Extend the Penn Avenue Cycle Track
On February 16, a bike rider came to the end of the Penn Avenue cycle track and started on the roundabout route to the Smallman Street bike lanes. They turned right onto 16th Street and were turning onto Spring Way when they were hit by the driver of an SUV. They were taken to the hospital in critical condition.
The Penn Avenue cycle track has been an overwhelming success since its installation in 2014. It has seen consistent ridership with as many as 3,753 riders in one day. BikePGH compared crash data from before and after the cycle track and found that crash rates had improved for all users, bikes, cars, and pedestrians alike. When the cycle track was installed, then-Mayor Bill Peduto said that it was an on-ramp to greater infrastructure improvements, but since then, things have largely stalled in the strip. While bike lanes were installed on Smallman Street, the route connecting them to Penn Avenue is circuitous, slow, and unsafe. This is where the February 16th crash happened, and if the Penn Avenue cycle track had simply been extended through the Strip, the rider would have gotten to their destination safely.
So, why doesn’t the Penn Avenue cycle track extend through the Strip? The Cycle Way Plan, prepared by HDR for the Department of City Planning (and predating the modern Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, or DOMI), shares some disappointing, if predictable, answers. From the Plan:
The loss of one travel lane would negatively impact traffic flow and operations in the District, particularly for large delivery vehicles and during the AM peak hour with inbound commuting.
Note that this would only be the case if one of the travel lanes was turned into a parking lane, thus turning the cycle track into a parking-protected bike facility, which are currently illegal in Pennsylvania, so the point is somewhat moot. But also, traffic operations should not be the primary concern on an active commercial street like Penn Avenue. You want drivers going slowly, not threatening pedestrians, and even looking at the storefront signs as they travel slowly through.
The loss of one parking lane was identified as a concern from business owners who indicated parking is a premium within the Strip District and would negatively impact their deliveries and customers (particularly those purchasing in bulk quantities).
Parking is not at a premium in the Strip District: the DOMI Strip District Parking Study found 3,300 publicly available parking spots. What business owners see as a lack of parking in the district is actually a lack of parking right in front of their doors. As the spots aren’t marked on Penn Avenue there’s a little wiggle room when it comes to how many there actually are, but in general, you can fit about 40-50 cars on one side of the street between 18th and 22nd Streets, in the core of the Strip District. That’s less than 2% of the 3,300 parking spots identified in the Parking Study. But these spots don’t end up serving a ton of people, because of the nature of the Strip District.
When I was but a wee Dave, growing up in Wexford, my family would come to the Strip District for special occasions like birthdays or the end of the school year. We never parked on Penn Avenue because we were suburbanites and, as such, would never parallel park if there was another option. We would usually park under the Veteran’s Bridge and then walk up and down Smallman and Penn for a while, looking at T-shirts we weren’t going to buy and wondering how old the pork leg in the window of Penn Mac was, before we would sit down for a meal somewhere.
The point being, most people who come to the Strip don’t park right out front, run into a store, and run right back out again. The Strip is a destination, and many people who visit plan on spending a few hours there, visiting multiple stores and just having a pleasant time in a unique urban environment. As such, when they park, they leave their cars for a long time, and the lack of turnover means that the parallel parking on Penn Avenue doesn’t serve a large amount of the Strip District’s customers.
I wanted to see if I could get some data to support my position, so I sent my drone up over the Strip from 18th to (almost) 22nd Streets. I counted the cars parked on the south side of the street that would be removed if the cycle track was extended and noted how many came and left. I counted 42 cars in that stretch when I began filming, and by the time my battery died twelve minutes later, only seven cars had left and eight more cars had arrived, meaning that in those twelve minutes, only eight vehicles were served. If we assume 1.5 occupants per vehicle, that’s only 12 people. If we assume this turnover rate of eight cars for every 12 minutes throughout an 8-hour day (which is unlikely considering this video was taken at noon on a Saturday, one of the Strip’s busiest times), that comes out to 320 cars, or 480 people. with 2.8 million visitors a year, or an average of 7,671 per day, these parking spaces are only serving 6% of the District’s visitors, which could easily be accommodated elsewhere. You can watch the video below, it’s far from thrilling but if you feel like verifying my work, here it is.
To double-check, I wanted to see if people who used the businesses on the south side of Penn Avenue between 18th and 22nd came out and got into cars on the same block as the business. To check this, I visited the Strip three times, at 6:00 PM on a Sunday, 12:00 PM on a Monday, and 12:00 PM on a Tuesday, and observed shoppers and diners on the strip. Of the 86 people I observed, only four got into cars parked on the same block and left. An additional four left one business, stopped by a car parked on the same block, and then went somewhere else. This confirms that most Strip District visitors do not need parking right in front of the business they’re there for. See the data below.
All of this is to say, we shouldn’t drop a discussion about a bike facility because “The loss of one parking lane was identified as a concern from business owners.” The data doesn’t suggest that removing the parking would have a significant negative impact on those businesses, and there’s a lot of data that suggests it would actually have a positive impact. Most people who use these businesses will have no trouble walking a to-go bag or a new shirt to a car they parked somewhere else nearby (not to mention, with all the new residential development in the Strip, more and more customers will be making their entire journey on foot). And deliveries and bulk purchasers already don’t use the parking lane, because parallel parking is hard, especially for a larger vehicle, and as long as double-parking in the Strip isn’t actually enforced, they’ll just keep doing that, which as far as I’m concerned is fine.
It should also be noted that many business owners, particularly those that are located away from the historic core of the district, understand the importance of safe bicycle access to their businesses. Many of these businesses are newer or run by younger owners, who aren’t stuck with this idea that parking is integral to accessing their business. BikePGH partnered with some of these business owners to make the video below.
The last reason the Cycle Way Plan rejected extending the cycle track was the most eye-rolling. From the plan:
The loss of any on-street parking is also a concern because the parking currently provides a physical barrier between the roadside pedestrian environment and the street, and keeps pedestrian activity better constrained from spilling into the street. However, the implementation of a cycle track would remove this physical barrier on one side of the street. While a cycle track would still provide a buffer between the sidewalk and vehicle travel lanes, the lesser usage of this facility compared to the vehicle travel lanes would make pedestrian spillover into the cycle track and towards the street likely; this spillover would not only result in the loss of the effective buffer to vehicle traffic, but would also result in bicycle-pedestrian conflicts within the facility intended for exclusive bicycle use.
So cars are needed to keep pedestrians from spilling into the street. But why do we want them to keep from spilling into the street? The Strip District is one of Pittsburgh’s most vibrant commercial areas, and with dining patios and merchandise displays leaving as little as four feet of usable through-space in some areas, I would argue that the sidewalks should be expanded rather than that the pedestrians should be constrained. The only reason you would want them constrained is if you think vehicle operations are more important than the comfort and safety of pedestrians, which in a place like the Strip is the wrong way to think about things.
Also, arguing that the cycle track is less-used than vehicular travel lanes is silly. The existing cycle track has seen use numbers comparable to vehicular travel lanes, and that usage would only go up if it were safer and more convenient. Bike facilities only appear to have less traffic because bikes aren’t as big as cars, so it doesn’t look as busy, when actually it can easily serve more people with less of an impact on the city.
The idea that a bike facility would not provide a buffer from vehicular traffic, or that such a buffer is even needed, is dubious. But the idea that bicycle-pedestrian conflicts would be another reason to scrap it is silly. The existing cycle track has been shown to reduce all crashes, including those involving pedestrians, in other busy commercial areas such as the Cultural District, just a few blocks away. In addition, it is silly to compare a bicycle-pedestrian conflict to a driver-pedestrian conflict. Most bikes go about ten miles per hour and weigh only about 25 pounds, plus the weight of their rider. A bicycle-pedestrian conflict is no fun, to be sure, but nearly everyone involved in one is walking away from it. The same can’t be said for when a car hits a pedestrian or a cyclist, as we saw on February 16th.
Extending the Penn Avenue cycle track would protect bike riders like the one injured on the 16th, but it would also make the road safer for pedestrians and drivers alike. The parking impacts would be a drop in the bucket, and the overall impact on businesses would most likely be positive. BikePGH has been advocating for improving bicycle connections in the Strip since the Penn Avenue cycle track was completed. Lend your support to their work by visiting the Safe Trips in the Strip page and pledging your support.
Since the February 16th crash, many local bicycle advocates have been reaching out to DOMI about how they will fix this. DOMI is responsible for implementing infrastructure improvements, but they can only implement those solutions that politicians are willing to fund. Therefore, the responsibility for fixing this mess truly lands on Councilperson Bobby Wilson and Mayor Ed Gainey. You can reach Councilperson Wilson here, and Mayor Gainey here. Please let them know that extending the cycle track will save bike rider’s lives, while costing nothing for the business owners in the Strip.