Here, in no particular order are some ideas for the improvement of Oakland. (Note: Some of these ideas will only work if joined with others; left to themselves they will only add to the mess. For example, doing 15 without 13).

1. Bury all utility lines. This would do away with the unsightly overhead clutter of cable, phone and electric lines, as well as do away with utility poles which are a magnet for illegal postings.

2. Install a traffic island at the intersection of Bellefield and Forbes. Crown it with a fountain that matches the architecture of the Carnegie Museum and Music Hall (No Modern Art!). This would beautify the intersection and stop drivers who are unfamiliar with the area from proceeding into the one-way section of Forbes that starts at that intersection.

3. Install a traffic island at the wide base of Bigelow Boulevard where it meets Forbes Avenue. Crown it with a fountain that matches the architecture of the Cathedral of Learning, Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, PAA and William Pitt Union (No Modern Art!). This would channel traffic into the appropriate lanes and make pedestrian crossing more safe, as well as beautify the area.

4. Remove the bus lane and railings from Fifth Ave. The bus lane and railing have been a killer to Fifth Avenue businesses -- a virtually gateless fence at the front door. The bus lane would be converted to metered parking.

5. Encourage (tax breaks, low interest loans) conversion of basements to garages with (where possible) entrances from rear allies. This should alleviate street parking problems for resident homeowners.

6. Convert all side streets between Forbes and the Boulevard of the Allies to metered parking. The resident permit parking program would be converted to a permit that exempts the car from feeding the meter in the permit zone. Visitor passes would be eliminated.

7. Build an underground parking lot under the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning and under the lot between Hillman and Carnegie libraries (and make the surface a lawn).

8. Raise the cost of street parking (meters) so that it exceeds the hourly cost of parking in a lot. This will encourage the use of street parking for short term use only. The convenience of parking on the street justifies the greater cost.

9. Encourage (tax breaks, low interest loans) participation in a building project along the commercial zone on Atwood Street that would convert front yards and first floors to shops. This would provide a coherent (though hopefully not unified, like a strip mall) and professional looking facade to the entire street.

10. Reroute the Marathon so that it runs along Forbes Avenue between Craig Street and Morewood Avenue. This would allow traffic to cross Oakland (via Neville and Boundary Streets) during the event. As it is, the neighborhood is virtually isolated when there is no need for this to be the case.

11. Encourage street vendors along "gray" areas created by the University of Pittsburgh (for example, along Forbes Avenue from Hillman Library back to Bouquet Street) and other stretches of "blank" sidewalk (for example, Fifth Avenue from Thackeray to Darragh Street), but regulate vendors so as to restrict the amount of sidewalk space they may occupy and prohibit them from blocking entranceways, scenic views (such as the front of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall) and more than 1/3 of the available sidewalk width so as to preserve the pedestrian right of way.

12. Convert the plaza between Hillman Library-Lawrence Hall-Law School and Posvar Hall into an Arabic-style covered souk.

13. Construct covered people movers or escalators (wide enough to hold two wheelchairs side-by-side) along Bates Street from Second Avenue (or the bike/hike trail) to the Boulevard of the Allies. This would encourage use of the bike trail for commuting to Oakland.

14. Construct covered people movers or escalators (wide enough to hold two wheelchairs side-by-side) along Desoto Street from Fifth Avenue to Allequippa Street.

15. Discourage through traffic from using Fifth and Forbes Avenues (perhaps by extending the time of red lights or disrupting the synchronization of them) and instead promote traffic along Second Avenue, the Boulevard of the Allies, Centre Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard.

16. Prohibit buses with a capacity of more than 20 passengers from the area between Craft Avenue and Craig Street. Instead, run smaller shuttles from bus ministations located on Craig Street, Craft Avenue, Centre Avenue and the Boulevard of the Allies.

John Newell, Oakland

Whatever plans we may dream for Oakland, we have to pay for them, and, even more, the plans for New Pittsburgh must address the sensibilities of Old Pittsburgh.

We have wasted too much time in this town on busting heads and preserving the status quo rather than coalition building to move us forward.

I offer some low cost or no cost ideas to get started:

(1) Make Oakland Pittsburgh’s first day attraction: A MUST SEE attraction of six world class exhibits:

Create an Oakland Pass that for $20 would deliver you via tour bus from Downtown, Airport or Monroeville hotels to Tour Bus Parking in the morning and pick you up in the afternoon to take you back to your Hotel. For $20, you would get round trip transportation from your hotel and a day pass to admit you to:

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History: one of the largest dinosaur collections in the world

The Carnegie Museum of Art: with its unparalleled collection of impressionist paintings

The Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens: Home to the largest indoor greenhouse in the United States and its world famous Orchid Collection

The University of Pittsburgh Nationality Rooms: 25 world unique & priceless Heritage museums at the base of the 42-story Gothic Cathedral.

University of Pittsburgh Heinz Memorial Chapel Docent Tour with its quarter-million pieces of stained glass and highest doublet windows anywhere.

University of Pittsburgh Stephen Foster Memorial Docent Tour -- a unique shrine to America’s favorite composer.

Tourists could get lunch at the Carnegie Museum cafes, or at the Cathedral basement food hall, or from street vendors in better weather. In front of the Carnegie Library main branch, take a third of the parking plaza and make it tour bus parking (or relocate Schenley Drive 50 feet closer to Hillman & Forbes Quad, leaving tour bus parking right up against the library and museum.) You can start it without capital improvements by cordoning off the right lane of Schenley Drive for tour buses only in the morning and afternoon/evening in front of the library/museum.

Right now, Oakland is difficult to visit and park in. This idea deposits people in a central location easily within easy walking distance of six wonderful world class attractions. It consolidates the marketing efforts and solves the transportation and parking problem for visitors. To accommodate elderly and handicapped individuals, have the bus company run an additional single minibus shuttle loop all day from Phipps to the corner of Schenley and Forbes to the front door of Heinz Memorial Chapel, looping back around the cathedral to Phipps. If you go to any tourist city in the world, tourist sites have dozens of tour buses lined up side by side. Make Oakland Pittsburgh’s must see, first day attraction and arrange for tourist facilities. One bus, three orange cones, a brochure and the cooperation of the Carnegie, Phipps and Pitt is all that is needed to get it started.

(2) Tie Oakland to the River and Define its Other Borders: Oakland started out first as a river town. Let’s change the name of the Pittsburgh Technology Center to the Oakland Technology Center of Pittsburgh. After all, it is at the end of the Oakland/South Side Bridge(Hot Metal Bridge), which connects Oakland to the South Side. With the mills being cleared it is the only land available in Oakland for substantial business expansion.

Cleaning up Bates Street from the Boulevard of the Allies to Second Avenue will help to tie the Oakland plateau to the Oakland riverfront. In future years, perhaps the old Railroad Bridge over Bates near Second could be replaced with a new lightweight bridge with a longer span and fewer supports. It only supports the bike trail now, and removing it would better visually tie the waterfront to the Bates Street Hill. Old maps seem to show a Murphy Street that used to connect the Oakland plateau to the Oakland riverfront. It seemed to connect from roughly the base of Robinson Street and Forbes Avenue down the hill to the river. Can it be reopened? A second entrance to the riverfront would create a nice loop effect, tying the upper and lower parts together.

Most people think of Oakland as its center: the Cathedral, Pitt, Fifth and Forbes. Oakland is generally agreed to be a 600-acre plateau bordered nominally by Junction and Panther hollows to the east, the Hill District to the north and west, and the Monongahela River to the south. It has the center core of schools, hospitals and retail surrounded by six residential neighborhoods. The beauty of establishing borders instead of just the center is that you define Oakland better visually and help to create an identity for the whole community. You can have signs on the major entrances to Oakland. How about entrance/exit signs on Fifth and Forbes coming from Uptown, on Fifth into Shadyside and Forbes into Squirrel Hill, at Bigelow and Center, and at both ends of Second Avenue. At Bates and Second Avenue and at Bates and the Boulevard of the Allies the Bates signs could say, "You are in Oakland" rather than "Welcome" or "Thanks." Or: "Welcome to Oakland PA 15213, Established 1867, Annexed to Pittsburgh 1868, Population 22,167, We’ll make you smarter while you are here!"

And at the exits: "Thanks for visiting OAKLAND PA 15213. Hope you feel smarter after being here! Be careful & come back to visit soon."

Simple signs with some flower plantings from the Western PA Conservancy would be nice.

(3) Several Stray Thoughts: Encourage businesses and residents to use Oakland PA 15213 instead of Pittsburgh. Like it or not Pittsburgh has a connotation worldwide, and we can build a new one for Oakland. Washington, D.C., has its Georgetown, Boston has its Cambridge, New York has its Soho.

Oakland is the youngest ward demographically in the city by far. Let’s celebrate it. While the South Side and the Strip have drawn crowds, we should encourage more of fun development in Oakland -- bars, restaurants, trendy shops. While South Craig is nice, let’s encourage fun development from the Playhouse to King’s Court. As juvenile court moves Downtown, redevelop the site as street retail and offices above. Consolidate all of county health in Lawrenceville. Develop the streetscape of Magee Women’s Hospital on Forbes. We should encourage gridlock in Oakland at night.

Put the Oaks back in Oakland. It was named Oakland for the wonderful groves of oak trees that unfortunately did not survive the mills. Let’s reforest Oakland with 100,000 oak seedlings in plastic tubes ($1/seedling) and get the school kids and businesses involved in getting them planted in Oakland.

If Hollywood can create a 90210 TV show for Beverly Hills, QED needs to create a 15213 show for Oakland for national PBS or cable syndication. A new Discovery Network or Learning Channel?

Can we clean the Cathedral? Am I the only person in town that thinks that every 75 years or so we ought to clean the buildings in this town? The dirt only reinforces that this is a dirty town. They cleaned the Carnegie and it looks great! They did it to Buckingham Palace. The White House is whitewashed every couple years.

What is with this Boulevard of the Allies name? Straight from WWI! What a horrible dated name for a road that connects the city center to the university center. How about fast-forwarding to the 21^st century? Turn it back to Second Avenue Downtown (Thousands of visitors will thank you) and maybe the rest Oakland Boulevard? Information superhighway? Perhaps the PG can have a "Rename the Boulevard" contest next! There is precedent. Grant Boulevard to Oakland was renamed Bigelow Boulevard. Water Street became Fort Pitt Boulevard, Diamond Street became Forbes Avenue, Downtown. Take the ornamentation off the boulevard entrance at Grant and use it as the basis for a WWI memorial on the north shore near the Vietnam memorial.

Tony O’Reilly, Pittsburgh resident, former Heinz CEO, owner of All-Clad Cookware in Canonsburg, a man who could live anywhere in the world, was quoted in the Dec. 10th PG during the dedication of the new O’Reilly Public Theater Downtown:

"O’Reilly went on to praise the "curiously modest" people of Pittsburgh and called the city a "truly wonderful city to live in and work in."

"It’s big enough to be interesting and small enough to be intimate," he said.

Let’s make Oakland a little more interesting as a tourist place to visit, let’s make Oakland more distinctive and recognizable as a destination, and let’s make Oakland even more of an intimate community where residents and institutions work hand in hand.

Mike Welsh, Friendship/Garfield

As a lifetime resident of the Pittsburgh area and the father of a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama, I am acutely aware of the vibrant role played by the Oakland area. In the development and innovation of all aspects of the arts and sciences, Pittsburgh is without peer, and Oakland is at the vanguard. There is one slight problem if I may be permitted to illustrate.

I am employed by Pittsburgh’s leading engineering and construction firm, Kvaerner, formerly Dravo. In our normal course of business we come in contact with people from all over the world. They stay at the Doubletree, the Hilton, the William Penn or other hotels. As soon as they get to town, they pick up literature promoting all of Pittsburgh’s many assets: art, theater, dining, zoo and science exhibits. One of them might suggest a trip to Shadyside. They are intimidated by the distance, the confusing streets and the hills, and they decide to get a cab. They can’t find a cab, since there are 400 other people looking for one, so they decide to drive, sometimes with frustrating results. They find that even most Pittsburghers don’t know the directions to Shadyside ("It’s somewhere near Oakland, I think."), and so they give up in disgust and eat at the hotel. Pretty boring for tourism.

I have been to most major cities in North America, and Pittsburgh’s attractions are equal to the best of them with only one major problem: They are physically separated from one another, and nothing that makes sense to an out-of-towner is connecting them.

I propose that we establish a tourist loop served by four buses, cleverly disguised as antique trolleys. They could be called "the Murphy Machine," "Caliguiri Coach," "Bessemer Betty" or other names with local flavor. Each would have a unique theme and be a tourist attraction in itself, perhaps with open sides in Summertime like the San Francisco trolleys.

Anyway, these tour buses could follow a designated route which would encompass all the significant tourist attractions in Pittsburgh. For example: Downtown, South Side, Oakland, Shadyside, Highland Park, Squirrel Hill, Bloomfield, North Side stadiums and back Downtown. The bus could stop at each tourist attraction to pick up and discharge passengers. These buses could run at peak tourist times, such as weeknight evenings, and all day on weekends until midnight. Because there would be four of them, you could count on one arriving every 15 minutes. The stops could be designated as "Pitt Stops", and could be brightly colored, lighted and regularly monitored by police to assure the safety of the riders.

People riding this loop could not possibly get lost. They would have to get back on the bus after visiting the attraction, and they would eventually be taken to where they started in an hour or less.

Special fares could be established. For instance, Toronto offers unlimited travel passes for their subways on Saturday or Sunday. For $6 Canadian you can get on or off as many times as you want to. In coastal Maine, they have buses similar to those described above, at a cost of 50 cents per entry. The prices could be worked out to Pittsburgh’s best advantage, and there could be cross-venue promotions, also. For instance, a holder of the weekend pass could receive discounts at attractions located on the loop, thereby promoting development of corridor businesses.

I would like to see something like this happening in all major cities. It would take the fear factor out of venturing away from the safety of your hotel.

Thomas F. Ryan, Glenshaw