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Wednesday, August 01, 2001

One of the first things you notice when driving down Merrimac Street on Mount Washington is the number of cars partially -- or completely -- parked on the sidewalk.

	Sielke Caparelli, left, holds her 9-month-old son, Christian, as she talks with her neighbor Barbara Pipilo yesterday on Merrimac Street on Mt. Washington. Residents say they want drivers to adhere to the street's posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Then you notice the number of driver's side mirrors turned toward the side window so they don't get knocked off by passing cars.

If the three hours I spent Monday evening on Sean and Sandy Sweeney's front porch is any indication, those passing cars are traveling in excess of the posted speed limit of 25 miles per hour.

That wasn't surprising to the Sweeneys and their neighbors -- Sielke "Silky" and David Caparelli from across the street and Barbara Pipilo from just up the street.

"This is a 'slow' night," said Sean Sweeney, 35, a garage attendant Downtown.

"You ought to be here later in the week," said Sandy Sweeney, 39, a senior operations specialist at a Downtown bank.

No, thanks.

It was unsettling to sit there for a few hours and watch and hear the traffic whiz by. The street is so busy that garbage crews constantly look over their shoulders and the ice cream truck doesn't stop. The sounds of whining motorcycles and deep-throated trucks quashed our conversation several times.

Sometimes they quash more than conversations.

A four-door Jeep totaled the Pipilos 1993 green Chevrolet Lumina van on March 11, 2000, four months after John and Barbara Pipilo and their four children moved in. The Jeep swerved like a misdirected linebacker to avoid a car pulling out from Sycamore Street. It hit the Pipilos' van head-on. No one was injured.

The only vehicles I saw driving anywhere near 25 mph were Port Authority buses wheezing up Merrimac toward Grandview Avenue. Some bus drivers exceeded the speed limit going down Merrimac so they could catch the green, yellow or yellow-red light at Virginia Avenue.

But the overwhelming majority of speeders were people driving cars, sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and motorcycles. Some motorcyclists, including a few without helmets, did wheelies coming up Merrimac.

Cute. Nice example for the kids, some of whom are kept behind chain-link fences to keep them away from the sidewalk.

Overprotective parents? Not on your life. Or theirs. Motorists have been known to veer off Merrimac and hit other vehicles, trees and even houses. Some residents have replaced their small front yards with concrete parking pads.

The residents have tried for years to get the city to enforce the speed limit on Merrimac and find permanent remedies for traffic and safety problems. Sielke Caparelli is continuing the effort initiated in part by Alex Caparelli, one of her husband's relatives.

"He told me I was wasting my time," Sielke Caparelli said. "I said something had to be done because someone is going to be killed."

She's right.

Someone already has been injured. A young girl suffered a broken arm in the early 1990s when she was hit by a car at the intersection of Merrimac and Sycamore.

Sielke Caparelli has called the Zone 4 police station and other police officials, the mayor's service center, the Department of Engineering and Construction (it approves stop signs, etc.) and Councilman Alan Hertzberg's office. Hertzberg said his office is helping the residents.

In a petition Sielke Caparelli wrote and now is circulating, she and her husband and the neighbors call upon city officials to control the speeders because they "put our children at risk, reduce property values and damage personal property."

Remember the "quality of life" issues the mayoral candidates referred to during the mayoral race last spring? There are a few that need to be addressed on Merrimac.

The residents want a traffic signal installed at the intersection of Merrimac and Sycamore that could be activated electronically to trigger a flashing yellow light from 6:30 p.m. until dawn. If that doesn't warn some speeders to slow down, the occasional visit of a patrol car with a trunk full of tickets might do it.

At the very least, the neighbors should have crosswalks at that intersection. The white painted lines designed to direct pedestrians across the street might persuade some speeders to slow down. They were removed during construction work earlier this year.

But what should be done NOW is to have lines painted in the 100 and 300 block of Merrimac for VASCAR -- Visual Average Speed Computer and Recorder. VASCAR helps police determine how fast a car is going between the lines. The old lines on those two sections of Merrimac have faded because of all the traffic.

Police Cmdr. RaShall Brackney, whose special deployment division handles traffic enforcement, said the lines are painted by police officers to make sure they comply with all the appropriate rules and regulations.

In a March 26 letter to David Caparelli, Cmdr. Catherine R. McNeilly, the former head of the division, assured the residents that Merrimac "has been added to the list of streets where lines will be painted, and hopefully, we can then begin to address the problems you're experiencing."

The sooner, the better.

Speeders beware.

Lawrence Walsh can be reached at 412-263-1895. His e-mail address is lwalsh@post-gazette.com.