Wednesday, November 19, 2008

One More Piece of the Puzzle




If you've looked at a Bike PGH map, you often feel like you're putting together a puzzle. We have a potential amazing bike trail around this city, as long as all the pieces fall into place.

There are 3 major pieces that I'm watching right now:
1) Connecting the Point and the Mon - scheduled for late 2010 as part of the point state park work.
2) Connecting the Point and the Strip - construction potentially starts next summer with the new Convention Center park pending more money.
3) Continuing the South Side trail all the way to Homestead/Waterfront - waiting on a deal between Sandcastle park and Dan Onorato. Supposedly they're "near accord". Perhaps since he's ignoring the Port Authority plight, he can focus some more energy on this issue.

Whatever the case, after a few months of trying out the Community Bike program, I'm on the verge of getting my very own bike - my first since my pink and purple middle-school Huffy. Maybe I'll take a hand-me-down from my parents, maybe I'll stop by the FreeRide program at Construction Junction, maybe I'll splurge at one of the specialty bike stores in the city, but I'm doing it. I'm an official convert of riding bikes on the river.

Thanks to the Friends of the Riverfront who seem to be the main organizers for a lot of this incredible trail work. I can't wait to see it fully unfold in the next few years. In the meantime, you'll see me crossing back and forth over the Hot Metal Bridge.

(Photo courtesy of kordite at flickr and the creative commons license.)

2 comments:

old man neill said...

Now if we could just flatten out all these friggin hills.

Rabenstein said...

Hi there! For more information on this entire loop around downtown check out Riverlife at www.riverlifetaskforce.org - building Three Rivers Park (Lisa Schroeder was quoted in the article) and Friends of the Riverfront maintains the trail within Three Rivers Park... called the Three Rivers Heritage Trail.... the trail extends beyond downtown and outside of Three Rivers Park...