BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Oakland Transportation Management Association (OTMA) received PCTI funding to conduct a Pedestrian Safety Assessment/Plan in Oakland in conjunction with CMU.

Their preliminary findings are ready, and will be presented at a workshop on Thursday, fron 3-7 p.m.

The goal of the Study is to provide a safe system that accommodates "all users, walkers, bicyclists, transit riders, and authomobile drivers."

Your participation could be very valuable in efforts to make Oakland more user friendly from a transportation standpoint.

CMU Campus, University Center, Dowd Room

November 18, 2010 from 3-7 p.m.

Phase I of the Study is complete, and can be viewed at www.otma-pgh.org.

For more information, contact Mavis Rainey at mrainey@otma-pgh.org

I hope to see some of you there.

Top. We just found out about this.

I will be going to this, if work thinks it's appropriate. I work at a community center in Oakland, so I think my chances are good!

Download the Phase I draft report here: http://otma-pgh.org/pedestrianstudy/downloads/CMU_Safety_Study.pdf

76 pages of fun!

the report says that These next stages, the interview and public workshop sessions, will be critical to the success

and direction of the project. Therefore, at this time it would be premature to assume any concept

will move forward until the interview sessions are conducted with the key stakeholders and the

public workshop will been held. With the combined input of these two events, the concepts can

then be distilled into sound recommendations for design and implementation.

Translation: some concepts include bikes, some don't, and the concepts that move forward are the ones that the public, ie yinz, like. PLEASE ATTEND!!

This is an OPEN HOUSE style meeting. Show up any time between 3 and 7pm.

Please RSVP here to let us know if you can attend. I cannot, but Erok will be there.

here are the four concepts for Forbes Ave.

click to see it larger: http://bike-pgh.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/forbes-ave.jpg

Upper right please.

"Nevertheless, speeding and aggressive driving continue to be a major issue for law enforcement."

That's good news, if true.

@dwillen, I think you missed the compass directions in that picture. The upper right has a 6' wide bike lane with the hard median headed downhill, but not uphill.

also, the report says that automobile parking is no where near capacity, so they better not scrap these ideas for on street parking instead

One significant problem with either a bike lane or a separated bike path on Forbes in front of Hamburg Hall will be preventing wrong-way cycling in it.

What I see now is right-way cycling in the road, and contraflow cycling on the sidewalk, which might not be ideal but it's safe enough with low pedestrian volumes.

Why would they put a separated bike lane downhill, but not uphill?

@dwillen yeah, well. I don't think I want to try to explain that here.

Oh, screw it, here goes.

Because there's a bus stop in front of Hamburg Hall, and they want to allow busses to drive in/cross/block the bike lane, but if there's a median there it's not possible.

But don't say I told you so.

There are bus stops on the other side of the street too. Big pull in spots where a 28X sits for a half hour at a time. How does a separated bike lane not mess that up?

I've seen in many other cities where they just put the transit stops in the median area, and the cycle lane goes around the far side of the transit stop.

Oh, and it's trivial for cyclists to hit 20-30 mph going downhill in front of Hamburg Hall. I really don't want to be doing that and find broken glass, tree limbs, sewer grates, or motorists pulling out of the parking lot, and be left with nowhere to go.

A 6' separated bike track would only be safe at speeds below 12 mph. That's one thing in an uphill segment, entirely another downhill.

You and I are comfortable going 30 down that hill. So in that case, why build any infrastructure?

For me, the point of this is to encourage new people to get out and bike. Encourage bicycles as a viable form of transportation. The number one reason people give me for why they don't bike into work is because they don't feel safe on the roads. A separated bike path is a lot more attractive for a person with a $100 mountain bike from Target, who will probably never go 30 mph on their bike going down any hill.

If the separated bike path was there, and I didn't get stuck behind (or hit by) busses, I would happily use it and reduce my speed accordingly. This area tends to get pretty congested, especially with bus stops and the reduction of traffic to a single lane. I think a path, even at 12 mph might be faster in many cases.

All that said, I agree 100% that an uphill separated lane would make far more sense, if we had to pick one or the other.

remember, these are just concepts that will move forward into design phase based on public comment.

they could have put an airplane runway on there too, but it would still need to go to design.

I don't like the separated bikelane going down hill.

It strike me as it might be from teh mentality "Where can we put a bike lane where it won't bother cars?" rather than "Where would a bike lane be useful for bikes?"

Ask the wrong question and you'll get the wrong answer.

If bicyclists show up and speak up (hint hint) the design could evolve in the direction of a nice buffered bike lane sans physical separation. This design would be cheaper, easier to maintain/keep clear and won't box people going faster in the downhill direction.

It's your chance to weigh in.

I can't imagine physically-separated bike lanes being any good when it snows.

Not currently, but for example, in NYC they are now sweeping and plowing the separate bike lanes first.

Just saying... it doesn't have to stay the way it is.

i think having them in a place like cmu could work. cmu has their own grounds crew that plows, cleans sidewalks, etc.

but. that is a really good point and you should make sure to go and tell them

I would like to show up but they have chosen a time that is difficult for people with day jobs.

Scott's suggestion about a buffered bike lane instead of a hard median is something I was thinking of too. dwillen's point about 12mph being faster than the rest of traffic is cogent but I think mistaken in this particular example, since they're talking about morewood->craig. East of Morewood, traffic backs up at the light, and getting forward of the queue would be nice. On the other hand, that leaves you with a mess at the intersection that you have to sort out.

Which leads to my next point... Their data show nine pedestrian injury accidents in the surrounding area over a four-year period, one bike/car injury accident, and 34 car/car injury accidents. (as an aside, I'm 100% certain that there were additional cyclist injury accidents, single-cyclist things, possibly related to facilities design - why weren't these statistics included?)

Every single bike or ped injury was at an intersection.

Every one. Every one.

So why are they talking about cycletracks, when cycletracks (or sidepaths, as they are also called) are known to increase the number of intersection conflicts and crashes, and are being phased out in Germany? Why even discuss mid-block facilities at all? I think Mick has it.

Half of those injuries were apparently caused by motorist failure to yield. The other half were caused either by red-light running or crossing against the light. I'm not sure which, but my observations of pedestrian behavior in Oakland suggest it was jaywalking. The solution there is more-responsive pedestrian walk cycles. And why not? There are a lot more pedestrians than anything else in Oakland. Their proposal is to make jaywalking less attractive by reducing "platooning" -- which could work, but it is also, in effect, just making it that much harder for pedestrians to get across the street at all. Which hardly seems right.

Finally, the idea that cyclists are not "accommodated" (their words) unless there is a special place labeled "for cyclists" is begging the conclusion. Nobody ever says that motorcyclists are not accommodated on Forbes, or that SmartCars, busses, station wagons, or SUVs are not accommodated. The distinction is evidence that the designers believe that cyclists don't belong on the roads - so we have to give them someplace special. I don't like hearing "Get Off The Road!!" yelled out the window of a Yukon, and I don't like hearing it whispered by people posing as my friends.

I think you might be lumping all people who ride bikes together with yourself. There is clearly a spectrum comfort, experience, ability, speed, and so on for all cyclists. I would argue that the bulk of this spectrum is not accommodated on Forbes.

If the goal is to make things better for us, then don't bother, if the goal is to get more people on a bike, then something needs to change. I feel perfectly comfortable biking on Forbes in the current state. Would I mind reducing my speed so that a greater number of people also feel comfortable biking on Forbes? Absolutely. For me, it has nothing to do with being segregated to a special place or giving up my rights to the Yukon.

Uh - first of all, my previous post failed to mention that there is a lot in that proposal that is clearly good stuff about intersection treatments for pedestrians, so I didn't mean to say that they're ignoring intersections by any means.

Okay, that said...

I'm certainly not lumping all bike riders together with myself. I've been teaching people long enough that I have a pretty good handle on the range of abilities that are out there. The thing is that I know that experience and skill is more important than fitness and speed, and that both of the former can be acquired. So I don't believe that we should build a "safe space" for the unskilled that is ultimately an impediment to gaining transferable skills.

Let me us a metaphor. If I'm teaching someone who has never ridden a bike before, I don't use training wheels. They might make things easier at first, but eventually you have to unlearn them. I'll lower the seat, or remove the pedals, to simplify the situation a bit instead. That way, they're still training the right set of neurons.

To be frank, I'm apparently not as fit and strong as you are, and I am not "perfectly comfortable" on Forbes as it is - particularly outbound from Craig and getting to the left turn lane at Beeler. I have nothing against improvements. I just want to be sure that they are true improvements, and not attractive nuisances -- things that look nice but have predictably negative consequences or encourage unsafe practices or unsavory political outcomes.

I would like to show up but they have chosen a time that is difficult for people with day jobs.

in case it wasn't obvious, it is an open house style meeting so you don't need to be there the whole time. you can just show up any time between 3 and 7

Well, crap! No, I totally missed that. Gotta run, rejigger my afternoon so I can stop by.

I just read the whole plan and am looking forward to seeing what happens at the meeting.

@Lyle, I don't think a 'safe space' would impede someone from gaining transferable skills or experience. Aside from some commuting in Mt Lebanon (where it is easy to find empty residential streets), my first urban cycling experience was in Berlin. That's where I learned everything about riding in a city/in traffic. Obviously, there are PLENTY of safe biking spaces there, but I still learned enough to come here and deal with everything that's thrown my way. Just because you spend some or most of your time in a bike lane does not mean you don't learn to watch out for cars, doors, buses, and tram tracks. Even though the biking infrastructure in Berlin is great, there is not a cycling track on every street, so I still learned a lot, including filtering forward, weaving in and out of traffic, and every other slightly stupid thing I probably shouldn't do.

In conclusion (and apologies if I'm rambling), maybe bike lanes can help to get people comfortable with the fact that they are riding in close proximity to traffic, and then they will start to bike everywhere.

My parents still live on Beeler, and I lived there through middle-, highschool and most of college. I can't make the meeting, tried to talk my parents (who work for CMU and will walk past the meeting while it's taking place) in to going, and they responded with "they might give you a bike lane, maybe not, who knows how these things get decided". Not a pre-txgiving battle I'm fighting.

Any road diet for forbes would be an improvement, as well as making it more difficult for pedestrians to jaywalk. Inbound, jaywalkers didn't catch a convenient cross at the Beeler light. Outbound, they don't think they'll catch a convenient cross at the light, didn't catch one at Morewood, or want to avoid the drunken mess on the quad (when geeks get rowdy, ugh). There's no real reason for people to cross between Beeler and the end of the garage - there's nothing to go to on either side. Even the residence there the driveway is down at the end of the garage (which admittedly could use a mid-block ped controlled crosswalk, between that and the alum house), there's a staircase at the light at Beeler. Between the end of the garage and Morewood you've got drunken fratboys, work studies heading to Alum house & Uni. center, people just cutting corners, and people racing to the bus stop. Many of those subsets would destroy any landscaping put in place to keep them from jaywalking, from oblivion or spite or habit. The last one changes, the first two never do.

Single lane car traffic both ways is perfectly reasonable, since single lane was adequate before MaggieMo and single lane is adequate after Craig. Beeler and Morewood are the main connectors in there, both are single lane (beeler could use a bit of a lane width control diet, especially around the bend).

If the cars are slowed down and under control, cyclists of all flavors are better off. Two wide lanes and lots of space to accelerate is the antithesis of that. Lower left seems entirely pointless, like a gratuitous act of landscaping. Lower right... same thing. Upper right is the only one that makes sense. Upper left, before I read the caption, made me think of those abysmal suburban strip mall corridors like rt.8 or 51.

Top. 1 hr 15 minutes left.

Okay, I did get to this for a few minutes. I learned that it's possible that between 0 and 6 of the 9 pedestrian injuries could have happened outside of the intersections. It's impossible to know because of inaccuracies in the way the data were coded. So I have to eat my words there.

It sounds like they've got pretty solid plans to do what ejwme wants: add a couple of additional traffic lights on Forbes, timed along with the others to provide safer mid-block crossing, and to pace traffic, which should help discourage (ie, remove the need for) jaywalking and improve conditions for cyclists.

Any road diet for forbes would be an improvement,

See, this is the philosophy that I object to. I am sure that it's possible to screw Forbes up worse...

@rosielo:

I still learned a lot, including filtering forward, weaving in and out of traffic, and every other slightly stupid thing I probably shouldn't do.

I think you might be making my argument for me.

I was looking for a fifth diagram, containing something like that two-way bike lane we saw pictured in Montreal on a thread a couple days ago. The only real problem I can see with a setup like that is getting traffic from the opposite side of the street to that side at either end of the two-way-ness.

That's not a small problem, stu.

I went, tried to talk to a big bunch of people with nametags, but I had no idea what any of them did.

I let them all know the hazards of sticking a separated bike path somewhere, especially going down a hill. The one close-minded guy dismissed my concerns, telling me, for example: "leaves are everywhere, its fall! why should that make a difference?!" I could never be in this line of work, bravo Bike-PGH for dealing with these people for us. Is this kind of meeting really the best way to gauge public opinion on a project?

I also wrote my comments on their "rank these things" list, which didn't include bike stuff at all in said rankings.

I was upset by the fact that there was no box on the sheet to vote for bikes. That is EXACTLY why we needed all of you to show up and speak up on our community's behalf. It's one thing for BikePGH staff to show up. It's another when 20+ of us show up and tell them not to ignore bicyclists.

On the other hand it's pretty amazing that there were any boards drawn up showing bikes considering how our concerns have been dismissed in Oakland for years. Thank god the engineers and folks at CMU are at least interested in providing space for bikes.

Thanks again everyone.

@dan - sorry for your less than rewarding experience. Your impression is right -- a meeting like this is not necessarily the best way to gauge public opinion on a project or concept. But, sometimes it is a requirement of the project to hold a meeting like this, and sometimes, it's the project sponsor's best guess at how to reach out to the "public." Your reaction is, in large part, why I tend to lurk here, and over time why I have become pretty vocal here. I've come away from this board with some really solid material that we are using to advance bicycle improvements in a number of geographic areas. But, that takes a certain amount of time and energy. For me, it is a wise investment. But, in a world where we all are all being asked to do more with less, not all planners can make that same investment.

Bottom line -- use meetings like this to your advantage. Educate the "closed minded guy" about the dangers of leaves. It may open his eyes when he gets to the next project. Make comments when they make comment forms available, or follow up with emails to the project sponsor if they don't. Let them knwo what you think. Give them suggestions. Be reasonable, be polite, but also recognize that in some elements of this project you are both the "intended beneficiary" of the project and the "expert." Both parties have something to gain from your interaction.

P.S. Good call on the name tag observation. I am going to start being more descriptive and/or informative when it comes to what our nametags say at these sorts of meetings. It's probably less important that people know my name than it is that they know what I do, or why I am there....

(and no, I was not there in a professional or personal capacity last night due to competing obligations....)

thanks all for showing up. they haven't released the traffic data yet, but i caught a sneak glimpse. basically, the models says that a lane reduction wouldn't significantly affect traffic. some intersections would actually get slightly better, some might get slightly worse. basically, a majority of the traffic is going east, so losing a westbound lane is insignificant. especially if they are able to get a left turn exclusive phase onto morewood. i imagine that a chunk of the backup is from the forbes westbound going from one lane (squirrel hill, where a majority of the traffic is coming from) to two lanes, then back to one lane near craig. with that said, i left the meeting at around 5pm, and there was no backup on forbes at all.

i was disappointed when asked about why bikes weren't a bigger part of the study, and was told that well, the point of this was to study pedestrians. i'm sorry, but if you're planning on completely re-doing a streetscape, beyond curb to curb, and you don't study all users, you are effectively excluding certain types of people.

I was told that at the meeting, even though the first paragraph of the executive summary says This report addresses the major transportation safety and mobility issues within the Carnegie

Mellon campus, and will be incorporated into the CMU Institutional Master Plan 2010. It will be

utilized in the future as a core document to facilitate growth of the campus and transform the

surrounding street system into a pedestrian and bicycle friendly system, serving not only the

future campus, but also the surrounding neighborhoods.

I showed up at around 5:30, ranked the boxes and wrote that bikes can not be ignored and that a 25mph speed limit was still too fast in an area with so many people walking around.

The room was packed so I didn't really get an opportunity to talk to anyone.

The 25 mph speed limit wouldn't be so bad if that were the actual top speed. The problem is that it's ignored and the actual 85%ile speed is probably more like 40 - except when it's 0. I made a pitch for setting the light timing to 22 mph, though perhaps a better argument is that it should be set to exactly what the average speed is from Margaret Morrison to Craig St and back at 8 AM.

@dwillen, I guess it depended on who you talked to. I think you talked to the GAI guy. I heard him also dismiss someone else. I talked to the CMU guy and he was a lot more receptive.

Next to downtown, Oakland is probably the most-visited area in Pittsburgh with the high concentration of hospitals and academia. A redesign is critically important for our image as a city. Please keep us informed about what we can do to make sure that this consulting group doesn't ignore us as a community.

From what I could gather last night, this was the last chance the public would have any input in it. He said they would do designs and submit their recommendations around January(?), and then that would be that.

asobi and others who weren't able to attend. Please email your comments to mrainey@otma-pgh.org, breppe@andrew.cmu.edu, j.wojtyna@gaiconsultants.com

cc: patrick.roberts@city.pittsburgh.pa.us, jason.kambitsis@city.pittsburgh.pa.us

scott@bike-pgh.org, eric@bike-pgh.org

dwillen, I think that this is it for the pedestrian improvements, but the road rearrangements are longer-term. Maybe I misunderstood, but there was an awful lot of "maybe we will do thus and such" and "gee it would be nice if we could foo" and so on.

I didn't notice anybody from PADOT there. Did I miss them?

I asked, specifically, if I would have a chance to comment in January after his "recommendations" came out, and he told me no, once they do that, it will be not open to further discussion. This was the same guy who thought we could ride over branches and wet piles of foliage, so take it with a grain of salt, I guess.

there was a rep from PennDOT there. he wasn't identified as such, just know him.

the road rearrangements can be as simple as paint. if they're re-designing curb to curb, they need to not exclude a whole user group

I heard talk of actually moving intersections - like at fifth and morewood, or moving the entrance to the parking lot to line up with Devon and put a signal there. Both of which seem like good ideas to me.

what do you mean by "moving intersections - like at fifth and morewood"?

"The parking lot..."

The blind-turn entrance at Hamburg? Morewood lot? The garage lot neer Beeler?

When I worked at CMU, I would go around the long way in order to avoid turning onto Forbes coming out of the BoM lots.

Now they've put more buildings there. I haven't biked around there since then, so I dunno if that made things better or worse.

Moving intersections: morewood doesn't quite line up when it crosses fifth -- there's a jog in it. They were talking about straightening it.

"The parking lot" - between University Center and the garage across from Beeler. Apparently PADOT says they can't put a signal on Forbes there right now, because the entrance to the lot and Devon are too close together.

I hope they don't straighten the jog at Morewood unless it has been shown to be unsafe. In my mind this jog is a method of traffic calming.

Scott - my thoughts exactly - it sounds like spending a lot of money for some marginal "traffic flow" benefit - which translates into facilitating speeding.

PennDOT has adopted the generations-old idea that anything that impedes traffic is BAD. We, OTOH, have come to understand that impeding traffic is GOOD.

If we understand that we and they have entirely different world views, and approach them with that in mind, and more importantly make them believe we are right, then we will go a long way toward accomplishing what we want, which is NOT to get where we are going, but to STAY INTACT while getting where we are going.

That's an interesting thought, Scott.

Stu, I don't agree that we want to impede traffic per se. I do want to reduce the top speeds, and perhaps narrow the range of speeds, but above all I want to concentrate on how we move *people* through a given space, not just move the same few cars faster. I think that saying we want to impede traffic is inaccurate and feeds into all the worst misconceptions about bicycles on the road.

Point taken.

I certainly want to "impede" traffic (not on my bike, via road design) to the extent that it compels people to drive at a safe speed. Those little signs they put up certainly don't have any effect.

@Lyle - I think your response to the term "impede" in this context is a semantic distinction. I think Stu's point - and it was a good one, is that of traffic calming - and certainly placing impediments in the way of traffic is among the many traffic calming strategies.

At least I think that's what Stu meant.

Sure. But the words we use here become the words we use elsewhere, and if I saw stu on the evening news saying "oh yeah, we want to impede traffic"... particularly since impeding is written into the laws.

From Merriam-Webster:

"im·pede verb im-?p?d

transitive verb

: to interfere with or slow the progress of"

So, I dunno. Are you sure we don't want to "impede" traffic?

I think impeding traffic is a horrid idea that we should drop right now.

Impeding CAR traffic?

Yes, of course. It's immoral, dirty, and it finances the enemies of this country.

But on the whole, we want to encourage traffic.

Impede means to delay passage or prevent it entirely.

We do want to delay cars, but not all cars, just the ones that are going too fast. And we don't want to entirely prevent cars from reaching their destinations.

So part of impede's meaning doesn't apply to what we want, and the rest of it suggests that it affects all drivers, not just the bad ones.

"Traffic calming" is a much better phrase for this. It suggests only slowing down the drivers who aren't already calm. Motorists figure it's the other drivers who are the problem and need calming, not them.

While "traffic was impeded" is a good excuse for being late, "traffic was calm" isn't. Motorists prefer calm traffic too.

Please don't forget the differences between a word's denotation (what ALMKLM posted) and connotation (what Lyle's point is).

So yes, we can want to slow or interfere with the progress of the fastest cars on the road *and* we can NOT want to impede traffic. I believe that for any given stretch of road, there are multiple ways of accomplishing both. I also believe that for any given stretch of road, the likelyhood of The Powers That Be actually designing and implementing a plan that will accomplish both is slim. Add BPGH to the mix and the odds improve

===ejwme et al

I'm really fond of using the word "calm" rather than "impede" in this context.

It looks like everybody showing up to this is beginning to work!!! We're getting some traction!

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11062/1129298-298.stm

one of the earliest projects to be advanced could be the safety plan to take a traffic lane in either direction on the part of Forbes running through campus and turning those lanes into bike paths.

Mr. Reppe said planners had run models that indicate traffic flow would not be impeded because of planned traffic enhancements including installation of timed traffic lights. Also, going from four lanes to two means fewer lane changes by motorists that slow cars down on the four-lane road, he said.

The bike paths would utilize the existing paved street, so the work would likely cost substantially less than reconstructing the street, Mr. Reppe said.

Also, please note that this is an old thread. this meeting happened months ago. just thought the context was useful

that would be awesome!

i work at cmu. i could see just about all of this working out for them. but where on earth (or on campus, really) would they put a "pedestrian bridge"? try as i might, i can't think of a place that would warrant it.

Maybe the pedestrian bridge would span Junction Hollow.

The map included in the P-G's article shows a new building on the west side of Junction Hollow, next to the Carnegie Museums. People could walk to the rest of campus via the Forbes Avenue sidewalk that spans the hollow (Boundary Street), but they may want a more direct route to other campus buildings, farther south.

Over forbes ave?

It looked like there were one (or maybe two?) bridges from future parking lots (ugh) near the Carnegie Museum/Library complex over the railroad tracks and Neville Street to the main portion of campus.

it'd be nice if the panther hollow trail were linked to the campus more directly. would open up Glenwood as viable housing for the students, could boost their property values down there. It's a cute area, just damn inconvenient. Sure one could walk up and through that new building (shows age), but that won't do on a bike, and the thru-street is gone now (building built on top of it). that used to be my favorite shortcut to oakland.

The bridge is going to be used to link CMU main campus and the existing and new development that they have been doing on/around Craig street. The goal is to make it easy for central campus to connect right with Craig, so some additional ped-friend infrastructure will exist between the bridge and the craig/forbes intersection at some point as well.

A staircase from trail up to Forbes would be handy. Especially if it had a bike tire ramp so I could roll the bike instead of carry it.

EDIT: Even better, one of these.