Update on Oct. 13, 2023: After a months-long closure, the bike and walking trail along Pittsburgh’s Mon Wharf has reopened.
The critical section of the Great Allegheny Passage closed in February for a total overhaul. The trail was moved from its old location so that it could be widened to nearly 10 feet along its entire length.
Original story published Sept. 6, 2023: A series of major bike infrastructure improvements in Pittsburgh have come to fruition this year, and a critical section of the Great Allegheny Passage, or GAP, trail is expected to reopen on Sept. 27.
The Point State Park Connector, also known as the Mon Wharf Trail, runs along the Monongahela River and into and out of Point State Park. The park is mile 0 on the 150-mile GAP, which encompasses a number of different trails between here and Washington, D.C.
The GAP sees upwards of 1 million riders each year, and that first or last section of trail caused endless headaches, said Jake Weiland, the manager of Point State Park. The trail paralleled busy I-376, it was narrow, and had two major choke points, one of which was due to a bridge pier. At just 4 feet wide, people cycling with trailers couldn’t go through, and instead had to use an on-street route.
What’s more, a lot of people couldn’t find their way out of the park to start their trip, because leaving the park required passing through a parking lot and finding the constricted entrance to the trail.
“I compliment the staff for many years of providing directions,” Weiland said.
The Point State Park leg of the journey could be just as disheartening for people ending their trip at the park. “At the end of the 150-mile trail: ‘Hurray you’ve made it! Welcome to Pittsburgh!’ and it dumps you right out at a roll-off dumpster and into a parking lot,” Weiland said with a laugh.
The new trail section, by contrast, is 10 feet wide for almost its entire length. It swings wide of the bridge pier, running parallel to the river, and allowing cyclists and pedestrians to emerge directly into the park — no parking lots — with its view of the confluence of rivers.
The roughly $4.5 million project has been planned for nearly a decade, and the trail finally closed in February for improvements.
When cyclists first began tooling around Pittsburgh in the 1880s and 1890s, they did so on boneshakers, penny-farthings, or safeties, with oil lamps dangling from their handlebars; the roads were thick with horses and wagons, and the avid cyclist had to contend with roads that were often either unpaved or lined with cobblestones or wooden planks.
These days, the biggest challenge is cars. In regular interviews and surveys with its membership, Bike Pittsburgh has found that “the single biggest thing that prevents people from biking is the perceived lack of safety,” said Eric Boerer, the group’s advocacy director.
Some of the city’s most notable projects this year have focused on protecting cyclists, either by adding bike lanes or adding physical barriers to existing lanes.
Just a mile from Point State Park, the heavily-traveled Downtown stretch of Penn Avenue bike lanes are now protected with concrete barriers, instead of plastic posts. That should address a long-standing problem with trucks and cars that often parked in the bike lane and sent cyclists into traffic with little notice, Boerer said.
A new trail under the 40th Street Bridge, meanwhile, allows cyclists to travel through Lawrenceville without having to travel on busy Butler Street. Stanton Avenue now has “climbing lanes” — bike lanes for cyclists heading up the curving hill. The reopened Fern Hollow Bridge has protected bike lanes.
“The city is making slow but steady progress on creating our vision of a fully-connected bike network that’s intuitive and safe and accessible to all,” Boerer said. But he noted that many neighborhoods, particularly in the city’s southern and western regions, lack bike infrastructure.
In the Strip District, which has seen some of the most development activity of the last decade, the city will soon implement a series of projects to make it safer to navigate the busy neighborhood: improvements on Liberty and Penn avenues, a mobility plan for people not in cars, and an update to the 28th Street Bridge.
The city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure has been holding a series of “mobility open house” discussions which continues into this fall. The meeting for the Strip District will be held at the Heinz History Center on Tuesday, Sept. 12.
