USCGC Peduto : Icebreaking on Penn Avenue

6/10 #216 23m

A later-afternoon, after-work ride, on the road bike because the Surly is just falling apart. I replaced the Surly's front wheel, the rear eyelet sheared off (costing the rack-and-fenders, the bike's ass is just gone), and I've worn the rear tire down to where the bright blue inner anti-flat layer was exposed when I checked it this morning. In summary: time for Bike-B.

Started at the Bastille, rode down to the Waterfront. Stopped at the Starbucks and sipped some Wifi and surveyed teh interwebs. 23 miles round trip.

Big News: by the most excellent Jon Schmitz, Bike Only Lanes in Cultural District. It's an 18-month prototype, it's all very conceptual, it affects bus routes (cue in, County government and PAT), and they want to have it effective and in place in 90 days. Just the right way to implement change: flexible and with a specific, short deadline.

It is, like many trial-balloon-compromise-by-committee's, not extremely painful and not extremely effective. And that's good; it's not extreme. It's not extremely painful because it displaces fewer transit routes than other streets would have, and it's not a primary artery. It's not extremely effective because it parallels the existing bike trail only two blocks away along the south bank of the Allegheny River, as shown in this depiction of the proposal on a Google-Map which includes existing bike lanes:

So it doesn't introduce new capability to an area that doesn't have any, and it doesn't introduce worst-case harm to transit, but it does break the ice and introduce a new thing in Pittsburgh - which is not easily done. So maybe it's a best-possible-achievable in a Kissinger-sense of the possible. Which is to say: well done!