PA: City survey to find out how people move about the city, and what would make it safer

The city of Pittsburgh wants to learn more about how people get where they want to go in the city and how to make those options safer.

The Department of Mobility and Infrastructure and a series of consultants started a three-month survey on Friday to find out more about the methods people use to move around the city. It will use that information to develop a database that will be updated every three years, make safety adjustments where needed and identify different infrastructure needs appropriate for each neighborhood, said Angela Martinez, the department’s assistant director for planning, policy and permitting.

Martinez said this effort is a follow-up to surveys done in 2015 and 2017 by the Green Building Alliance. The department is required to file a report with City Council every three years as part of its Complete Streets program, but she said it is a good practice even if it wasn’t required.

“A lot has changed in 10 years,” she said in an interview on Monday. “We know things have changed since COVID. We need to look at how we are moving around today.”

The city expects to find more people working from home at least part of the time since the pandemic, and probably more using bicycles, scooters or walking to work, she said. Given the success of public transit and park-and-ride facilities during the recent NFL Draft, it could be a good time for public officials to make a stronger push to increase ridership there.

In addition to finding out the methods people currently use to move around the city, the department wants to learn whether there are additional safety measures it could implement that would encourage greater use. For example, would more people use bicycles if there were more protected bike lanes or would more people walk with better sidewalks, more lighting or narrower intersections to cross?

“Are there things that people would like to see that we don’t have now that would encourage them to use one method or another?” Martinez asked. “We want to hear fresh information. One of the foundational pieces of growth is how people are going to get around.”

She expects the information will be different for residents in each neighborhood — perhaps more bicyclists in younger areas such as Oakland, Lawrenceville and the South Side, more walkers in the Strip District and more transit users in the South Hills and the East End. The goal is to find out how to serve them better or learn what else they would use if changes were made.

The survey is designed not just for city residents, but also for those who work in or travel to the city for entertainment. It is available at https://arcg.is/1y0CuK1 and participants can receive a voucher for one 30-minute free POGOH ride as part of the city’s bikeshare program, and entry into a raffle to win one of 40 $25 gift cards.

Partnering with DOMI on the survey are Carnegie Mellon University; POGOH; Bike Pittsburgh; the Pittsburgh chapter of WTS: Advancing Women in Transportation; and the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Society of Highway Engineers. They expect to finish analyzing the data by the end of the year.

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