OT: Bigelow remaining open, but being rebuilt

[CrazyPaco]

The problem with that plan (from an outside perspective) is that Bouquet is a significantly narrower street than Bellefield without a whole lot of space to widen it, and it’s a much harsher angle to turn left onto Bouquet from Fifth without significantly rebuilding the Fifth/Bouquet intersection.

As for the general plan to bury the roads, I think it’s prohibitively expensive (think several hundred million dollars) and given that Fifth and Forbes are PennDOT roads (not the city), you’d need an amount of state investment and initiative that I don’t believe will ever exist. Pitt’s integration with an active, urban streetgrid with the shops and other activity that lines Fifth and Forbes are an attribute for campus that Pitt sells to students on a regular basis. Pedestrian bridges and tunnels just aren’t utilized enough to be worth the money - see the decision to build a new pedestrian crosswalk right next to the pedestrian bridge on Forbes because so few students use the pedestrian bridge and so many are cutting across Forbes.

I agree that I’d like to see Bigelow between Fifth and Forbes closed to traffic - and I think making Bellefield a two-way street is the best option - but I think what Pitt should be doing to make campus more walkable is exactly what they’re doing - increasing pedestrian safety, increasing bicycle usage and bike infrastructure, and encouraging and supporting as many students, faculty, and staff to use transit to take cars off the road.

There also a lot of utility and chiller lines under Fifth and Forbes, so yes, burying streets would be like an on-campus stadium project in cost. Pitt would have to foot a large chunk of the bill. It would need a "campus" sugar daddy.

Nearly every not-even-major urban school I've ever been to has closed streets running through their campus that were often much more significant than Bigelow. Closing Bigelow is long overdue. Agree that Dithridge is the more complex solution, but it is the better long-term solution. Both streets only have the capacity for 3 lanes.

 

[RaleighPittFan]

I remember being able to get to the pitt stadium from fifth without going outside. thru medical library, thru a hospital, over some escalators and I think there was an "hospital personnel only" door you had to go thru but by God, you could do it..

It took you 3 times as long than just walking up the hill and people looked at you weird since you were carrying a case of beer thru a hospital and library but yep, it's possible, or at least was in 1996..

Were you trying to add a hospital and a library to your extensive list of places you've been kicked out of?

 

[McKee Place]

This is a poster boy situation where having high profile winning football or basketball teams pays dividends beyond merely filling more seats or charging more for tickets.

With bad sports, the laymen yinzers (who are ignorant on such intricacies as being top employer) in the city are indifferent at best or maybe even hostile to Pitt.

So if they'd hear or read of the city yielding to close a thoroughfare like Bigelow, it would be a net possible political liability to the city politicians who agreed to it. They'd hear the predictable grief from the stodgy Oakland homeowners who bitterly fight everything about Pitt, probably hear grief from local commuters... and nothing at all positive to get out of it. Pitt's gratitude? Doing the right thing for the students? None of that matters if the pols get nothing tangible out of it.

However, like with the Steelers and Penguins, who are massively popular with the ignorant yinzers (because they've won a lot), it is a much easier sell to politicians to bend over for the most outrageous demands of those entities... the Right Thing be damned.

Win or compete for national championships multiple times in the past 30 years, as the Steelers did with SBs and Pens with Stanley Cups ... instead of mostly dumping the bed ... and Pitt would have Bigelow closed long ago. Plus, probably a subway line to Oakland. And likely a new on campus stadium, for that matter. Winning championships, like elections, has happy consequences.

 

[PittMan 72]

There also a lot of utility and chiller lines under Fifth and Forbes, so yes, burying streets would be like an on-campus stadium project in cost. Pitt would have to foot a large chunk of the bill. It would need a "campus" sugar daddy.

Nearly every not-even-major urban school I've ever been to has closed streets running through their campus that were often much more significant than Bigelow. Closing Bigelow is long overdue. Agree that Dithridge is the more complex solution, but it is the better long-term solution. Both streets only have the capacity for 3 lanes.

How about this current plan with an attractive overhead pedestrian walkway across Bigelow?

 

[pittchagg]

There also a lot of utility and chiller lines under Fifth and Forbes, so yes, burying streets would be like an on-campus stadium project in cost. Pitt would have to foot a large chunk of the bill. It would need a "campus" sugar daddy.

Nearly every not-even-major urban school I've ever been to has closed streets running through their campus that were often much more significant than Bigelow. Closing Bigelow is long overdue. Agree that Dithridge is the more complex solution, but it is the better long-term solution. Both streets only have the capacity for 3 lanes.

I hear you and agree on Bigelow - in fact, I’d close down Schenley Drive between Forbes and Clemente Drive, too. But I just don’t really see how the benefit to burying Fifth and Forbes would be worth the cost. Keep in mind, too, that some of the busiest bus stops outside of downtown and the busway are right in the middle of the area that would be buried, so I’m just not sure what the benefits really are outside of aesthetics - and even then, it’s my belief that streetscape improvements, landscaping, and traffic calming/mitigation can give you everything that you’d be looking for aesthetically, while also keeping the street grid intact.

As an aside - and this isn’t just to Paco - I just don’t see pedestrian bridges or tunnels generally as a solution. Once again, Pitt built a pedestrian bridge across Forbes decades ago and, for decades, students have jaywalked across Forbes Avenue right underneath it to such an extent that Penndot has built a new crosswalk and traffic light right next to the bridge. I can’t see any different result occurring if you build a network of expensive tunnels or bridges over Bigelow or Fifth or Forbes, when the money would be much better spent by improving the intersections and making them safer.

 

[WeaverIsComing]

we could just put forbes and 5th underground

 

[CrazyPaco]

I hear you and agree on Bigelow - in fact, I’d close down Schenley Drive between Forbes and Clemente Drive, too. But I just don’t really see how the benefit to burying Fifth and Forbes would be worth the cost. Keep in mind, too, that some of the busiest bus stops outside of downtown and the busway are right in the middle of the area that would be buried, so I’m just not sure what the benefits really are outside of aesthetics - and even then, it’s my belief that streetscape improvements, landscaping, and traffic calming/mitigation can give you everything that you’d be looking for aesthetically, while also keeping the street grid intact.

As an aside - and this isn’t just to Paco - I just don’t see pedestrian bridges or tunnels generally as a solution. Once again, Pitt built a pedestrian bridge across Forbes decades ago and, for decades, students have jaywalked across Forbes Avenue right underneath it to such an extent that Penndot has built a new crosswalk and traffic light right next to the bridge. I can’t see any different result occurring if you build a network of expensive tunnels or bridges over Bigelow or Fifth or Forbes, when the money would be much better spent by improving the intersections and making them safer.

Yes, sinking 5th is primarily about aesthetics and connecting the core of the campus and its primary academic and residential buildings in a contiguous pedestrian friendly green space creating a true quad. It's a day dreaming project. Ideally, both Forbes and Fifth would have been completely rerouted, but that plan died long ago with the expressway. In the context of fantasizing about Pitt's campus, I really couldn't care less about keeping the street grid of Forbes and Fifth intact or having municipal bus stops in what would be the middle of a university quadrangle. But that is all just pie-in-the-sky fantasy stuff with the current realities of the city's transportation. What Pitt is doing is what they can actually do now, and it is a giant improvement over what existed 10 and 20 years ago. But what they are doing in no way gives a similar aesthetic look or functional greenspace compared if plans to sink these roads were actually feasible (and there were such plans in the 50/60s).

Pitt tried to close Schenley between Forbes and Clemente when Schenley Plaza was being created and the city wouldn't have it. One of the reasons given (or at least put forth by community opponents), was concerns that Pitt students would over run the plaza if it was physically contiguous. How stupid is that? An aside, Pitt owned Clemente Dr when it bought Forbes Field and actually created that road and turned it over to the city. It also gave a slice of the Cathedral Lawn along 5th to the city to widen 5th. Pretty short sighted in retrospect, but so was demolishing the Logan Armory without saving its facade and obliterating the main entrance to Thaw Hall with the SRCC.

I agree, tunnels and bridges won't be used enough to mitigate any safety problem. However, from what I hear, the cross-walk lights aren't really solving the jaywalking problem on Forbes either. Human nature. It is just hard to have a major college campus with such a dense population of students and facilities and control pedestrian flow. But we'll see if students take to it more in the future.

 

[TIGER-PAUL]

To me, it’s basically closing it. Keeping the shuttle stops, bike lanes and now bump outs and one lane to Forbes? Forget the area during afternoon rush.