Pittsburgh Highways... (Grove City, Beaver, Denver: gated, suburbs, congested)

[rugerjitsu]

Originally Posted by TheSquills

Pittsburgh is much older, on hilly topography, and has some of the oldest infrastructure in the nation. When building the first highways and the first wave of suburbs Pittsburgh was once the larger metros of the country. It will never have the convience of Texas super highways. Will it keep us back from every booming like a huge Texas city? Yes of course.

More importantly, will I ever mind if I don't have 5 cozy lanes to drive on everywhere I go? No. If I can walk in a old neighborhood, but have to deal with a crappy Pittsburgh ramp everytime I go to work, then so be it. What neighborhood will have to be blown out next for a new interstate?

good point...haven't thought of it that way!

[dugdogmaster]

TheSquills is right, what people fail to take into account, for the majority of the part, when debating, complaining or just talking about Pittsburgh's highway system, for one, is how old it is, and secondly, how limited it is forced to be due to the topography of the land. Frankly, I'm amazed at the ingenuity and what they have been able to do to make it more convenient.

One example: If you've ever driven Rt60/I376 South, when you're going down that long, steep, sloping curved stretch of highway before you hit the Shippingport/Beaver/Aliquippa interchanges, before you cross the Ohio River, look to your left, then look to your right. You're driving on the side of a mountain.

[BrianTH]

For what it is worth, the evidence of the last few decades proves that highway-building is a losing strategy when it comes to local transportation issues. Basically, whenever you build a highway for local transportation purposes, development ends up locating right next to the highway exits, and pretty soon you have congestion on that highway. The only proven way around this problem is to put tolls on the highway and jack up the tolls until congestion goes down--which no one likes. And there is in fact a viable alternative, namely lots of parallel surface streets instead of a few highways, leaving highways to their natural purpose (providing high-speed roads between, not within, developed areas).

Of course Pittsburgh's topography doesn't lend itself to lots of parallel surface streets either (if ever a city was waiting in vain for the jetpack or hovercar, it was Pittsburgh). But there are multiple surface street paths available if you know what you are doing, and the bottomline is we could spend oodles on new or expanded local highways and end up with little traffic benefit to show for our trouble. In fact, if we are going to spend oodles on anything, it should definitely be on public transit: in addition to the direct benefits to users, even a small diversion of people to public transit during rush hours can significantly improve congestion on local highways.

[Tombstoner]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

if ever a city was waiting in vain for the jetpack or hovercar, it was Pittsburgh.

Do we know we are waiting in vain?

[Katarina Witt]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

For what it is worth, the evidence of the last few decades proves that highway-building is a losing strategy when it comes to local transportation issues. Basically, whenever you build a highway for local transportation purposes, development ends up locating right next to the highway exits, and pretty soon you have congestion on that highway. The only proven way around this problem is to put tolls on the highway and jack up the tolls until congestion goes down--which no one likes. And there is in fact a viable alternative, namely lots of parallel surface streets instead of a few highways, leaving highways to their natural purpose (providing high-speed roads between, not within, developed areas).

<snip>

Well, that is true to a point, but usually traveling on the highway is still quicker. We learned this first hand when we had to take some furniture to our daughter in a rickety old truck that my husband thought was not safe to drive on the highway (I-25 in this case). It took about twice as long as taking the highway, which we took back home.

ETA: In the city, the development is already there, so that is not quite the issue it is when building a new road on empty land.

[ferraris]

Unfortunatley, Pittsburgh isn't very conducive to lots of regular streets running parallel, though.

[Hopes]

Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday

Unfortunatley, Pittsburgh isn't very conducive to lots of regular streets running parallel, though.

We prefer the dart board pattern to the grid pattern.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Tombstoner

Do we know we are waiting in vain?

I'm willing to bet that neither of the two things I have been waiting for since I was a kid growing up in Detroit will happen in my lifetime: my getting a jetpack/hovercar, or the Lions winning a Superbowl. That said, it is true I'd give better odds on the former.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

Well, that is true to a point, but usually traveling on the highway is still quicker.

Highway travel times will certainly tend to be quicker outside congested times or outside developed areas. The gap closes considerably otherwise, and it would be nearly non-existent if we did certain smart things with major surface streets (like go to roundabouts instead of signalled intersections). Again, this is all outside crazy topographic situations like Pittsburgh's.

In the city, the development is already there, so that is not quite the issue it is when building a new road on empty land.

Yeah, in cities the bigger issue is usually that highways are terrible uses of potentially very valuable urban land, cut up neighborhoods, and so on.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by ferrarisnowday

Unfortunatley, Pittsburgh isn't very conducive to lots of regular streets running parallel, though.

No, it is not. Aside from the aforementioned jetpacks/hovercars, I say we just start double-decking our surface streets. And then triple-decking them. And so on.