BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Iditabike training? http://www.iditabike.com/

City of Pgh worker was salting the trail from Hot Metal to the Baldwin Border this morning. He had a plow, but wasn't using it.

Probably don't need to plow much at this point. A little salt and the high temps should melt everything down quickly. Last night the hot metal bridge was mostly snowcovered, soon to be a sheet of ice if it didn't all melt off today. It was nice to see the 40th street bridge sidewalks totally clear last night, and the bayard st bike lanes dry as a bone (after being slush and packed ice yesterday morning).

I feel the same way. I would write my own thread similarly named: "What good are bike lanes when they're filled with parked cars?". Snow is expected over the following weekend and week so be aware of the delay(s) in plowing or salting.

Shaded and north-facing surfaces will always be in the worst shape. The best example of that is the ramp from Second Ave to the Hot Metal Bridge. It gets a lot of traffic but never gets any sun, so any snow that falls on it gets packed down quickly and freezes into an ice pack. I broke a shovel trying to clear it after the 2010 Snowmageddon event. The 2/20/2010 shoveling party thread Facebook album of my endeavors that day

If you are injured and have medical bills as a result of trails and bike lanes not being cleared within a reasonable amount of time, is there any legal action that can be taken?

It'd be a stretch, I don't know how many people have successfully sued an municipal/state authority for any accident in the snow. That said, there is prior caselaw I've seen, though it mostly refers mostly to people making claims about vehicle damage/accidents resulting from potholes. I'd assume you could make similar attempts regarding bike lanes?

I think you can win if you can show the city knew about that one particular pothole, had time to fix it, but didn't fix it. It's not enough that the city is generally aware that their roads have potholes, and that they aren't fixing them at a particular desirable rate. Seems like you'd have a stronger case, more similar to a successful pothole case, if somebody else told the city there was an ice problem (say) at a specific location (not just "on this trail"), the city had a reasonable amount of time to address it but didn't, and then the injury happened. I'm not a lawyer though.

a stronger case [...] if somebody else told the city there was an ice problem I would treat this as a suggestion (for all of us) to regularly 311 ice (and other) problems. Create a record so that problems get a history.