Business owners in Downtown Pittsburgh are speaking out in opposition to a proposed, and funded, bike lane project on Fort Pitt Boulevard, raising concerns about parking and access to businesses.
Adam Smeltz reports on the "bikelash" facing a bike lane proposed for Fort Pitt Boulevard in Pittsburgh. Smeltz provides a dispatch for a recent community meeting about the bile lane, reporting that several Downtown business people are concerned that the proposed bike lane "would badly hamper access to businesses and residences there, obstructing critical deliveries and likely ruining street parking…"
The Pittsburgh City Council has already approved spending for the $772,000 project, with 80 percent of the total cost coming from the federal government. Here's how Smeltz describes the scope of the project:
Two bike lanes — one in each direction — would replace a parking lane on the north side of Fort Pitt Boulevard from Grant to Stanwix streets. From there, the lanes would turn north on Stanwix, with one lane planted on each side of the street.
They would reunite on the north side of Penn Avenue, where they would continue west toward the state park, effectively extending bike lanes already in place farther east on Penn.
Planners are hoping to complete the project in 2017.
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