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w0jty t1_iyanw13 wrote

I drive penn ave and liberty ave both directions pretty frequently. Doing the speed limit on both, I very rarely hit constant red lights on liberty, but penn gets worse the closer you get to the intersection by target.

In the latter case, the rapid changes in development is certainly part of it. A lot of lights have been added, and the changing to bidirectional penn circle (which I whole heartedly support) has added twice the number of cycles to those intersections.

Do you notice it in both directions? Time of day? How fast are you traveling? There are certainly some light timings that stink in the city, I’m just having a hard time seeing this here.

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jxd132407 t1_iybl790 wrote

The crazy thing about that intersection by Target is that every direction is either one lane immediately before or immediately after. It's an expensive intersection with lots of concrete and lights and traffic engineers to keeo tweaking it, when a simple roundabout would carry more traffic with less delay.

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LostEnroute t1_iycu2f4 wrote

I have driven through roundabouts in a lot of countries, but can't imagine how one would be pedestrian friendly here. Or is that not a concern?

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the_real_xuth t1_iyeec8s wrote

Proper roundabouts work reasonably well with pedestrians in most places but in PGH, the attitude towards pedestrians of most people who drive is utterly atrocious. On top of that I have never seen any enforcement by police for failure to yield to pedestrians even when it happens right in front of them (and similarly I see police fail to yield to pedestrians as well). So I don't think the pedestrian experience is going to be good at a roundabout in PGH but I don't think it's going to be any worse than it is anywhere else in the city.

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CARLEtheCamry t1_iybuoxr wrote

I haven't noticed it lights around here, but I'm from Erie and my Dad is a civil engineer.

When I was a new driver, we had some family thing, and we both drove separately. We took 12th St home. It's like the most stoplights per mile of a 2-lane road, ever. I, being heavy on the gas at that point would accelerate quickly up to 40 (in a 35). My Dad did the slow Dad acceleration up to 35.

He ended up beating me home because he had momentum to get ahead of me right before it turned into one lane.

Once he was done gloating, he explained how the lights on 12th are timed to a specific speed to give you all greens if you do the posted speed limit, like that's the math it's based on. And also I'm a dumbass for wasting gas driving like that, it's bad for the car overall, etc.

Anyway the next time I drove on that road my father's voice came to me, like Yoda visiting Luke... *do the speed limit /u/CARLEtheCamry *. And driving down that road with the lights all turning green in front of me, like they were escorting me and it was pretty cool.

12th wasn't a pain in the ass - my driving was. No need to avoid it anymore.

That's not to say the timing on the lights isn't bad. But I bet some of the issues being discussed in this thread may have been caused by a little aggressive driving.

Lol now I want to know who's responsible for programming the lights by me.

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w0jty t1_iycxbs7 wrote

Ha. I was also raised by a civil engineer and was constantly taught “lessons” growing up.

Still have lots of family in road construction, and the insights and frustrations they share are too innumerable to communicate to the general public. It’s really frustrating that everyone assumes people are doing their life’s work trying to make things more difficult for someone else.

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McHitman t1_iybdrqt wrote

I hate driving on that section of Penn. people crowding intersections, randomly double parking, trying to cut across Penn at the stop signs.. it’s the worst

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Cryptic_Skies t1_iyblb81 wrote

i bike that section of penn and a few other soul-sucking nexus points in this burgh and i feel as if i could easily handle any city after doing so for years.

everywhere else seems to be organised chaos. here, it's random chaos. unpredictable unpredictability. like a sea of toddlers having a tantrum during a sugar crash.

love this town.

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