In the wake of the historic snowfall that blanketed Pittsburgh city streets this past month, one City Councilor wants to gather data on the use of street crossings, bus shelters and sidewalks — an effort to help people get around without their cars after a future storm.
Councilor Barb Warwick introduced a bill Tuesday that would direct the Department of City Planning to collect data on the usage of curb-cuts, intersections, bus stops, and other infrastructure, so that Pittsburgh can establish processes for better clearing them of snow.
This past January “We had this once-in-a-decade winter weather event, and it really has exposed for the city a shortcoming that we have,” Warwick told reporters on Tuesday. “ It is in the gathering of this data and the analyzing of the problem, ultimately, that is the first step to getting to a solution.”
The legislation would create a “Right-of-Way Accessibility Needs Inventory.” It directs officials to collect data on business districts, schools, daycare centers, community centers, houses of worship, and “other locales that require free and clear access to curbs and sidewalks.” The goal, the bill states, is to document these locations so that the Department of Public Works can prioritize clearing them in the future, especially to help at-risk populations such as children, seniors, and disabled residents.
Officials are used to hearing from aggrieved drivers when streets aren’t clear. But during the public comment period of a meeting last week, Council heard from residents who had been impacted by snow on sidewalks and at bus stops.
Temperatures are forecast to reach the mid-to-upper 40s in Pittsburgh. We can also expect some (but not all) of the snow to melt.
Disability-rights advocate Alisa Grishman, who uses a wheelchair and lives in Uptown, told council that uncleared sidewalks made it impossible for her to leave her house for more than two weeks after the storm. As a result, she said, she had to postpone a medical procedure she’d had scheduled.
“ There’s still so much snow in the road. Even just an inch of snow buildup prohibits me from going out because it gets stuck in my wheels and gums up everything so that I can’t move,” she said.
Property owners have responsibility for clearing the snow from sidewalks on their land. But Grishman and others said that city plows sometimes made the job harder, by pushing snow off the streets and into the infrastructure non-drivers use.
“ Not only has the city not done a good job of clearing curb cuts, it’s actually made things worse by treating them as snow storage,” Grishman said.
Elaine Houston, a resident who lives between Shadyside and East Liberty, said she was trapped in her apartment complex.
“The lack of adequate snow removal, from plowed-in curb cuts and snow still piled between lanes, is unacceptable more than a week after the storm,” she said. “ We need this problem resolved quickly, and a system put in place to ensure the situation is not repeated in the future.”
311 service requests and calls for Snow Angels — volunteers who help clear sidewalks for those who struggle to do so on their own — might be used to help compile the report, Warwick noted. Gathering further information on where snow builds up on sidewalks, she added, could help other city departments.
“At this moment in time, there is no mechanism for us to just go out and say, ‘Just start enforcing snow on every sidewalk!’ It’s just an impossibility at this point,” she said. “ This is just to get that ball rolling of figuring out how we address the problem.”
If approved, Warwick hopes to see this project completed by mid-November, which she says should give the city information ahead of the next winter season. The bill would require the inventory be updated quarterly after that.
“ It’s a tall task,” Warwick said of improving the city’s snow-clearing processes. “It’s gonna take some time to get it figured out, but the first step is understanding the problem before you can address it.”
Warwick plans to hold the bill for a few weeks before it comes up for a vote at Council’s table. She said that would give planning officials and other members of Mayor Corey O’Connor’s administration time to weigh in.
“I think everything that we’re doing at the city [is] with an eye to next winter,” she said.