting has blown up. Used to be I would ride to and from work (7.5 miles) and not see another rider for a week at a time.

It's true there are far more Pittsburgh cyclists now than ten years ago, but I'll believe we're near a tipping point when I see any space at all taken away from cars and given to bicycles (other than space they weren't using anyway).

What about the bike corrals or the bike lane on Carson St that got rid of a bunch of parking?

Wait, there's a bike lane on Carson St? Really? Sounds like tipping point time!

Edit: I was down there on Icicle Bicycle and didn't notice it there, but I see it in the news. Anyway, this is exactly what I was talking about. We're there, let's keep going.

Carson st between about 2nd and 10th, and another one that starts just before SSW

The lane on Carson from 2nd to 10th is wonderful, that used to be incredibly stressful to ride, because cars want to go about 50 on that stretch.

also there are currently only 2 installed corrals in the city.

lest we forget that east liberty blvd used to be 4 car lanes

Been cycling around here since the early 90's and a bit before, but a that age you are invincible. Anyway, cycling in Pittsburgh is tough, but it is better now than it ever has been. Believe me, it was much worse a decade ago. There is power in numbers and that is paying off.

I still don't ride that bike lane on Carson. I will probably always come off the bridge,cut through the gas station and take that side street to Tenth/Carson.That stretch is usually highway speeds for most cars..No thanks.

unfortunately, a sizable number of drivers in this city feel there are particular stretches of road where the police would be unable to setup a speed trap, therefore in their minds it makes perfect sense to slam the pedal down and do the next 3 blocks at 65 instead of 20.

That could be fixed with some creative police work. For instance, set up Cop #1 at Carson & South 5th with the timing mechanism but no car, and put vehicle-supplied Cop #2 (and #3 and #4) at Carson & South 6th. Pull drivers over between there and South 10th.

Repeat as necessary along Penn in Point Breeze, etc.

The part that is so baffling to me is why does the city just not give a rat's ass about traffic issues!?! Do you want to keep/attract people to living in the city? Make it a safe environment, in all aspects. Cops can certainly hand out traffic tickets while they stand around waiting for houses to be robbed or people to be shot. Maybe Lukey just needs to go and maybe Peduto will do something about this.

Was buzzed by a black Hyundai sedan this morning on the Boulevard. It was around 5:30, so there was about 7 cars in all of downtown. Someone must have peed in the drivers' cereal this morning.

Didn't get a full plate, but the first three letters were DJE. Tried to catch up with him on Smithfield to no avail.

@edmonds59 I think it's due in large part to budget issues. The city has been so strapped for cash for so long, that all kinds of things get passed over. Like everything, traffic enforcement costs money, and if you're deciding between picking up the trash and enforcing speed limits (or more realistically, between putting police on the street in the most dangerous neighborhoods and enforcing traffic laws), then the traffic stuff just can't compete.

I have to believe that traffic law enforcement is a net money maker for the city. All those tickets must more than pay for the officer's time handing them out. I think the lack of enforcement is more driven by politicians responding to complaints of their constituents. If you want to make somebody really unhappy, give them a ticket for speeding on a road they've been speeding on for years.

Just my 2-cents, but I think the lack of traffic enforcement has less to do with “planned” priorities and more to do with individual police incentives. I read an article not too long ago (sorry I cant remember source) that was focused on the war on drugs & drunk driving. It seems that if an officer is real successful in busting drunks-and-drugs they get promoted way faster than the guy who is just busting pick-pockets and such. So the individual cops realize how their own internal game is played and adjust accordingly. If you believe the stories as printed in the paper, there are an awful lot of drug busts and car chases that start with a cop pulling someone over for a broken tail light. So if they see a car break a traffic law, no big deal, look the other way. But see a car break a very minor law & have the driver fit a profile, lets pull him over he might have drugs. DWB and DWBWT (driving while black, driving & while being white trash).

All we need is to make enforcing traffic laws as beneficial to the cops (promotions, awards, etc.) as enforcing all the other laws and they will start enforcing them.

The lack of DUI enforcement here is shocking. I am originally from Philly, where it's pretty well enforced. I cannot recall seeing one checkpoint anywhere in the city in my 6 years of living here.

It's true there are far more Pittsburgh cyclists now than ten years ago, but I'll believe we're near a tipping point when I see any space at all taken away from cars and given to bicycles (other than space they weren't using anyway).

In addition to those mentioned above, Meade St downhill before the co-op posted no parking signs signs and painted sharrows where there used to be parking.

A quick look around the web makes me think that traffic enforcement is actually not a net money maker for most cities. A couple examples:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/outreach/traftech/TT252.htm

http://www.walkdcwalk.org/2012/04/prioritizing-traffic-enforcement-in-mpd.html

If we want better traffic enforcement, we have to let the city know that we're willing to pay for it. And maybe change the stupid law that doesn't let our cops use radar guns.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/more-tickets-in-hard-times suggests the opposite. It appears that most police departments don't get much revenue from ticketing, but they could if they wanted to. It would just annoy a whole lot of people. When they do try to raise money they focus on out-of-towners, for just this reason.

And maybe change the stupid law that doesn't let our cops use radar guns.

They were talking about this a generation ago. Some of the stupid reasoning, even then, was that it was too much trouble to train municipal level cops in the technology. C'mon, guys, that barely made sense in 1983, and makes even less sense today. In 1983, we had four-pound Betamax video recorders. Now we have two-ounce helmet cams. I cannot believe a similar evolution has not also taken place in speed monitoring tools.

Betamax?

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=KUiuHGWvRrw&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DKUiuHGWvRrw

"And maybe change the stupid law that doesn't let our cops use radar guns."

Among other reasons, radar's margin of error in a less-than-ideal (anything but flat open space without any other moving objects) is too large to hold up in court. This is why most states us LIDAR and VASCAR I/II.

There is virtually nothing keep cops anywhere from setting up a speed trap using any of other non-radar methods of speed tracking. The law keeping radar out of cities is a non-issue.

Used to be that once a year they would set up a speed trap on Schenely Drive in front of Phipps about once a year and pick off a few dozen speeders in an hour. Same thing on Shady.

I haven't seen that at all this century.

In the City of Pittsburgh, police costs for court appearances for traffic citations were of great concern in the 1990's and some officers were making a ton of money handing out tickets. As a result, the court system changed and the current system no longer requires the officer to appear and the information on the face of the ticket is deemed sufficient for purposes of proceeding in court. When the change occurred,(and officers were no longer paid for court) traffic citations dropped 70% in the city. The city police have no incentive to aggressively hand out citations where they get a ton of shit heaped on them and then do not get paid for the time they have to show up in court, which is scheduled when they are off. Sounds crazy but it is true.

The whole setup is stupid. If you get a ticket, you have a big incentive to go to court because the judge will more or less automatically reduce your fine and/or points, and in the meantime the cost to the public has increased dramatically. There has to be a better way.

On a similar note, the enforcement of the sidewalk shoveling ordinance is awful. It's what, 2 weeks since we had any snow, and there's still snow/ice all over the sidewalks. The city should employ a crew to do the shoveling and send the homeowners a bill for the cost + $100 fine. Make it +$1000 fine if the jackasses shovel their driveway and leave the sidewalk untouched.

@freakflag51 I believe city introduced liaison officer to represent police in court somewhere around 1995 so cop who issued a ticket should not appear in court.

@salty, I have read before that the city hesitates to enforce the snow removal rules because it puts a burden on elderly citizens - who put their votes where their mouths are.

Maybe the City would consider assigning officers to monitor those areas where bicyclists are at greatest risk along commuting routes. Penn Avenue? West Carson? Squirrel Hill, Shadyside and East Liberty? Just having a police car sitting there with the lights on always seems to slow drivers down. No increased police costs-no court appearances for tickets.

I was at a city meeting after Snowmageddeon and learned from them that they need to receive a specific complaint. Emailing 311 and saying that people aren't shoving won't work, you will need to say that the sidewalk in front of so-and-so's business or at such-and-such address has not been shoveled. There is a time frame but I don't remember what it is.

(I know that the City will not accept complains about streets not being cleared until 24 hours after it is stopped snowing.)

> @salty, I have read before that the city hesitates to enforce the snow removal rules because it puts a burden on elderly citizens - who put their votes where their mouths are.

they have recently (this year?) introduced a program for those who are unable to shovel their own walks to arrange to have someone else do it for them (a city-arranged volunteer, i think?). i think it's called Snow Angels...

I thought that program was called "common courtesy", but...

Anyways, I'm sure there are cases where someone can't shovel, but I see an awful lot of rentals that are not shoveled. Last weekend I walked by this gigantic house on Aylesboro with a big circular driveway that was absolutely immaculate while the whole sidewalk was covered in ice. I see a lot of shoveled driveways + unshoveled sidewalks which is pretty clear evidence the resident is not unable to shovel.

I probably don't have it in me to narc on people although if I knew that reporting it would result in a crew being dispatched to shovel the sidewalk I might.

Anyways, kind of O/T - just grumpy after my walk home last night.

Yeah, landlords are the worst in terms of snow removal. I'm going to start reporting the folks on my street who don't do this -- it's a real problem, and dangerous for the old people in my neighborhood.

But if cops enforce laws here who is going to stand or sit for hours on end on overtime to watch construction and Duquesne Light work downtown?! What a joke. They sit out front of my work for 8 hours sometimes. Most overtime,most literally standing and looking at a hole.

Lets face it the powers that be in all of this drive cars...well usually huge SUVs. They don't care about people walking or riding a bike. No one does. Best to do your best and be careful in your commutes. I don't think anyone will pay much attention to a walker or cyclist. I 311'ed the Highland Park Bridge and they said it was up to PennDot. Should I contact PennDot and tell them to not plow the snow onto the sidewalk so people can walk or ride a bike across the Highland Park Bridge? I guess I could, but PennDot? Goodness, they throw debris on the sidewalk themselves all the time. They don't care about anyone but themselves.

Polish Hill sculpture:

Totally cool sculpture, V, would have made a great tag, but what's the point?

Pittsburgh's Snow Angels program

ETA: Psst, Jonawebb: tag 179. But I don't get the relevance either.

"They sit out front of my work for 8 hours sometimes. Most overtime,most literally standing and looking at a hole." ^^2 comments up.

Sorry, I was offline for a while. It's just that people say, gee these guys have elevated this staring-into-the-hole routine into an art form. And, just as art imitates life, it has indeed become an art form n'at. Life is funny.

Ah, makes sense.

I really have to go back and memorize all tags prior to when I joined the game.

@jonawebb I can't find a link to the post directly, but it's at the bottom of this page. I don't have them all memorized but don't walk your bike dozens of flights up a building for a tag.

The Cathedral stairs tag was the lamest tag, ever, in the history of the game.

And I went to get it!