BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Until the lines are replaced, be prepared for Anarchy. I was passed (in a car) earlier this evening by someone in a hurry to get to the next jam up in front of Whole Foods. I truly hope he found some solace in that maneuver.

...because there isn't anarchy when the lines are there?

So glad they are redoing Penn circle. People cant seem to figure out how to drive in their lane around a circle. Every time I drive there and around allegheny center on the north side, I get cut off within inches. Can they pave highland also? It is literally painful to ride on two wheels there.

part of highland near the circle is closed, so maybe.

Also, the rightmost lane of penn circle @ penn is closed. It's stunning how few drivers can stay in their lane while turning onto penn. And then they have the gall to rage at others who do.

Center (at least from around Whole Foods to out past Giant Eagle) seems to be completely repaved. Now if they did Negley up to Ellsworth I would be golden. Pretty awesome indeed. (Excluding the fact that I rolled through some tar stuff and my tires are a little sticky, but worth the price)

I put my foot down on some tar and ended up getting it all over my pedal. Watch out for that stuff.

I'll wait for the day when they turn Penn Circle into a real circle, rather than just a round about way of spitting unsuspecting motorists towards Point Breeze. In a car I used to always try to make that left back on to the rest of the circle from Penn, only to get lost in the back roads of East Liberty / Homewood while failing to turn around. I know my way around now, but it took a few years of "but I wanted to go *that* way!!! poop!"

Pittsburgh - where we prefer our tourists lost and our natives surly.

ejwme: The effort is in the other direction - they're slowly "uncircling", At one time, that area was laid out as a classic grid. An overly-optimistic urban redevelopment plan imposed the circle traffic pattern and the associated islands. The current work at Highland and Center will get rid of that island there, and I believe the plan is to get rid of the one next to Target as well.

The current work at Highland and Center will get rid of that island there, and I believe the plan is to get rid of the one next to Target as well.

I'm pretty sure they also plan to reintroduce two-way travel to the section of Penn Circle between Highland and the new Target location.

An overly-optimistic urban redevelopment plan imposed the circle traffic pattern and the associated islands. The previous iteration of pedestrian-friendly planning: Put all the cars on their own roads where there aren't any peds, and let the people have free reign of the interior.

yeah, the circle is supposed to become two way

even better. (though I'm quite peeved about the Target, but that's another matter all together.)

My Stepdad grew up in that area, and said the circle killed business there. That and some housing shenanigans in the 60s with a fire and relocation and politics and racism. It'd be nice if some of that healed. It'd be nice if this helped it heal.

here's a shot of S'lib just before the demolition. 1955

you can see the church in the center right

here's another cool shot

sorry, here's another one. this is Penn and negley. almost looks like there's a cyclist in this shot

I think I recognize that pothole.

erok where are you getting these?

I love old photos of places I recognize.

I think you can see Motor Square (big dome) in the first one, too. It blew my mind when I found out that place was just a AAA/DMV. It looks like some fancy old exhibition hall or something.

I'm guessing here: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/images/pittsburgh/

I spent maybe 5-6 hours one night looking at old pictures of my neighborhood. Amazing stuff. I'm glad it is online.

The Motor Square Garden renovation was driven by an attempt at an upscale retail space, but the city wasn't quite ready for it yet.

MSG also houses a nursing school....

dwillen has the right webpage

Looking at those pictures, and seeing everything that's changed... it just makes me wonder why on earth there are any excuses for why it takes so long to change anything. in 100 years my entire municipality went from farm land to bustling suburb to pseudo ghost town. Why can't we put bike lane paint on streets faster than 11 miles a year?

Wow, what a photo archive. It's fun to compare some images from ages ago with a current street view, just about anywhere in the city.

I found a photo of Smithfield St looking northward across Water St (Ft Pitt Blvd) toward First Ave, taken 1936. The first three buildings on First Ave continue to exist, pretty much unchanged in 74 years. Here's the current street view. Now go to that site, click on Images, type "Smithfield Street" in the box, and pick photo #205. Its identifier is "715.3630462.CP".

this is a GREAT website. i found a pic from chislett st from 1908 and there is just an open field where my house now sits

i was bored tonight.... until now. thanks erok/dan...

has anyone seen that enormous photographic history of pittsburgh book? i need to pick up a copy...

"Pittsburgh Then And Now." The original came out in about 1990. There's an updated version, too, from about 2005. Kinda cool to get your hands on one of each.

I had a friend who happened to be crossing a street when the shutter clicked, and is preserved in the 1990 edition in front of the not-all-that-long-ago-torn-down florist shop at Liberty and Market. That scene alone is now very different today. Open space!

So can any of you identify where this photo was taken?

http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/getimage-idx?view=image;entryid=x-msp285.b030.f01.i02;viewid=ACCD2761.TIF;cc=hpichswp;c=hpichswp;quality=m800

Noah, first thing that comes to mind is Junction Hollow looking up toward South Oakland, but that's just a WAG.

Back in my day we had to spend hours and hours in the Pennsylvania Department at the Carnegie Library or in Hillman at Pitt to find these gems.

For example, this is where babies were made:

Ah the Hump District. I always enjoy showing visitors where the doors used to be on the Frick Building before the hump was removed.

I am never calling it downtown again. "Take this trail all the way to the end.. turn right on Grant St and you'll be in the Hump District"

Thank you sloaps.

I love how the one building was *planned* for the hump removal, and thus has windows that, when it was first built, were underground. I dont' remember which it was. Ducky Tour taught me that.

it just makes me wonder why on earth there are any excuses for why it takes so long to change anything. in 100 years my entire municipality went from farm land to bustling suburb to pseudo ghost town.Why can't we put bike lane paint on streets faster than 11 miles a year?

this made me lol. thanks for putting some of my frustrations so succinctly. i think it can be summed up to the cliche where there's a will there's a way. it takes a long time to build that will - unless there is some enlightened powerful person.

erok - I have lots of will. And I'm tempted to buy lots of paint.

Sometimes I think employment is the only reason I don't spend all my time in jail or breaking stupid laws.

well, if you want to start a business that specializes in installing pavement markings, we could use it around here. we'll keep you busy.

I know you might be joking, but I just did a google search - they exist. I thought it was just DPW that did it. Hunh. That research will entertain me for days. Maybe I could go legit.

come on ejwme, lets do it! We could spend our days painting lines, our evenings leading bike rides and our nights guerilla gardening! weeeee!

i'm not joking

i hope to have a blog post next week that will explain a bit more

now THAT's an American dream I can get behind.

erok - I'll wait patiently for details

Verona Road Painters, Inc., has a nice ring to it?

Provided you enjoy traveling, having a Woman-Owed Business Enterprise which supplies specialty pavement markings to DOT's and municipalities could be pretty lucrative. Government contracts require some participation from Minor-Owned, Woman-Owned or other Disadvantaged Business Enterprise.

you guys are total enablers. keep it up. I'm starting to see little reason not to do it at least part time.

Canadian, and done for free, but http://urbanrepairs.blogspot.com/

EDIT: Great quote from halfway down the page:

"They are perfect for Victoria with its narrow roads and tight budget," says OURS spokeperson, Yukon Duit. Sharrows are short for "Shared Use Arrow". They are bicycle-and-chevron markings indicating a shared use lane. The markings are used in cities across North America and Europe on roadways that cannot incorporate a full bike lane. [emphasis added]

Perhaps we could commission this device?

http://vimeo.com/6075609

I'm loving the Urban Repair Squad. That's going to kill some time.

Oh man, look at these hipsters: http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?med=1;q1=AIS.1991.22;rgn1=hpicasc_ci;sid=f5622c3dcae3c57fc71021bfe8716206;size=20;c=hpicasc;lasttype=boolean;view=entry;lastview=thumbnail;subview=detail;cc=hpicasc;entryid=x-9122.xv42.gt;viewid=XV42GT.TIF;start=1;resnum=8

Single speeds, perhaps fixies without any brakes on the handlebars?!?!

Taking a break from the bike polo match, as it was played in a more civilized age.

Why commission the Streetwriter when we've got Pittsburgh's very own Chalkbot?

@ Noah - The full record, as you perhaps saw, unhelpfully identifies it as "unknown Pittsburgh neighborhood." Before I read the other reply, I also had guessed it might be Oakland, but it's not much more than a guess.

yeah, well i suppose chalk might last longer than the paint they use

Three of those bikes have "rod brakes". I don't remember when the coaster brake was invented, and I can't see one on the other two anyway. Also, one has a headlamp of marginal utility. I suppose if there are no streetlamps and car headlights, you don't need as much light to see by.

Also, those girls look like they really rode. Still no cleats on the shoes tho

it looks like the rod brakes are the kind that press down on the tire itself, making me wonder whether this was before pneumatic tires. also, if you look closely on the forks, you can see the little pegs sticking out from the side. it's where people would rest their feet when going downhill because the pedals were going too fast due to the fixed gear

are you sure the pegs weren't for pulling sweet fixie tricks?

The caption says "Portrait of two men and two women". Yet there are 5 people in the photograph. Hmm.

I can't find any valves on the tires, so maybe they are solid. (This gives a whole new meaning to the expression "wearing down your brakepads"). Also, might be me but the bikes seem huge in comparison to contemporary ones.

The people were shorter then. Also, clearly, one of the people in the photo, isn't. Else the caption would say "three men." Photographic evidence of pre-Roswell visitations, I say.

My money is on the kid on the right being the alien... he just seems too young compared to the others.

At last, I can say: "Don't trust anyone under 30."

Ejwme: You start up a road painting service that resolves the bike lane issue in this city and you can count me in as someone with years of experience handling and maintaining the machinery and chemicals that do the deed. Level of seriousness: very high.

The guy in the middle of that photo is a badass. A no-brake fixie, with the bars 8" lower than the seat, that's a serious track position. And, whatever the exposure was for that photo, never blinked. Badass. He probably forced the others to ride enormous frames in a attempt to make them more manly. Didn't seem to be working. Except for the women.

I love both directions this thread is taking.

First, back to line painting (again): You want enabling? Try this video. Made in Pittsburgh by a well-known Pittsburgher, no less.

Second, back to the four^H^H^H^Hfive people in the photo, I too was looking at the tall man in the center. Those handlebars would be truly cool in any decade or century. And both the women look badass enough in their I'm-guessing-1915 way, on the ground as the one is. Women? On a bicycle? How dare they exercise their independence! They probably just came from a suffrage protest!

rob and ejwme- my level of seriousness and ability to get equipment also very high

I figured it was the unblinking giant that was the alien. He's probably the one that brought bicycles to this planet in the first place.

The date is listed as 1909-1930. They're crazy if they think this could have been taken in 1930. I'm almost positive this is pre-World War I.

Aaaand having another look at the page, I may be right (for once):

Source: John Gates Photograph Collection, ca. 1890-1910, AIS.1991.22, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh

Although if they can mess up a count of "number of people in this picture," they can probably fudge the year, too.

I was just about to post about the date - two ranges are given, one is 1890-1910, the other is 1909-1930. Assuming both date ranges have some form of legitimacy, that puts this photo at 1909-1910.

I need to understand what we're talking about in terms of painting lanes. The videos and blogs flying around on this thread are all guerilla, some involving arrests (haven't seen the local vid yet, going to have to wait for youtube access on a different network), but talking about it on a public forum where identities are easily deciphered lends an air of legitimacy.

So what are we talking about? I'm all for either one, or both. It's just a matter of approach and where the discussion takes place

@ejwme, we're just talking. Have you noticed that pretty much all of the threads on the board eventually wander off into some arbitrary direction? We're like that.

Anyway, I took another look at the photo and I've decided that this is actually a family portrait. The fellow in the middle is the father, the woman on the left is his wife. The rest are their children. Also, his bike is the only that appears to have a ringer; clearly the leader. (I won't speculate on the somewhat creepy doctoring of the daughter's eyes.) Sorry, no aliens here, move along.

As for the other sub-thread: I keep wanting to go to the Home Depot to buy a can of spray-paint. Then I want to go out and start tagging all these road hazards that I keep running into (and don't always remember). I'm pretty sure I could go through a couple of cans of safety-yellow or orange in a week or less. That would be guerrilla to me.

After looking through a shit-ton of those photos I can tell you that they didn't do much work in narrowing down the dates for the majority of the photos... some of them have a very wide date range that probably reflects the shooting career of the photographer.

Judging by the style of the hats, the number of buttons, the solid rubber buttons, and the leaves on the trees, my best guess is early June, 1903.

Someone should look at the EXIF tags and see for certain.

During the last trail cleanup (possibly earth day?) someone tagged all of the trail hazards along station square (killer roots anyone?)

I'm not suggesting any kind of geurrilla action as much as I'm suggesting a privately owned group that puts down legit lanes, so organizations like bikepgh didn't have to deal with local gov't to get a simple job done. Could be complicated...

Ahh, that was clean up people tagging the roots. I figured it was some city crew that went out there and did it. I was wondering why they didn't just fix the crap instead of tagging all of the hazards.

@robjdlc: I have noticed the tags on the SS Trail! Particularly the one on the Vlad-the-Impaler train rails, on the bit you'd have avoided had you followed the trail "detour" signs. Whoever took the time to do that is a hero.

I have to admit that I have much more confidence in local government that I have in "privately owned group". The latter are responsible to no one and, in the long run, are only interested in perpetuating themselves.

In a democracy we have the option to decide, regularly, at the ballot, on our collective priorities. The reason stuff doesn't just happen is because competing constituencies, in principle, all have a say. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. I don't have the energy to work for a dictatorship, so the current system suits me just fine. (Paradoxically, I probably have the energy to whack people who might want to do so.)

Anyway, individual action is key. Propaganda by the deed, but in a good way.

Bravo on tagging the South Side "irregularities" in the pavement. I had likewise assumed it was the city marking them for future attention.

Having worked as a contractor for several government agencies, I can safely say nothing gets done quickly. Ever. If you started now, you could be painting by fall of 2011. Unless there is money sitting around (that does not need to be approved by a council) with no one to do the work; in that case, I can be painting by the end of the week (if it stops raining of course).

Unless there is money sitting around (that does not need to be approved by a council) with no one to do the work

BINGO

I wouldn't be interested in perpetuating myself and merry band of helpers, I'd be interested in getting bike lanes and sharrows on pavement. Once that is done, I'd be free to seed bomb barren land, collect and recycle roadside litter, and otherwise pick up the tab where our elected officials seem to have missed the point by being mired in red tape and politics.

I don't trust people who do it for votes any more than I trust people who do it for profit. But I'm not interested in any of their excuses for why it costs so much or takes so much time. I'm interested in whether it gets done or not.

In the past 100 years since those photos were taken, 100% of the county roads were paved an average of what, 10, 20 times? - that's over 800 miles of county roads, so that's 8,000 - 16,000 pavings. By comparison, how many miles of bike lanes do we have painted, on any roads? Not paved, just painted. And how many times were they painted?

Yes, there's scads of industry surrounding road paving and car use, propping up politics and whatnot. What I'm saying is I'm not interested in that, that horse is dead. I'm interested in why, in 2010, they can't put paint brush to pavement or let someone else do it? Great, the past sucks - lemme get a hanky for the tears. So why are they allowing the present (and pending future) suck as well?

If they're looking for someone with LLC after their name and a bucket of paint to bid lower than anybody else to improve on the situation, fantastic, I'll get right on that. Heck, I'd swallow the cost and do it just for the kicks of putting one of those signs with lit up arrows on my bike and taking the lane down ARB

So Erok, if I buy paint, can you get the city to deputize me?

See, I take too long to type. Let Morningsider do it! I'd have to wait until the weekend.

This is from the historic website posted earlier in this thread: According to the pamphlet, "Pennsylvania Trolley Museum," horse-drawn street railways began in 1859 when the Citizens Passenger Railway started to operate on Penn Avenue to 34th Street, later extending to East Liberty, a trip lasting one and a half hours and costing sixty cents.

One and a half hours? The PAT apple didn't fall far from that tree.