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Pittsburgh, a Beacon for Walkable Neighborhoods
written 26 Apr 2009 in the earliest morning
When I first moved to Pittsburgh in 1999, it was described as “a bunch of small towns all crammed together.” That’s a pretty apt description. Unlike many, often newer, cities I’ve visited, Pittsburgh is very much organized in a way that keeps residences close to business districts. I’ve lived all over the city — from the North (Allegheny Center, Bellevue) to the South (Beechview, Dormont, Southside) to the East End (Shadyside, Oakland) — and while I have different opinions on different areas of the city, one thing holds true: every one of those places had me within a few blocks of the necessities (ie, a grocery store, public transportation, restaurants and bars.) I only owned a car while living in Dormont, and rarely used it except to visit in-laws who lived further south in Pleasant Hills.
More Posts in pittsburgh
The Port Authority Finally Knows Who’s Riding What, When and Where
Brent over at Peak Direction has awesomely pointed out that the study the Port Authority commissioned to analyze it’s routes has finally come out to the public, and it’s got a ton of great information inside. Some of the info the report contains provides general information about Port Authority routes, such as the fact that they’re too complicated, often too long, and some routes are just completely pointless. Check out his site for all of the links you’ll need to really get in depth with reading the report, but I thought I’d share some highlights that I found interesting as I read the report.
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Public Transit: Comparing Austin to Pittsburgh
Maybe I’ll make a little series out of this, comparing the City of Bridges to the City of Live Music. Or this may be the last post in this vein, we’ll see. For clarification, the public transit system in Austin is called Capital Metro and the one in Pittsburgh is the Port Authority of Allegheny County.
Yesterday we took a few buses and while I wouldn’t call myself a Capital Metro-nado, we traveled far and had what I surmised was a pretty typical experience.
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Pittsburgh, Still Happening
Though we’re currently on the road for some time, I’m still keeping up to date with all the latest haps in Pittsburgh’s progressive movement via my favorite websites, mostly ones on the Internet.
The Port Authority Wants to Hear from You
As part of the major renovation that’s happening with our fair city’s transit system, the Port Authority is holding open house meetings specifically aimed at hearing where the public wants to go when it comes to riding buses.
This is your chance to do more than just blog and bitch about the bus system, which for all of its shortcomings is actually halfway decent and so the improvements which are likely to come out of this and the other initiatives the Port Authority has been undertaking this year are going to be a welcomed addition to Pittsburgh.
Bring Back the UltraViolet Loop
There are a lot of great bars and coffee shops and other late night hang outs in this city that are pretty easily accessible via bus routes from where I live, places like the Brillobox or Quiet Storm, or neighborhoods I’d like to explore more thoroughly like Regent Square. The problem is, if you plan on staying late, don’t — very few buses run until 2am or later.
The Kingsley Association
I recently stumbled upon the Kingsley Association, or rather was referred to it by Anna Dubrovsky of Anywhere but a Cubicle. For my purposes, I was looking for a swimming pool that I could frequent to get some exercise while it’s still too cold for bike riding. My expectations weren’t all that high, really having no idea what to expect at all, but when I arrived I was blown away. I have no idea what all my new membership with the Kingsley Association entails (though I think there is a gym and basketball courts in the facility as well), I can tell you that it has a world class swimming pool. Pristine bathrooms and showers, where cleanliness is concerned, and a very large pool, I would imagine Olympic-sized might even be an accurate description.
Pittsblogian
I just stumbled on a couple of nifty Pittsburgh-related blogs today.
Walking Pittsburgh pretty much lives up to its name with photographs and interesting tidbits about Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods from a couple who live in Lawrenceville. I particularly enjoyed this article on Beechview, which has me wondering about “Seldom Seen.”
Find Port Authority Hand Schedules Instantly
After I created this mobile-optimized version of the Port Authority’s trip finder, Jake from 42harold.org sent me some code and permission to style up his own creation, an extremely simple and easy to use little form that allows you to type in the name of a bus you’re looking to find and it’ll bring up the PDF version of the hand schedule from the Port Authority’s website.
A Better Port Authority Trip Finder
The Port Authority of Allegheny County offers an online trip planner that is decent from a functionality standpoint, but the Port Authority’s website in general, to be as definitively accurate as possible, sucks. For example, it’s a table-based layout, the design leaves a good bit to be desired, the site’s homepage fails HTML validation with 65 errors, and it’s awfully slow. Plus, it’s one of the few remaining sites where you actually have to type in www or you get a Bad Request error.
So I’ve done what I could and nabbed the primary code from their main site and optimized it for mobile phones. Well, for iPhone in particular, but it should work relatively well on any mobile device that’s got an Internet connection. If you use the site on a mobile device other than iPhone, let me know how it looks / functions in the comments.
iPhone and mobile device optimized Port Authority Trip Planner »
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