Does Pittsburgh have a strategy.

[slamont61]

Yinz are lucky you don't still have to follow a Yellow, Blue or Green Belt. Yep, Pittsburgh had a plan....

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by slamont61

Yinz are lucky you don't still have to follow a Yellow, Blue or Green Belt. Yep, Pittsburgh had a plan....

funny you say that...there was an interesting thread maybe last year on the color-coded belt system. give it a read if you can find it.

[szug-bot]

Originally Posted by fleetiebelle

That is maddening, but sometimes as a driver it's maddening when a steady stream of pedestrians means that you never get to make your turn. Like, sometimes during rush hour, only one or two cars can turn from Smithfield onto Carson near station square because so many commuters and tourists are crossing to get to the incline and the T. I'd love to have a protected all-way cross there.

I've noticed lately, and have witnessed it practically every single day at this point, that on Grant Street african-americans will walk against the light, directly across the four moving lanes. It's perplexing, and it is only african-americans, for some reason.

[erieguy]

Originally Posted by lprmesia

Something to consider though, is that people enjoy varying degrees of density. Some folks choose to live Downtown or in the South Side due to the conveniences of living in a highly walkable area close to all amenities. Some folks like to live far out where they have to drive for miles to get to their closest neighbor. There's a million shades of grey in between.

It's sometimes frustrating to see some types of folks try to dictate how other types of folks live their lives in those areas.

1. When the city crowds tell the car folks in Cranberry that they shouldn't drive, should have more sidewalks, and decry their lack of density. That model doesn't work for the Cranberry.

2. When the Moon Township crowd tells city folks that their buildings are too old, their houses are too close together, and their streets are too narrow - that model doesn't work for the city.

3. When the bike lane folks of the South Side Flats tells the car dependent folks living in the South Side Slopes that they need to get rid of their on-street parking for bike lanes on 18th Street because "it won't hurt you to walk a few blocks, cars don't make sense, you can just bike everywhere" - telling that to people who've put down hundreds of thousands of dollars for their home to give up their conveniences doesn't go over well, nor does that work for families with kids, people with disabilities, etc.

There's varying degrees of grey. It's the reason Baskin Robbins has 31 flavors. I'm not saying don't change things at all, my point is that large scale/broad/sweeping changes tend to not work because the wants/needs/demands of an area don't change overnight to a homogeneous neighborhood with like minded people.

I was coming home from a long road trip the past weekend and thought about how nice a self-driving car would be for an event like that. Hundreds of miles on the turnpike can be pretty dull, I'd rather just take a nap. But city driving? I'll take the wheel. I still drive a manual transmission because I race cars and I enjoy the feeling of mechanical grip. I like the conveniences of the city, but still prefer to have a car with off street parking. Taking Uber/Lyft to get everywhere doesn't work for me since I sometimes need to get from A to B quickly and can't afford to wait 10-15 minutes. It's also not always very cost efficient. Biking isn't fast enough to get me from A to B and doesn't work if I have to transport things.

My point is that changing user habits tends to be more successful if the change is based off expansion of an opportunity as opposed to the elimination of another. Uber and Lyft didn't need to eliminate Yellow Cab to be successful, nor did they need to eliminate public transportation - they catered to a need and improved the process. The Big Dig in Boston is still congested after all that expansion - but the overall throughput and flows are higher than what they were previously - it just likely means that even with the expansion it still wasn't enough to meet the demand.

Bingo.