‘Quick build:’ Speed humps, brighter crosswalks, better sidewalks improving street safety in Pittsburgh neighborhoods

Pittsburgh is putting an extra emphasis on improving the safety of the streets in its neighborhoods, and the effort is beginning to show positive results.

The city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure is using its discretionary funds to pay for relatively inexpensive improvements such as sidewalks, speed humps, crosswalk improvements, parking restrictions near intersections, and bump-outs to shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians at intersections. Since the beginning of the year, the city has announced more than a dozen projects from Highland Park to Homewood and Mount Washington to improve safety for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.

“You don’t always need millions and millions of dollars to improve safety,” said Panini Chowdhury, a planning manager at DOMI.

The department has developed a system it calls “quick build” to make immediate neighborhood improvements for a small investment. For example, in some neighborhoods where pedestrians have problems seeing to cross the street because motorists park too close to intersections, the city painted lines on the street to make it obvious that no one should park there.

In Highland Park earlier this month, crews started a project on Stanton Avenue that includes a raised bus stop adjacent to the Mt. Ararat Community Activity Center at Stanton and Negley and laid a concrete raised bike lane to improve safety. Those steps are a follow-up to last year when the city installed speed humps, climbing lanes for bicyclists and better traffic signs.

In Homewood, crews synchronized traffic signals two weeks ago and made shorter cycles to give pedestrians more opportunities to cross the street. They also added leading pedestrian intervals, which provide pedestrians with three to seven seconds once they begin crossing the street before traffic gets a green light.

Under the city’s Critical Sidewalk Gaps Program, 400 feet of new sidewalks were installed on Merrimac Street and Grandview Avenue to make it easier for residents to walk around the neighborhood.

In some cases, the quick steps are temporary and later replaced with permanent material, a process called “hardscaping.” Last week, crews were out on Negley Avenue at Bryant Street in Highland Park to make temporary curb bump-outs installed last year permanent and paint brighter wider crosswalks.

Some of the efforts, such as the Homewood Mobility Plan, began before Mayor Ed Gainey took office in January 2022, but Gainey’s administration has ramped up the efforts across the city. These changes come after what Chowdhury called “years of disinvestment” in some communities, a frequent theme the mayor uses.

In Homewood, Chowdhury has been overseeing the plan since 2021. A statistical analysis shows the changes are working, he said.

From 2021 to 2023, vehicle crashes are down 105% in the neighborhood, crashes with injuries are down 50%, and there have been no pedestrian or bicycle crashes. On Kelly Street, which Chowdhury described previously as “a speedway,” crashes dropped from 12 in 2021 to two in 2023 after traffic-calming measures such as speed humps were implemented.

“The numbers are telling the story of how we are making the neighborhood safer,” Chowdhury said. “We didn’t have to wait for federal money. We just listened to the residents and made some changes to help.”