BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

this is a really dangerous area of a really dangerous road. there will be a candlelight vigil as part of the rally from what i understand.

I'm surprised the website doesn't have a link to this anywhere. That would be incredibly helpful.

I also don't see any contact info for the organizers.

Joe,

This all has happened really fast.

There is a map under the "Why" on the "Make the Curve Safe" website.... (although perhaps the map is not very visible).

The 'Make the Curve Safe' website does show the groups behind it: 'The Urban Tree Forge' and 'The Prop Shop'... 'the forge' was John Metzler's company, and Steve Weiner, the owner of the Prop Shop, is the one who initiated this petition (see statement on the 'Why' area as well). He's also the first person's signature.

http://www.wpxi.com/news/23549103/detail.html

"Police questioned the driver, but did not file charges. They are still investigating the cause of the accident and are trying to determine if the trailer was properly attached to the truck."

Well, considering it came loose and struck and killed someone I don't think there's a whole lot of "determining" to be done... sad story.

they found that it was not attached correctly but the driver, who, to his credit, was the person to call the ambulance and did not leave the scene and who i have heard is a good person and probably devastated by this, got a moving vehicle violation ticket. pretty light penalty, but chances are uhaul attached the trailer to his car, and he just helped his mom or friend move, and went to return it. he may never have actually taken it off himself. we dont know.

the uhaul place is almost right next to where john was killed. the driver was returning the trailer.

full disclosure: john was a friend of mine and i had the privilege of working closely with him on some projects. he was a fantastic human being. his services were packed and we planted a tree for him on sunday with what seemed like 150 people.

also, seriously, i would not reccomend riding a bike to this area. it is seriously unsafe and cars fly down there. you may be able to get part of the way there via negley run but coming back you will want to have a LOT of lights. It is not a safe place to bike, unfortunately... it is near the racing oval.

Thank you Caitlin for the additional information. Yeah, I was at the memorial sunday too. My friend Jason was a close friend of his -maybe you know him too? He's an Urban Three Forge member.

Anyhow, cyclist, pedestrian, and even a regular person driving this area of Washington Blvd..... THIS ROAD is not safe for anyone, for what I know -and quoting: 'In just the past 6 years at least 3 people have died and countless accidents have occurred at this curve on Washington Blvd'

If you care and are willing, please sign the petition!

Thank you!

i used to work for uhaul, and the only think i can imagine is that it wasn't attached properly to begin with, or the guy took the trailer off, and didn't put it back on right. they are unbelievably easy to attach to a hitch. many people don't put the safety chains on because they "do this all the time." We were supposed to make sure that every trailer was properly attached. that included making sure the hitch that was on the person's vehicle was a hitch rated to that traier, and the ball was the correct one.

Good candidate for a diet, perhaps? narrow the four lanes to three (middle turning lane), with prominent bike/ped sidewalk or pavement lanes.

street trees too

yeah it could use trees and a road diet. everything from hamilton down is pretty bad, including the side roads.

i know jason. he;s awesome. we have a piece of his work in our office

Good candidate for a diet, perhaps? narrow the four lanes to three (middle turning lane), with prominent bike/ped sidewalk or pavement lanes.

Indeed, but I don't believe there is a single person or entity in the area with the political clout to make this happen.

I agree that road is dangerous, particularly for cyclists, and something should be done, but a total makeover doesn't seem to make sense. Unless you are riding to the U-Haul, why are you riding on that road? I know a lot of cyclists use that road to get out of the city on longer rides, but it's pretty easy to take a lower traffic route to get to the Allegheny River. I would love to see a bike route from Negley Run to the Oval, but there are tons of roads in the city I'd rather see get a diet than Washington Blvd[1].

Perhaps it's a "build it and they will come" situation--if the road was more ped/bike friendly, more bike/ped friendly businesses would open.

[1] I wouldn't mind seeing the intersection of Washington Blvd and ARB/Butler Street get a bit of a make-over--lots of cyclists use that stretch to get out of the city, and by golly, it sucks.

I signed the petition, I used to take that road 5 days a week to research in Aspinwall. It is a terrible stretch of road by bike.

I used to take that road 5 days a week to work in Blawnox. Outbound only - I didn't like the blind curve uphill inbound. The problem isn't the road, it's the drivers. One of those fatalities was a guy with a brand new motorcycle who went flying up the road, overcooked a left turn and wiped out in front of oncoming traffic. Really hard to blame the road for that one.

The knee-jerk response that "this road is badly designed" is emblematic of a pernicious theme in our culture -- nobody is expected to bear any responsibility for their own actions behind the wheel. The design of the road is fine. It's posted for 35 mph and it's SAFE at 35 mph. The problem is that people drive 65 down it, and nobody gives a damn, and when something inevitably goes wrong, people blame the road instead of the driver.

They don't want to blame the driver, because then, they'd be pointing the finger at themselves the next time they do something stupid like drive a trailer without the safety chains attached, or rent a truck that they're not qualified to drive, or yak on a cell phone while eating a Big Mac and tuning the radio.

This is the second time in recent memory that a runaway trailer has killed someone in Pittsburgh.

The other guy was charged with vehicular homicide and manslaughter. This guy is being charged with a few things, maybe not quite as severe but the police and DA certainly know whose fault this was.

(though I'm not convinced that either one was an accident. There are people out there who leave the safety chains off on purpose! Just like the ones who drive with only parking lights on to "save gas"... )

So now people want to put up flashing lights? What, they think that the reason people fly down Washington Blvd is because they don't KNOW that they're speeding? People want to lower the speed limits? I guess if it's posted at 25, maybe people will only drive 55 instead of 60?

They say they want to block the "inside lane" but I can't understand how this would work without putting cyclists at even more risk.

I don't understand how private citizens get the authority to block off a road just because the police say it's okay. Aren't there supposed to be engineering studies for things like that?

It's posted for 35 mph and it's SAFE at 35 mph. The problem is that people drive 65 down it, and nobody gives a damn, and when something inevitably goes wrong, people blame the road instead of the driver.

+1

The city used to be fairly active in having police enforcing the speed limit (popular spots were the entrance to the police firing range across from the Oval, and near the bad curve), but it's been awhile since I've seen _anyone_ pulled over for speeding there.

As with most roads in the city, if you actually drive the speed limit there, you will experience lots of horn honking, bumper-riding, and tight passes.

It's posted for 35 mph and it's SAFE at 35 mph. The problem is that people drive 65 down it, and nobody gives a damn, and when something inevitably goes wrong, people blame the road instead of the driver.

As with most roads in the city, if you actually drive the speed limit there, you will experience lots of horn honking, bumper-riding, and tight passes.

+2

Very good points... yes, if people drove within the speed limit, many situations and accidents like this would be avoided, but hating to admit it, to be able to make cars/drivers change their driving patterns -at least- in this area, would be rather hard. To be able to re-design this whole boulevard would take a lot of political work to do it.... so, what to do? Go to the next line of defense, like placing barriers and other more affordable preventive measures, to protect not only the people who work on this area, but cyclists and other cars as well.

It strikes me that simply strictly enforcing the speed limit at various points on the road for a few weeks is the best solution--not only does it make motorists think twice about speeding, it also generates revenue for the city.

Perhaps some of that extra revenue could toward building barriers.

That reminds me--this is vaguely similar to the situation that precipitated the barrier along Ellsworth Avenue at the (old) Katz residence. Many moons ago, there was a similar issue of several bad accidents with cars overcooking that slight jog in the road (I don't believe there was a stop sign there, either). The Katz family, along with others in the neighborhood, successfully lobbied to get the barrier installed.

I don't think Washington Blvd is safe for biking, even if cars stick close to the speed limit. My impression is that the road is the same vintage as Bigelow Blvd or Saw Mill Run Blvd. Washington is slightly safer then thm, IMO, but no enough.

The lanes are too small for a bike to be safe without taking a lane, the traffic is too fast for a bike to keep up, and both the curves and level of traffic make changing lanes difficult for drivers.

It would be nice if they made it one lane, but car traffic would get awfully backed up and, even with a safe bike lane, there wouldn't be enough bike traffic to justify it.

Like, Bikeygirl, I don't see much in the way of feasable changes that would make it safer.

Go to the next line of defense, like placing barriers and other more affordable preventive measures, to protect not only the people who work on this area, but cyclists and other cars as well.

Let's just make sure that any such preventative measures really DO protect cyclists.

If people want to do something affordable and preventative, and they're willing to put some of their OWN time and effort into the game instead of just demanding that someone else do something, they should take turns driving a truck up and down the road at the posted speed limit. Call it a pace car. Change the culture. Rent a rolling billboard to drive up and down that road as John's memorial.

@Mick: you don't have to keep up with traffic to be safe taking the lane. The only thing that is needed is that motorists do not drive faster than their sight lines. Maybe you and Bikeygirl are right and this isn't likely to be made safe for children and weavers. But that doesn't mean it's hard to make it safer for most of us. Plenty of similar roads with 35-mph speed limits are safe elsewhere in the country.

This morning during rush hour, the Edgewood police were mounting a blitz on motorists with expired stickers. Easy money. It couldn't be hard for the Pgh PD to mount a blitz on speeders on the curve. Heck, mount a blitz on expired stickers on the curve, and the rest of the motorists will see the lights and think it's a speed trap and slow down anyway.

Washington Blvd does make an atrocious cycling road, I don't think anyone here has any doubts about that. For now I think the only practical option is speed enforcement and I think the best way to do that is to install overhead flashing lights approaching each direction of the downhill curve and to have regular patrol cars on the "flat" of that relative S-curve between the two Larimer-Lincoln arch bridges. Like Lyle and others have been saying that would be "easy money" for the city. I have to admit that even though I do slow around that bend it's hard not to casually get up to a speed of 45mph or more.

If there was safety planning into this years ago, an easy solution would be an additional traffic light somewhere because there is a huge distance between the light at Frankstown Ave and the one at Negley Run Blvd. Having one or two traffic lights along that stretch would likely decrease the instances of "excessive speeding" and make it somewhat safer for bikes, but I seriously doubt it could ever be bike-friendly.

I think our best hope right now is that bike lanes/markings are added along Negley Run Blvd and a path along the west side Washington Blvd to the oval and hopefully further linking to an Allegheny River Trail and the Highland Park Bridge. I would have no idea however of the engineering required to alter the crazy intersections near there, but I would think the bike path along Washington Blvd would be much simpler.

Traffic engineering best practices discourage the use of lights and stop signs as speed control. I don't completely understand why, but those guys are the experts. Automobiles jackrabbitting from one stop to the next is very bike-unfriendly -- a steady flow of slow traffic is much better.

Too many cyclists can't start smoothly from a stop, or fall over sideways. (Though I don't see many of these on Washington Blvd)

I don't like stop lights because I impede other traffic more when I have to accelerate from a stop.

How about somebody randomly bounces a beach ball out from the Prop Shop once an hour or so?

Seriously, the bottom line is that people will take action to protect themselves from danger but will not inconvenience themselves to avoid killing someone else. The threat that motorists pose to others must be reflected back as a threat to the motorists themselves or they won't change their behavior. I would much prefer that threat be the threat of legal punishment, rather than the threat of vigilante action.

Ok everyone, my last post for this -for now...

The Awareness Rally is TONIGHT, where the organizers are trying to have a quick, but hopefully effective, public show of support. We are meeting at the curve at 8pm TODAY Thursday May, 27th. Please arrive safely and park wisely if you drive there, as there is no good parking at the curve. You will need to park up the street or across the street. Please be careful!!

The overall goal is to quickly form a human guard rail holding posters. We don’t have much time because the police are only blocking the inside lane for 30 min. So we will have to organize and then disperse.

I myself will be there with my bike because, besides wanting to show my support to the people who work on this area, I think it would be nice for us cyclists to feel safe riding that road as well.

SO.. maybe see you there!