Advocacy News

> Protected bike lanes on Forbes Ave & Fern Hollow Bridge – The Fern Hollow Bridge is finally complete along with a protected bike lane from S Braddock Ave all the way to Beechwood Blvd!

> So Many Bike Racks! – We just wrapped up a 2-year project with DOMI to install 500 bike racks across the city. That’s 1,000 new bike parking spaces!

> Trail to Mairdale Neighborway – Construction on the City’s newest neighborway is complete! The Trail to Mairdale connects the end of the Chateau Trail through the Northside to Riverview Park via McClure and Woods Avenues. Wayfinding signage is the last step, and will be going in soon.

> Bike Lane Extension on Smallman & 21st – We’ve been waiting for years on a short but critical portion of the Smallman St bike lane to be completed through the core of the Strip District and across 21st St, and now it’s here!

> Mon Wharf Connector – The Monongahela Wharf Connector Trail was updated this summer to create a more pleasant and safe ride to The Point via the GAP Trail.

> Downtown’s Penn Ave bike lane improvements – Our push to “harden” the Penn Ave bike lanes to prevent drivers from parking in them is coming to fruition! The new concrete “pills” have been installed to create a protected bike lane from Point State Park to 11th St, and vertical bollards are coming soon to prevent vehicles from entering the bike lanes.

> Safety Improvements at 5-points intersection – Short-term pedestrian safety improvements have been installed at the Five-Points intersection of Beechwood / Wilkins / Linden in Squirrel Hill including painted bumpouts and increased bike lane markings. Further, more permanent improvements are in the works.

> New path under the 40th St Bridge – There is now a “tunnel” that cyclists and pedestrians can use to get under the 40th St Bridge without navigating a dangerous intersection or crossing train tracks.

The Gap to the Point project is an ambitious series of protected bike lanes connecting the Great Allegheny Passage (Eliza Furnace Trail) to Point State Park via an on-street route, while providing safe bicycle connections to the largest job center in Western Pennsylvania. A major innovation of this project are the raised bike lanes that integrate with major bus stops.

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Take Bigelow! Although only a block in length, this section of Bigelow is an important connection in Oakland’s bike network and helps connect Pitt’s campus for bikes and peds, while beautifying the area.

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Brighton Rd is Pittsburgh’s latest protected bike lane, extending northward and becoming standard bike lanes. Brighton Rd is one of the longest continuous bike lanes in the City of Pittsburgh.

In an attempt to bring calm to a wide and confusing street, the Negley Ave bike lanes provide a needed north-south connection between Highland Park, East Liberty and Shadyside, with some improvements to confusing intersections.

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In one of the more high temperature bike lane struggles in the City, PennDOT (the owners of the street) agreed to include bike lanes on Forbes Ave connecting our two major universities and leaving everyone wonder why it took so long for this in the student-dense neighborhood. The project also features Pittsburgh’s first “bicycle signals” and bicycle radar detection.

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While still not complete, the Allegheny Commons protected bike lanes added bicycle accommodations to an over-built, “urban renewal” era ring road in the Northside. Look for even more improvements (including Pittsburgh’s first protected intersections) on this ever-improving project.

The 2007 bike lanes on Liberty Ave in Bloomfield and Lawrenceville were our first successful push to carve out space on Pittsburgh’s streets for people riding bikes. At the time, the only other on-street bike lanes in the City were on Beechwood Blvd and the Highland Park and Riverview Park loops, painted roughly three decades prior.

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The East Liberty Blvd bike lanes are the City’s first Complete Streets project led by our efforts and introduced the phrase “road diet” into Pittsburgh’s lexicon. Going from four car lanes to two, it added two bike lanes and two lanes of parking, while making the street safer for pedestrians to cross.

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The West Ohio St bike lanes are a no brainer project that brought greater access to the park and to the historic Gus and Yiayia’s food cart.

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The Penn Ave bike lanes, connecting Downtown’s Cultural District and the Strip District, are the City’s first “protected bike lanes,” ie bike lanes delineated with a physical barrier. While removing the outbound lane of traffic was controversial at the time, the bike lanes have proven to increase safety for all users of the roadway (especially pedestrians), decreased congestion at several intersections (namely the 16th St bridge), and have at times carried a full quarter of all of the morning commuters on Penn Ave.

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Installed around the same time as the Penn Ave bike lanes, this is Pittsburgh’s first “Parking Protected” bike lane, providing safe access to Phipps Conservatory and Schenley Park, from Oakland.