User Rating: / 4
PoorBest 

Thursday, 17 May 2012 12:10

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

Tomorrow is Bike to Work Day, the kick-off of BikePGH’s season of Car Free Fridays. If gas prices and parking fees and sitting in traffic weren’t incentive enough for you to get on a bike, there are a few motivational goodies thrown in.

Everyone who rides will receive a canvas Car Free Fridays bag filled with swag at a hydration station (see details below) from 7.30 to 9.30a. The bags contain, among other things, a Bike To Work Day Discount Passport good for use at a number of local businesses until May 24th.

At 8.30a, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl  will hold a press conference on the City-County Building’s portico. BikePGH’s Executive Director Scott Bricker will also talk.

The location of hydration stations are:

Golden Triangle Bike Rental and Eliza Furnace Trail, City-County Building portico, Downtown;

The Priory Hotel, 614 Pressley Street; at Federal & General Robinson Streets (near PNC Park), and Penn Brewery, Vinial St. and Troy Hill Road, North Side;

BikePGH, Doughboy Square, Lawrenceville;

Chatham U. Eastside, Fifth and Penn Avenues;

Squirrel Hill branch of the Carnegie Library, Forbes and Murray;

Baum Blvd Automotive, near Baum and Millvale, Shadyside;

Whole Foods Market, Centre Avenue, East Liberty;

Duquesne University, at Forbes across from the Barnes and Noble, Uptown;

Carnegie Mellon University, near the University Center tennis courts, Oakland;

REI in South Side Works; and

Friendship Park.

After work, Penn Brewery will hold a Bike from Work happy hour from 5 to 7p.  The Over the Bar Bicycle Café will initiate its Car Free Fridays happy hour and donate 10% of sales from now through October to BikePGH.

It's a little scary for some of us to brave that traffic, but the consciousness of drivers is being influenced little by little, with every painted bicycle symbol on roadways. Every new cyclist on the road is another reminder to car drivers that the road is not theirs first and others' second but a public route for all to share. 

Maybe one day we will have bike-exclusive lanes on our major corridors. I hope I can still move my legs up and down by then.

User Rating: / 2
PoorBest 

Tuesday, 15 May 2012 10:37

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

The second set of workshops and meetings are underway in the progress of MOVEPGH, the transportation component of the city’s first-ever masterplan, PLANPGH.

I missed alerting you yesterday to the meeting that kicked off this week of work sessions, but you have today, tomorrow and Thursday to drop in on work sessions at the IBEW Local #5 at 5 Hot Metal St. on the South Side.

Consultants and planners will be on hand to talk to you about the data they’re analyzing. Today and tomorrow’s sessions run from 10a to 7p. Thursday’s is from 10a to 3p and Thursday night is the wrap-up progress report session from 6 to 8p.

You can investigate the whole ball o’ wax here.

This plan is your plan, this plan is my plan, from Marshall-Shadeland to Lincoln Place, so your ideas and feedback are critical to the plan being pertinent for the next 25 years.

I’ve been to a few sessions in the plan’s construction, from “open spaces” to “preservation.” Transportation is particularly meaty and topical and seems to be coming up against a headwind of contradicting attitudes.

On the one hand, mass transit is critical to nurturing a sustainable city — one that’s increasingly attractive and in the national spotlight. On the other, it is apparently possibly expendable to a particular Harrisburg resident who is either drawing out the drama as we inch closer to a 35 percent cut in bus service or who has no intention of extending state funds to prevent it.

This is a pretty good time to infuse mass transit with public money, when development plans and people’s decisions about where to live depend so much on it.

Honestly? We can’t raise the fees that drivers pay for licenses? Really? We can’t tax drivers more for the privilege of burning their own private gasoline?

Paying for transit is one of the most worthy things a state can do. And transit is the lifeblood of a vibrant city. We’re almost there... and it will be September before we know it.

User Rating: / 8
PoorBest 

Monday, 14 May 2012 16:31

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

In 2007, a couple of Pitt students created a landlord/tenant rating site called landorslum.com.

The “about us” link describes the site as a way for people who rent apartments to combat some of the problems they face.

“Being students at the University of Pittsburgh led us to an appreciation of the struggles that students and others can have with landlords and rental agencies. With the demand for housing so high, landlords in many areas have the luxury of charging high prices and offering little maintenance. Until now, there haven’t been many options to combat such behavior.

“That is why we created this website -- to finally give renters a voice and a means to avoid the proverbial “slumlord,” or to give credit to landlords who truly do care about their tenants."

It is signed Adam Gorzelsky and Katie Wilson.

I have been trying to reach them or whoever runs the site to no avail so far.

Beside the names on the list of landlords, there is one of each of three kinds of icons — a happy yellow face with a waving hand for great, a sort-of-smiling orange face for good and a blue face that breaks out into tears for slumlord. Some landlords were variously rated as good and bad by different people.

Most of the descriptions make me realize how lucky I was as a renter for 20 years in six different cities. I had one sort of bad landlord, who did not return a security deposit, two or three mediocre ones and 10 who were good or great. One of my landlords in Tulsa was from Ireland and would bring us Jameson's, oatmeal and ham for holidays -- my hand to God.

When I read comments about landlords that had the happy yellow faces beside their names, I saw a pattern of description that made me a little suspicious. Some seemed too pat, as if landlords themselves were writing the reviews.

Besides ratings and descriptions on this site, you can read discussions. How old these exchanges are is hard to know. Reading one rant in ALL CAPS with lots of LOL and abuse of the English language thrown in, I had a flashback to 7th grade when I witnessed a fight between two trashhead girls who could have killed each other and made the world a better place immediately.

Until I can talk to the site tenders, it's probably wise to vicariously enjoy this site with a shaker of salt.

User Rating: / 1
PoorBest 

Saturday, 12 May 2012 10:49

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

Three neighborhoods were designated “Design Fund Neighborhoods” in 2011 with support from the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh.

I posted some details about Fineview’s project on this site on May 9.

Today, we move east to Morningside, a neighborhood whose shape is my favorite in the city — like an impressionist’s “T,” the crossed part draped like arms around the shoulders of Highland Park and Stanton Heights and holding hands with Upper Lawrenceville.

The Morningside Area Community Council’s project is landscape design as a vehicle for the neighborhood to consider, or reconsider, the use of Natoli and Heth’s athletic fields (shown above, courtesy of the CDCP), correcting design and functional obstacles and maintenance and safety issues.

Grant Ervin of the MACC said the previous CDCP grant for the business district helped define the current plan, to improve access and awareness and develop a facilities improvement plan. Leading up to this, the MACC has added street lights, garbage cans, made facade improvements and brought seven new occupants to the business district since 2008.

The Design Fund is footing the total cost of $7,000.