Janet Jai: The dangers of Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan, especially for children
Share this post:
Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan will be coming to all of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, maybe to your street. Be careful! This new bike plan may make Pittsburgh’s newly designated bike-path streets (and others around them) more dangerous — especially for children — and for drivers and pedestrians as well.
Given the pandemic and major social unrest, you may not even be aware of Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan, officially introduced June 23. I only became aware of it because I live on North Euclid Avenue in Highland Park, one of the first streets being converted into a new bike-path street.
DOMI (Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure) has put four roundabouts/traffic circles on North Euclid with plans to add four more, one at almost every intersection on our relatively short and not-very-wide street. These roundabouts are meant to slow down traffic (some drivers on North Euclid definitely need to be slowed down) and to create a “neighborway” bike-path, a street where cars and other vehicular traffic are slowed to make the bike-path streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Biking and walking are good for health and good for the climate. I love walking and am a strong supporter of climate-change solutions. Unfortunately, I cannot support Pittsburgh’s Bike(+) Plan because it encourages children of all ages to ride on bike-path streets on bikes, e-scooters, motorized skateboards and other devices, saying that all of this is safe because the traffic (cars, trucks, buses, etc.) will be going more slowly.
It is one thing to see a lovely family group of parents and children bike riding together. It is very different to see one or more children riding or scooting on their own in the middle of traffic.
I would like you to envision living on a bike-path street (remember, these streets will be all over the city) and pulling out of your parking space to find an 8-year-old or younger child on a bike in front of you and two children on e-scooters or possibly “toy” hoverboards in back of you as you attempt to drive to work or food shop or wherever. To me, this is very dangerous. Yet all of this is allowed — and most of it is encouraged — by Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan.
Since discussions with DOMI didn’t lessen my concerns about Pittsburgh’s Bike(+) Plan, I did research:
1. The Casebook of Traumatic Injury Prevention reports that: “Children in the fourth to seventh grades exhibit both high bicycle riding activity and high collision rates.”
2. Bike-friendly cities like Boulder, Colo., and Portland, Ore., have been postponing allowing e-scooters on their bike paths because of safety concerns. (Portland is testing them, but its first four-month test showed an increase in e-scooter-related injuries.)
3. Most successful bike-friendly cities have done significant community engagement and safety education to make sure that bicyclists are aware of the rules of the road and the importance of following them. They also enforce bike laws. Pittsburgh’s Bike(+) Plan calls for safety education but is encouraging everyone of all ages to ride on bike-path streets now, before it is offering the safety training, which is not required. And from what I can see, there is virtually no enforcement of bike laws here.
My research also deepened my concern about the roundabouts that DOMI is inaugurating. On city streets that are not very wide, roundabouts are difficult for larger vehicles (or older vehicles without a good turning radius) to navigate, often bringing cars, vans, trucks, etc. much too close to the curb, endangering pedestrians. Roundabouts also present ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) concerns because it is known to be more difficult for blind pedestrians to cross safely at roundabout intersections.
I also found that fire departments worry about traffic-calming measures that can slow down fire trucks in an emergency. It is likely that the eight roundabouts planned for North Euclid could slow fire trucks down significantly when every second is precious to reach a fire in time.
Pittsburgh’s new Bike(+) Plan is being rushed forward when we are all dealing with a pandemic and trying to correct major social injustices. I believe it is vital to postpone the Bike(+) Plan until at least next summer. This will give us time to (hopefully) get beyond the pandemic and to find solutions to the bike plan’s problems.
I believe there are real solutions, but achieving them will take time, community engagement, intense bike safety education and possibly legislation as well. This is why I recently addressed Pittsburgh’s City Council about the dangers of the new Bike(+) Plan. I don’t want children — or drivers and others who may have to swerve to avoid hitting children — to be injured, possibly severely, because of a Bike(+) Plan that is deeply flawed and moving forward much too rapidly.
Janet Jai is a Pittsburgh writer/artist.