Greensburg aims to boost pedestrian, cyclist safety with new transportation plan

When Bella Fiume moved to Greensburg after four years living on Pitt’s Oakland campus, she expected to see more people walking the sidewalks around her new home.

Fiume is one of a handful of residents who attended an open house this past week to provide feedback on a draft of Greensburg’s Active Transportation Plan — a blueprint to help the city improve infrastructure for walking and cycling.

“Going from there to here, I definitely notice a lot less people walking around. I don’t know exactly why that might be,” said Fiume, 24, a planner for Westmoreland County. “It might just be the ways of this area, but I was disappointed to see not many people walk.”

The Active Transportation Plan is supported by a $20,000 WalkWorks grant the city received from the state Department of Health at the end of 2023. The city held an open house in March to gather public input to guide the plan, which is being drafted by Gibson-Thomas Engineering.

The draft presented to residents Wednesday included 32 suggestions for improvements to city infrastructure, which include widening sidewalks and bike lanes; adding barriers between the sidewalk and the road in tunnels; creating bike routes through the city with pavement markings; enforcing illegal parking on sidewalks; and connecting businesses, local universities, parks and trails in the city.

The main priority of the plan is bolstering pedestrian and cyclist safety, said Jack Soles, project manager for Gibson-Thomas.

“Two of our big projects that we would like to get out would be increased separation (between sidewalks and the road) for College Avenue, Main Street heading north, as well as two tunnels — one along College Avenue and the other tunnel (along) Arch Avenue,” he said.

Gibson-Thomas aims to finalize a draft of the plan by the end of the month and send it out for review by the city and the project steering committee. A final plan will be created in August, which could come before city council for a vote in September, Soles said.

Two bike routes

The plan suggests creating two bike routes using less congested roads in the city, Soles said.

The routes would start at Pennsylvania Avenue and Seton Hill University, connecting to Euclid Avenue and Main Street. One route would travel up Urania Avenue to the Five Star Trail entry point on Laird Street. The other route would lead cyclists down Mt. Pleasant Street to the trailhead by Highland Avenue.

The routes could be defined with white pavement markings that depict a person on a bike. The markings are meant to alert drivers to the potential presence of cyclists, Soles said.

“We picked Pennsylvania Avenue as the one thoroughfare for the one bike route, just because of the amount of pedestrian foot traffic there,” he said. “It’s a one-way street, so you don’t have to worry about conflicting traffic volumes. And it’s signalized, so there will be chances to stop and they’ll have to go at the pace of traffic.”

Alec Italiano, Greensburg planning and development director, would also like to create a 2-mile walking loop in the city, running from the Five Star Trail’s intersection with Laird Street through the downtown business district to St. Clair Park and back.

With electric bikes and scooters becoming more popular, Italiano said now is the perfect time to create the Active Transportation Plan.

“People are trying to be less vehicle dependent,” he said. “You’ve got to make a community that’s positioned to have multiple modes of transportation to get around.”

For Victoria Baur, sidewalk improvements are the most pressing issue for human-powered transportation in the city.

“I know there are some places where there’s cracks or the sidewalk may be disconnected,” said Baur, a Greensburg native. “Seeing improvements there would be good.”

Baur would also like to see greater enforcement of illegal sidewalk parking.

“I think parking on sidewalks is a big issue in the city, and there’s two parts with that: education — letting people know that it is illegal — and also working with either code enforcement or police to better enforce that all throughout the city, because it’s not just in one area,” she said.

Baur was excited to see tunnel improvements among the list of transportation improvements.

“That’s down near where a lot of students are walking from Seton Hill,” she said of the tunnel on College Avenue, “and it would be great to see some improvements there, whether it be lighting or just … more of a barrier between pedestrians and fast-moving cars.”

As a planner for Westmoreland County, Baur said the city’s Active Transportation Plan complements the county’s work.

“It supports the work that we do, and we love being involved with these kinds of plans at the local level,” she said. “Any time we have an opportunity to help contribute to this process, we definitely want to be involved.”