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Grata's Guide: PennDOT making bad traffic worse at Century Square
Sunday, June 27, 1999 By Joe Grata, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Grata's Guide is getting around. We get letters, and lots of e-mail, too.
Send your transportation questions, complaints and suggestions to Joe Grata c/o The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or e-mail him at jgrata@post-gazette.com. Include address and phone number, please.
If it's not broke, fix it. Last year, when the state Department of Transportation rebuilt Lebanon Church Road in front of Century Square in West Mifflin, it upgraded the traffic signals along the busy four-lane road.
Westbound traffic that moved well before the improvements is now often "trapped" between Lebanon Road (Route 885) and Delwar Road, especially during afternoon rush hours. Traffic leaving Century Square stores and attractions block the intersection, so people with a green light go nowhere.
Horns honk, tempers flare and drivers flash "Pittsburgh salutes."
The lights aren't properly synchronized, and the situation was made worse when the light for Delwar Road was changed to allow too much time for left turns, Jack Murphy of Pleasant Hills points out.
Response. Murphy is correct. PennDOT took an already bad situation and made it worse.
PennDOT pulled the same trick when it upgraded traffic signals on Second Avenue through Hazelwood in 1991, a popular "back door" route to Oakland and Downtown from points south. Engineers said at the time that traffic would move "more efficiently." I guess that explains why it takes longer than it used to take to get through Hazelwood during afternoon rush hours.
Call the PennDOT traffic engineering people at 412-429-4975 and tell 'em what you think.
When the "Walk" sign lights up to cross East Carson Street, cars making a rightturn coming off the Smithfield Street Bridge can't readily see it or pedestrians in the crosswalk, because of the brick building on the corner.
"It's very difficult getting 20 children across that intersection safely," Stewart said. "You have to be alert and quick."
She suggests a traffic signal that is " 'all-stop,' like the one at Carnegie Museum at Forbes Avenue and Craig Street" in Oakland.
Response. Stewart makes a good suggestion, but I'm not sure how it will be received. It isn't easy to please everyone, especially motorists, at Carson and the Smithfield Street Bridge. She may have to wait until one of the youths gets hit by a car for positive change to be made.
Call the city's traffic control people at 412-255-2873 and PennDOT's traffic engineering people at 412-429-4975, and tell 'em what you think.
The Liberty Tunnels maintenance workers not only have swept up the discarded cigarette butts outside their south portal office, but they also have cleaned up dirt accumulated inside the tunnel entrance.
Finally, county Public Works Director Tom Donatelli called to say he didn't know Dorseyville Road in Indiana Township was in such terrible shape before reading about it in the PG's "Worst Roads" survey results in April. "Due to the article, we took note of it and paved it," he said.
Gold Pan Dan. He's Port Authority's new mascot, a 19th-century Yukon Territory prospector who plays to the transit system's "Gold Standard of Service" marketing theme. Gold Pan also is intended to interest children in the benefits of public transportation without being a video game that's a demolition derby of buses.
My interest is whether Gold Pan Dan might be related to Dapper Dan of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-affiliated charitable organization. "Let's do DNA testing," I said to Judi McNeil, spokeswoman for the authority. "Make it DAN testing," she said, "and we'll go for it."
Poor Pa Pitt. If the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Murphy and City Council want to know what they need to do to draw more people Downtown and keep 'em coming back, they should take a look at the Liberty Tunnels.
Outbound (southbound) traffic was lined up through the tunnel, across the Liberty Bridge and onto the Boulevard of the Allies and Crosstown Boulevard, making for a 30-minute-plus crawl for two miles Saturday afternoon last weekend.
West Liberty Avenue at the south end of the tubes was down to a single lane, because the contractor working on the new interchange was pouring concrete, all the more reason somebody should have been manually controlling the traffic signal.
But no one is regularly assigned to the intersection on any Saturday or Sunday. People who would love to come Downtown are put off by unjustifiable 10- to 20-minute delays, even around midnight.
The same case can be made for posting a traffic cop on Route 28 at the 31st Street Bridge on busy weekends in Downtown.
The city's traffic philosophy seems to be this: Out of sight, out of mind.
Unfortunately for too many Downtown visitors, it's this: Outta here -- forever.
Plate du jour. The license plate NBV-1 belongs to Patricia Angelo, mayor of North Belle Vernon in Westmoreland County. Hope she doesn't lose her title.
Factoid. The Top 5 commodities shipped by rail in Pennsylvania are coal, petroleum, metal products, nonmetallic minerals and metallic ores. -- PennDOT Bureau of Rail Freight
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