Pittsburgh's entrance through the Fort Pitt Tunnel might be the Cinderella of first impressions, but more than 13,000 inbound drivers daily are more familiar with one of the ugly stepsisters.

Like many highways, Route 51 is a design-free mishmash of malls, strip malls, box stores, auto-service lots, beer stores, tanning salons, roadside bars and disappearing sidewalks, hardly a glass slipper contender.

But when it arrives in the city from Whitehall as Saw Mill Run Boulevard, the four-mile stretch to the Liberty Tunnels is so degraded that it could be a parody of blight: A boarded-up window, weathered gray, isn't bad enough; the board is shredded, revealing a glass-block window grid with some of the blocks punched.

Related coverage:

4-mile stretch of Saw Mill Run Boulevard
exemplifies what years of neglect can do

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