December 1, 2021 Virtual Public Meeting on Homewood Community Affairs Join Homewood residents, Operation Better Block, and the City’s Department of Infrastructure and Mobility at the virtual Final Public Meeting on improving mobility and safety, encouraging physical activity, and providing better access to public transportation. The Homewood Comprehensive Community Plan, safety assessments, community focus groups, and another public meeting have informed efforts so far. This meeting will begin at 6:00 pm and is completely virtual. To access the meeting, join at the designated time via Zoom.
August 15, 2019 Mobility Demonstration Project Seeks Feedback The City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure has been working with a new consortium called the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective to increase mobility options, especially to and from public transit. With this, the City posted an online survey to receive early input and feedback from Pittsburgh community members. About Through the addition of electric scooters, electric bikes, rental cars, and carpooling services, the City of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective seek to expand local transportation options. Pittsburgh-native Ben Bear, Chief Business Officer of Spin, said: “while electric bikes should be available and stations with some services should be available in three to four months, electric scooters might take longer because changes need to be made in Pennsylvania law to allow them.” To ensure accessibility and affordability in all of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods, a part of the proposal for this initiative involves “donating 10 cents from every trip to a special fund to help build infrastructure such as stations and to help people in disadvantaged areas use the system,” possibly including reduced rates and alternate payment methods. To learn more, read the full article posted on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website. Provide Your Feedback While the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure has gathered a wide array of city and regional transportation plans, studies, and workshop feedback in pursuit of community needs and values, the Department is always looking to receive additional feedback from Pittsburgh community members. To submit your feedback, complete the Mobility Demonstration Project: Early Input survey.
May 22, 2019 City Receives Grant to Support Safe Travel for Schoolchildren On May 22, 2019, officials from Mayor William Peduto’s administration discussed a state grant of more than $450,000 to support safe routes to school for elementary and middle school students in Pittsburgh. About A bill was discussed at Pittsburgh City Council’s standing committees meeting accepting $464,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s (PennDOT) Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside Program, which provides assistance to municipalities to support the creation of safe and appealing alternatives to single occupant vehicle travel. More than 30 million Americans nationwide transport their children to and from schools every day, which research shows increases hazardous road conditions and harms the environment. The Safe Routes to School program seeks to address that by supporting walking and biking to school, leading to eased traffic conditions and better health for schoolchildren. “The ability to walk or bike to school has long been one of the classic characteristics of Pittsburgh, but over recent decades it has become increasingly hazardous for children, who are our most valuable and vulnerable travelers,” said Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) Director Karina Ricks. “This grant will allow us to dedicate resources to help us collaborate with school leaders and parents to identify areas where low-cost improvements can be rapidly implemented.” What’s Next? DOMI is proposing using the PennDOT grant to hire a Safe Routes to School coordinator who is part educator, part engineer and will work on programming for students to walk and bike more easily. The coordinator will work on traffic calming and other safety improvements on streets near schools best suited for walking and biking. Once approved, DOMI plans to have a person in the position by the beginning of the 2019-2020 school year. Learn More To learn more about PennDOT’s Transportation Alternatives Set-Aside program, visit their website. *Information provided by the City of Pittsburgh
April 26, 2019 Harnessing the ‘Power of Play’ to Build Equitable Cities When planners and community stakeholders are hashing out asset inventories and needs assessments to figure out the state of neighborhood amenities, a few things are sure to almost always make the list: more access to green space, safer crosswalks, more parking in business districts, gateways, and wayfinding signage. When planners design communities to be safer, healthier, more sustainable, and more walkable, how often do those efforts make a community more playful? The Power of Play Play is powerful. In the sphere of early childhood education, experts recognize the unparalleled importance of play in learning and development. In business, play is seen as a gateway to greater creativity, collaboration, and breakthrough innovation. In society, communities that play together stay together. Isn’t it time we embraced playfulness as a quality worth designing into our urban spaces? Perhaps the trouble is that the word itself seems just too playful to be taken seriously. We need more words for play. More Words for Play The Finnish language has no shortage of words for play. For Finns, playing a game is different from playing a sport, which is different from playing music. There are distinct Finnish words for children’s play and the play that adults engage in. There’s even a Finnish word that means both “work” and “play.” This rich vocabulary shows that in Finland, play is a valued part of life that isn’t confined just to kids’ stuff. Where else would we see play show up in our plans, if only we had the words for it? What would we call the kind of play that brings strangers together? What would we call playing around with ideas and possibilities? It’s questions like these that motivated a coalition of public and private sector partners to start the Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative and organize a citywide movement to expand the presence of play in every community. As a mid-size, post-industrial city in the midst of dramatic changes spurred in large part by new development, we see a mandate to build greater public demand for play as an integral part of the city’s future. Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative Locally in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative is working to make play a part of the urban infrastructure. Since 2013, members of the Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative have been working together to find and remove the barriers holding communities back from experiencing the social benefits of play. These efforts have brought together leaders and representatives from the city’s parks and museums, human services and municipal agencies, arts and sustainability nonprofits, and community development groups. Along the way, we’ve encountered distinct manifestations of play that we really wish had their own name. Learn more about the work of The Playful Pittsburgh Collaborative and read the full article from the urban planning magazine Planetizen. (shared via Planetizen)
