Parkway West WORST Congestion outside NY & LA (Pittsburgh, McKeesport: hotel, employment)

[SammyKhalifa]

Originally Posted by SolitaryThrush

Amusing to watch the traffic news each morning, where day after day after day after day traffic is backed up each morning and each afternoon in all directions.

Without viable public transportation in the area, nothing will ever change or improve. Of course few people use the buses or subway because they don't go anywhere . . . and they don't go anywhere because nobody uses them. With them cutting almost all the routes and eliminating park-n-rides, it's only going to get worse.

Stupid.

Put park-n-rides at each exit on the parkways, make dedicated bus lanes (and teach Port Authority how to run their buses on time), and run regular, frequent buses into and out of town during rush hours. Hell, toll the parkways to make even more incentive for people to use public transportation. Not everybody needs to drive by themselves to work in an SUV.

Tolling the parkways would only serve to back things up even more. It would be a disaster.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by SolitaryThrush

Of course few people use the buses or subway because they don't go anywhere . . . and they don't go anywhere because nobody uses them.

As an aside, a lot of people actually are using local transit for commuting:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/24426794-post1094.html

Certainly a lot could be done to further increase transit usage with smart investments, but I think it is important to note the existing system, particularly after the recent redesign, is already quite well-used.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by SammyKhalifa

Tolling the parkways would only serve to back things up even more. It would be a disaster.

Undoubtedly you would use exclusively "open road" tolling, likely a combination of transponders and license-plate recognition:

Open road tolling - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[mjost7]

Originally Posted by scottrpriester

Ahhh, nice to see at least one other person that sees through all this "poor design, it's because of the terrain" nonsense.

Let's also not forget about educating the masses on handling downhill grades and maneuvering bends in the road.

Nonsense. Even if we could improve driving ability, we could not change it enough to eliminate congestion.

The real behavior we could change is the kind dealing with working from home and mass transit, etc.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by mjost7

Nonsense. Even if we could improve driving ability, we could not change it enough to eliminate congestion.

No, don't you understand? With proper driving behavior the peak capacity of a highway lane becomes infinite.

[airwave09]

The argument that the parkway west can't be significantly improved without spending a dump truck full of money is flawed, IMO.

All that needs to be done is to extend the 3rd inbound lane from Greentree down the hill and make it separate and become an overpass adjoining with 51 north.

This would provide a simple and unimpeded alternative for traffic heading to areas north of downtown without having to go through the tunnels, which would in turn relieve some congestion from the horrid banksville road interchange in front of the tunnels as well.

This would give people an actual incentive to take 51 over the west end bridge, because it would noticeably save them time. They would get to choose at the top of the hill (or earlier) to take this route and would have their own dedicated lane to get there while bypassing most of the traffic.

As it is set up now no such incentive exists, because the current exit for 51 north is literally right in front of the tunnel, so you have to sit though all of the tunnel traffic anyway. At that point it is almost always quicker and easier to just continue on through the tunnels to your destination.

[mjost7]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

No, don't you understand? With proper driving behavior the peak capacity of a highway lane becomes infinite.

Right, I know.

I will agree with the other posters that we could conceivably improve perception/reaction time (a little, maybe through some video games?) and gain a better understanding of the rules of the road through a training course, but come on, we're not going to solve congestion this way.

[pman]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Why should this be such a high regional priority? The bulk of the peak flows are going into and out of the city, not between those two particular areas.

I suppose that route through the city is sorta like a spine line

[h_curtis]

Originally Posted by Blackbeauty212

Any guesses on how much worse it'll get once theres No Public Transit????

This is great news for city folks and also the tree huggers!!! Thanks for the great news! As the city gets more popular and the horrible urban sprawl becomes more and more in the past, things are truly looking up. Thanks for this uplifting report. Hope more and more become city dwellers and less people cut our wonderful trees down and put up vinyl sided homes, like you see all over the place in Murrysville and beyond.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Geeo

Traffic on the parkways was pretty steady until the 1960s, I believe. There was no Monroeville or Robinson to speak of, no suburban office parks clogging the access roads, so there was less traffic. Most people worked in the city,

Most people really didn't work in the city back in the day.

They weren't working at suburban office parks, but they were working at the major suburban industrial plants like the Duquesne Works, Nat'l Tube, Continental Can, Westinghouse Electric, Homestead Works, WABCO. They are all gone, or greatly reduced in size in our current era, but they did contribute a lot to traffic on the parkways as people made it to work.

By the 1950's and 1960's, most steelworkers were folks who commuted to Homestead from North Hills or to WABCO from West Deer. The day of Westinghouse Electric getting their staff from those who live in East Pittsburgh and nearby was long over.