There's an article in the PG that makes it sound like this will change, but they also have a list. Definitely good news to see that (parts of) Negley, Ellsworth, and Beechwood will be getting paved. Although, I'd rather they didn't pave Spring Way to be honest...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/pdf/201105/2011601pgh_paving.pdf
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11152/1150478-53.stm
whoa. rialto is on there. i think these roads are still up for debate. it's 2011 and council and the admin still haven't figured out how to equitably pave roads so that everyone is happy. are other city's still figuring this out?
Skimpy list, but they're paving second avenue from Ross to the 10th street bridge. That should increase the speeds of everyone.
oh man, that pdf burnt my retinas. Is this seriously how stuff still happens dahntahn? Yikes!
I also wonder how wide they will make smallman when they pave it… Could improve the strip commute a bit if they actually give a shoulder, instead of keeping 10 block gravel pit it is now.
I bet speeding and the number of drivers goes up on Reynolds. The terrible pavement has created a traffic calming effect.
in years past the news on WDUQ was fond of bringing up the fact that the City (county?) had purchased software to determine which roads to pave when based on use rather than where council members and their noisiest family and friends live, but weren't using it for what appeared to be absolutely no reason other than the typical "change is evil and bad".
And I've just realized I may be remembering "paved" but it could have been clearing snow instead.
Regardless, there is no way that we're being as smart as possible in our paving plans. But since they're repaving, does that mean they can put in bike lanes/sharrows? Can we be that smart?
They have been painting bike stuff at the time of repaving so I would expect some new stuff soon. Although they have yet to repaint the sharrows on Liberty Ave.
I'd love me some sharrows on Reynolds. Maybe they can also say "This is not a shortcut for Penn Ave, Slow the F down!"
"This is not a shortcut for Penn Ave, Slow the F down!"
+1
Reynolds is Pittsburgh's low hanging fruit for a "greenway."
@ejwme ^^that is the idea, but we're going to try to concentrate on the streets that are on the bike network first.
Brighton is an example where it's getting repaved, it's on the bike route, and the city should have the work orders in place in time for it.
ya'll are seeing this list at the same time as us (and most of the city staff), so getting the engineering done in time for the road to get repaved is a bit of a race
sigh. I guess that's good news erok, but it's still more than a little depressing that the powerst that be / the work to be done are so discretized as to necessitate a "race" rather than everybody all working together and planning ahead and all. Then again, I mostly earn my living because people at my company behave the same way - discretized and incommunicative work tasks, resulting in a super fun "race" to the finish.
I'll be happy to ride on any new or repainted sharrows on any road at all. That is something I can be patient for.
Could you guys post the plans, please? I just got a couple of cameras and would love to do some before and after videos.
"...discretized and incommunicative work tasks, resulting in a super fun "race" to the finish."
Whatever mental image I may have previously had of the nuclear industry did not involve that scenario. I'm going under my desk now.
How about Penn Avenue? Between Negley down to the Children's Hospital? That is a bumpy ride!
I'd love to know what rating the city's pavement management system has for each of these segments identified on the list.
Also surprised there's no coverletter, header or footer that explicitly insures this document is officially from DPW.
sorry edmonds, just venting a bit about suddenly getting paid attention to after two years of quietly being on the back burner (mixed blessing). The more I see of life in general, the more I think most organizations - public, private, commercial, defence, non profit - all work the same way: by the skin of their lucky teeth, and a lot of avoidable sweat. Humans are not the best pack animals.
+1 bikey girl. That stretch of road is the first that comes to my mind. It's kind of like potholes are the norm there and it's when you hit actual road that you get a bumped around.
see, I figured that part of the decision making is figuring out which roads are 50% pothole or more. At that point, it may make more sense to let the next winter or two take care of the remaining road surface and it may become smoothe again down to the substrate, lessening the repaving work. Perhaps Penn Ave is one that the DPW is allowing Jack Frost to finish his demo work before they repave?
The metric for which streets to repave should consider (a) current pavement condition (b) number of users (c) estimated time to repave (ie, there's no point in paving a road whose subsurface is so crappy that you'll just need to pave it again next year. Save your pennies, and then fix the damn foundation.)
Which council district it's in is just petty. Publish the metric, publish the inputs, and then you don't have to worry about claims of partiality. Oh, wait. Partiality is how politics works. Never mind.
This is not completely relevant, but interesting: http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601
There is a mention that the exponent in the equation correlating road wear to axle load varies with the condition of the pavement. In other words, heavy vehicles do much less damage to roads in good repair than to roads in poor repair. This suggests it would be practical to limit access to roads that are in disrepair in order to preserve what pavement remains.
Wasn't some part of Penn Avenue in some project to redesign the street top to bottom? Maybe they're holding off paving in the hope that they'll be redoing sidewalk placement and such before too long?
Wearing it down to the substrate would be great…if it weren't cobblestones and trolley tracks.
I would gladly volunteer huge amounts of hours on a given summer to make whatever block I lived on 'cobblestone free' and then have them pave on a proper base. I think lots of people would if it kept the streets from breaking down less than a year later…
"... it would be practical to limit access to roads that are in disrepair in order to preserve what pavement remains."
Local and state governments do this with signage, but who reads signs? Reducing the permissible load on a road or bridge affects local businesses that complain to their elected officials that their taxes are too high... so bureaucrats will continue to establish lower ratings and business will continue to ignore and/or remove the load rating signs.
In my view, limit access means "no through traffic by four-wheeled vehicles". You go through and install cheap temporary speed bumps in the middle of every block. It wouldn't be appropriate for many roads, but to use Reynolds as an example... the trouble is that there is a bus route on Reynolds, which I'll bet is a significant source of road wear.
@lyle i was in delaware recently, and happened to ride through these candlesticks that are placed within the right-of-way. They allow cyclists to filter through, but inhibit motorists from taking the curb lane - and if a motorist should wander in, then the rap of the stick should learn them.
They're paving Rialto? Without doing a pile of research, I think Rialto was repaved within the last 10 years.
Brighton, Second, Ellsworth, Penn, Perrysville - Good to see they're on the list.
they're repaving rialto st between ley and "cityline". surely this doesn't mean the hill, which, last i rode it, was paved quite nicely. it doesn't get much in the way of heavy vehicles as traffic on that section.
hmm, I half expected to see my street on here. the PWSA has been doing a great job digging it up for utility work and doing a seriously 1/10 assed job patching it. Think cold patch loosely thrown into a 6'x12' hole with no tamping. jerks.
Yay Stanton! Sick of doing repeats & dodging those holes.
When I work in Connecticut, the road my office is on is a lovely huge two lane thing with great sightlines and very little traffic - which would normally result in it being used as an alternate freeway (to the backed up one beside it). To avoid trucks using it as such, they installed roundabouts periodically on it - not at intersections, just in the middle of nowhere. They are of a radius that prevents big trucks from traveling on the road at all, and they keep cars from drag racing on it as well.
Not really relevant to Pittsburgh city roads, but it's an effective way I've seen to limit the size/speed of vehicles on roads. Yet another reason to like roundabouts.
Except here people would think they were some kind of new maid robots called Rhondabots.
Interesting - what road is that? I'd like to see it on the Googles. I really like roundabouts, though they do present problems for pedestrians, and especially blind ones.
Maybe that's only because the builders don't want to spend very much money to install pedestrian accommodations, or because the culture doesn't train all drivers to slow to 5mph any time there is a pedestrian standing at the edge of the roadway.
@ejwme The 3300 block of Brookdale Drive in Upper Saint Clair has a traffic calming feature similar to what you described. Not quite a roundabout but it does inhibit long trucks and higher speeds.
In the neighborhood I spent the first 4 years of my life (and have since gone back to several times), near Winterpark Florida, they have installed not quite roundabouts in the middle of the road, that force drivers to momentarily go around them. Wish I could find a picture/satellite view that explained that better…
I remember somewhere around Rockville MD having mid-block roundabout-like devices. The key was being able to provide fire truck access while also discouraging using the road as a highway bypass. I'll post a StreetView later if I can think of it. This was from 1996, IIRC.
Lyle - it's on International Drive in Windsor, CT. There are no sidewalks that I remember, though I think there are curb cuts or some such other islands of pedestrian infrastructure isolated in the middle of a high-speed corn field. The only reason I was comfortable walking there was because there was absolutely no traffic of any kind, very quiet.
I've seen weird landscaping road narrowing to single lane with stop signs mid-block as an approach that suburbanites take to control their teenagers, an example is here: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Logans+Ferry+Road,+Plum,+PA&aq=0&sll=41.91716,-72.72018&sspn=0.01734,0.040083&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Logans+Ferry+Rd,+Plum,+Allegheny,+Pennsylvania&ll=40.480208,-79.701106&spn=0,0.002505&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.48016,-79.701484&panoid=ru9y9HFuSbqCMEVMw9L5tQ&cbp=12,40,,0,0
Seems like the latter would allow fire trucks access, but also wouldn't necessarily prohibit large vehicles - but appears more intended to prohibit idiot teenagers from careening into the neighbors' lawn.
First link to the traffic circle is pretty cool. Do the drivers just speed up to it then slow down to get around the circle then speed up again? Seems like you would need five more of them for it to be successful.
The second link is sort of the same system as on Neville with the elevated train tracks. Should be yield signs though!
Dewey St in Edgewood could use the same treatment with success.
rsprake - if you're asking about my CT traffic (crop) circles, typically people do tend to go pretty fast there and slow down for the circles, I think they really are designed to inhibit trucks but not speeding. I've never driven there, so I don't know the real speed of traffic there - fast but not screaming.
BTW, the repaving on Beechwood started today. They've started by ripping up the bike lane pavement starting from 5th Ave and going up the hill.
Coming downhill wasn't a problem but I'm not looking forward to going uphill - I might take Shady until they're done.
They were tearing up the downhill travel lane when I passed by.
I just rode through the Beechwood @ Fifth intersection a couple of hours ago on my way to Reynolds. Both southbound lanes were torn up. There were two traffic cops. Both were yakking on cell phones and only one even noticed me going through the intersection 
Perrysville between Marshall and East was getting a nice layer of blacktop this morning (9/13). Finally. But the part between Marshall and the lower Federal intersection is what really needs it.
Looks like the paving crews went home, leaving the most needed parts untouched. From the city line (by the Ross bus garage) to Marshall Ave, the part that's US19, it's silky smooth.
10th street from the bridge to carson was paved. is niace.
