Bike Racks On ALL Buses

 

Port Authority Transit buses have had a face lift. The entire fleet of buses had been outfitted with mounted bike racks. The installation of the bike racks should open up a wide variety of recreational opportunities for cyclists. For example, city dwelling mountain bikers will now have easier access to urban trails such as those at Frick Park which are considered the best mountain biking trails available inside the city limits.  You could ride to the trail, but a lot of times mountain bikes aren't suitable for riding on city streets.  So being able to jump on a bus and take your bike to the trail is pretty huge.


Conversely, city cyclists can now easily head to the suburbs and ride beautiful country trails or experience portions of the Montour Trail that may not have been easily accessible before. The buses can also transport those looking to pedal the Great Allegheny Passage to trailheads in McKeesport and Duquesne.
 
For suburban cyclists who may fear city meter readers or shy away from the high price of a city parking garage, the bus bike racks make it easy to access the city trails.  A lot of people come into the city on the weekends to ride the trails.  Every bus goes to Downtown and the trail system starts there, so that just makes life very easy for all biking enthusiasts. 

MetroPittsburghRealEstate.com

PAT Transit

McKees Rocks Gets "Jiffy" Park

Volunteers "create" Third Street Park in McKees Rocks

The flat 3.2-acre Third Street Park in McKees Rocks received a mountain of mulch on Friday morning but was otherwise barren except for a picnic pavilion that had been erected earlier this summer by 25 corporate volunteers.  But by 3 o'clock, the park had a KaBOOM! playground with slides, swings, ladders and other climbing devices in vivid shades of orange, yellow and blue.

More than 200 corporate and community volunteers -- including Pittsburgh Penguins coach Dan Bylsma-- labored mightily to excavate the mulch mountain. That was after they dug holes, mixed and poured cement, installed playground equipment and built a gazebo, a horse shoe pit, eight picnic tables and four benches. The workers used shovels to load mulch into wheel barrows and big sheets of plastic and rakes to spread mulch around the swings and slides and into a winding walkway. Though a mid-morning storm with thunder and lightning mandated a 30-minute halt to construction, workers beat the 3 p.m. completion deadline by 10 minutes.

The Pens sent 45 employees from the front office and Mr. Bylsma. They worked the entire playground construction shift, with the coach wearing a purple do-rag on his head and the same grey teeshirt worn by all the volunteers.

The corporate sponsor of this endeavor was the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. The group is spending $15 million over three years to build or fix up 2,000 playgrounds across the country.  About $75,000 went to the Third Street playground. Forty Snapple Group employees worked on the McKees Rocks project. Other volunteers include elected officials and employees of McKees Rocks, the McKees Rocks Community Development Corporation and organizers from KaBOOM! as well as borough residents. Duquesne Light Co., which sent volunteers in June to build the pavilion, returned on Friday to help with the playground.
 

Neighborhood children were consulted about what equipment should go into their park. Some of them even showed up to help, including Andy Cochran, a fourth-grade student. "This is like my second home," he said of the park that is within walking distance of his house. "I've been here since 10:30 and I've done a little bit of everything, including hauling mulch."

Future improvements are planned for Third Street Park, including the installation of bocci courts.

McKees Rocks
Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

New Section of Allegheny Trail Opens

Allegheny Passage Trail

A nearly three-mile section of the Great Allegheny Passage in the Mon Valley, described as one of the trail's most scenic, will open next Friday. Linda McKenna Boxx, president of the Allegheny Trail Alliance, described the new asphalt-paved segment stretching from Grant Avenue in Duquesne to The Waterfront complex in Homestead as "awesome".

But Ms. Boxx also said that a goal of completing the last remaining section of the Great Allegheny Passage, the piece at Sandcastle Waterpark, by November is not going to be met.  They just do not have all the funds.  More than $1 million has been raised toward the estimated $3 million cost, and trail advocates are hoping Gov. Tom Corbett releases a $750,000 grant that state Sen. Jay Costa got added to the capital budget. Once the Sandcastle section is complete, there will be 150 miles of unbroken trail linking Pittsburgh with Cumberland, Md., where it joins the C&O Towpath to Washington, D.C.
 
A 10 a.m. ceremony next Friday will open the newest trail segment, which features views of the U.S. Steel Edgar Thomson Plant, Braddock Locks and Dam on the Monongahela River and even the Westinghouse Bridge over the Turtle Creek valley. The ceremony will officially open up the section where two bridges were erected last summer -- a 110-foot-long span in the RIDC industrial park in Duquesne that crosses three sets of Norfolk Southern Railway tracks, and a 170-foot-long bridge in Whitaker over six sets of tracks operated by Norfolk Southern and Union Railroad Co. The section already has had its unofficial debut, as bicyclists and walkers have been checking it out.

The new Whitaker bridge will be the site of the ceremony. Rather than cutting a ribbon, the celebrants will raise a ceremonial railroad crossing gate.

Allegheny Trail Alliance

C&O Towpath

Cumberland, MD

Homestead

Metro Pittsburgh Real Estate

Sandcastle Waterpark

Waterfront Complex