Bike Demonstration Leads Pittsburgh Police to Prove Protestors’ Point
On February 16, a bike rider was hit by a driver as they tried to navigate between the Penn Avenue cycle track and the Smallman Street bike lanes. This crash has reignited a discussion among activists to extend the Penn Avenue cycle track to Lawrenceville. They organized a demonstration at the crash site on February 28. While media organizations were notified, the police and the City were not.
The idea was fairly simple: a handful of bike riders rode in a loop around Penn Avenue, 16th Street, Spring Way, and 17th Street, tracing most of the route that is intended to connect the Penn Avenue cycle track to the Smallman Street bike lanes. Whenever the riders arrived at 16th and Penn, other demonstrators would block 16th Street with their bikes, ensuring the riders’ safe passage between Penn Avenue and Spring Way.
This went about how you would expect: drivers on 16th Street were mildly inconvenienced in order to make other people safer, and most took it in stride (some even did light-tap honks followed by thumbs up), while others acted like the world was collapsing around them, honking and yelling. But other than the demonstrators blocking off the road, who one driver tried to ram with their vehicle (part of a disturbing trend), everyone involved was perfectly safe, and delays were minimal.
That’s when the police showed up.
It is unclear who called them, and they were not personally supportive of the demonstrators: one drove their motorcycle between a pair of them and yelled for them to get out of his way, while another yelled at the riders saying that they couldn’t “bully” drivers. But in the name of public safety, they blocked Penn Avenue and Spring Way at 17th Street, 16th Street at Liberty Avenue, and 16th Street again all the way on the opposite side of the 16th Street Bridge. In essence, the police created a multi-block, car-free zone.
And it was great.
“What’s amazing is traffic is flowing fine,” said Armin Samii, one of the demonstrators and a volunteer with Better Streets Lawrenceville and CEO of Dashcam for your Bike. “If we didn’t have as many cars coming down Penn and redirected them to Liberty, things work fine. So why can’t we dedicate one of those lanes to a bike lane? Why isn’t there the political will to do that? Clearly it’s not an issue.”
The political will in question is the will of Councilperson Bobby Wilson and Mayor Ed Gainey. In a February 24th email, Councilperson Wilson’s Community Relations Manager Julianne Hluska quoted him as saying, “I am deeply concerned about the accident involving the bicyclist at 16th Street and Spring Way in the Strip District on Thursday, February 16. I am eager to see what measures the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) can implement to improve safety in this neighborhood. “ You can reach Councilperson Wilson here, and Mayor Gainey here.