BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

The rapid demo may have been a result of the structure being so severely damaged that it would be too dangerous to send anyone in anyway, or even to leave standing what was left. From what I saw on the news I would assume that to be the case.

To an extent, almost anything that goes in there that isn't an empty shell will be an improvement to the neighborhood. That intersection is really horrible as a pedestrian and really cuts off flow to what could be a credible mini business district from the rest of Murray, which, even lower Murray is doing somewhat better these days. What I want to propose, loudly (and in vain, but he), again, is that the topography of that 5 way intersection (4 of the ways are uphill) creates a uniquely good opportunity to take pedestrians above the fray. The ideal, concept-wise is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovenring Realistically, even if we can just get a couple chords, a couple of these connections done, that would make a huge difference to the neighborhood.

That's precisely what I proposed for the bike-ped solution around Saline-Second-Greenfield. A roundabout for cars underneath at the SqHill corner makes bucketloads of sense, too.

Wouldn't this proposal involve spending the entire city's road budget to create one really awesome intersection?

I'm thinking the city should change their road budget anyways. What if we only paved main roads and made the side and tertiary/residential low traffic roads just be crushed gravel?

Going a little off track here. Changing the intersection for cars is kinda outside the scope of what I was imagining. Not that the pedestrian infrastructure would be cheap exactly, but in principle the topography density and potential density in the area make this a candidate. For sure, as a pedestrian is the worst way through that intersection right now.

Putting a roundabout there would be way cool - and maybe not that expensive. Would involve buysing some real estate and training dirvers (umm ... "training drivers." Has that ever been succesfully done?) Also independent of a hovenring. The hovenring would not be cheap.

I don't see how a roundabout improves things for pedestrians there, by itself, it might make things worse, because there'd be multiple lanes of near constant traffic to cross.

You'd need both. During construction of whatever sort, there should be a defined route for pedestrians to use to avoid the area. We could do that today.

I'd move the crosswalk on Pocusset up the hill a bit so it doesn't put you on a death island then go from there (the south side of pocusset street just past the white building) over forward avenue, putting a pillar in the wedge between forward and murray (more of less at the location of the crumbling parking bunny mural), a ramp down to the eastern side of Murray and continue a branch of that ramp across murray to join an elevated walk that sits between the then TWO layers of pedestrian walk-in level development at the current location of the building that caught fire and Poli. Then continue at that level north across forward again up to the gas station, allowing pedestrians to skip at least the southern entrace to the gas station. Better still if they could walk over the whole thing and/or if the entrance to the gas station higher up the hill could be shut down. If there's no money, this wouldn't make my life better with what I need do with my kids. You'd leave a ton of gnarly problems, but the heavier foot traffic side of Murray you'd have made an effort to connect and enliven your business district by making crossing forward better and creating two layers of retail in a key spot.

Since this is getting touted as the "gateway to Squirrel Hill" it certainly seems fair to suggest that complete streets should be part of the gateway.