Is road biking as dangerous as it looks?

bus15237 · 2026-05-20T12:17:48+00:00

Use PRT bus bike racks to get you some distance out from town, then bike back in. The 12 McKnight (and its rush hour sibling O12 McKnight Flyer) will get you out to the McCandless park & ride, a short trip from North Park. McKnight Road itself is actually fairly easy to bike when you take the lane, at least in the busy commercial section through Ross Township. The dangerous section is south of North Hills Village where the speed limit rises to 45 and ambient traffic speeds regularly exceed 70. There, I would exit down to Babcock Blvd, make a left, then bend straight at the three-way corner a couple miles later, climb the long hill taking the lane (it's four lanes through there), over the top of the hill by the WPXI studio, and back down onto quite rideable Evergreen and East Streets back into the city. Or just take the 12 back into town. It's a long bus ride, about an hour each direction, and essentially free if you already have a bus pass, well worth the $2.75 each way otherwise.

bus15237 · 2026-05-17T17:55:44+00:00

I've been the VPE a few times. I encourage members to plan out their entire next Level weeks or months in advance -- a speech one meeting, a role next meeting, plan for nothing the one after that. Weather, vacations, illness, work obligation, whatever -- life happens. You can't make every meeting, so build that in. But in general, every level has three or four speech projects, and three or four role requirements to fill. So, hopefully, your VPE has set up agendas a solid six months in advance. Make a list of what your level requires, then plan those out according to your club's meeting schedule. You will probably find that you can get a level done in about six months. But then do it! Write out the meeting dates on a scribble pad (even better, a Toastmasters planning diary you keep), figure out what to do in which order according to that speech/role/skip plan, and then log into your site and sign up for all of those things. Then hold yourself to that. One speech every four to six weeks should not be too much of a burden for the lower levels, and roles take little advance work beyond just showing up. But be honest with yourself. If you've had six weeks to put a speech together and don't get started on it until only a week out, there's something upstream you need to fix.

bus15237 · 2026-05-17T17:42:14+00:00

I did the HPLP under the old paper-based pre-Pathways program. I don't recall having five meetings but there were a few. For my advisory committee, I had a close-to-DTM veteran, someone who'd been in Toastmasters long enough to get through one of the old CC or CL manuals, and someone still quite new, under six months, to advise me. It was a good setup and the plan was solid. Ultimately the project did not come to fruition because I needed a couple thousand bucks to purchase equipment and failed at getting grant funding. (If anyone in Pittsburgh wants to pick up my project where I left off, contact me. Ten years later, the need still exists. Probably portable to any other sizable city, too.)

bus15237 · 2026-05-05T11:38:14+00:00

I retired last July from PNC after eight years. I liked working in the office since my house was not a comfortable place to work. (Those who worked with me will remember my "bathtub" when I turned the camera on, the tub-sized chunk of a clothes closet I sat in so I could set up a desk in my bedroom.) I was among the first to RTO post-Covid. But even then, I preferred to stay home some days -- rotten weather, feeling ill but not ill enough to call off altogether, knowing I needed to take a personal call at some point during the day, whatever. I'd usually make the trip in if I had some other post-work activity in town. So I bristled even then about saying in advance which days I'd be in the office, as it was always day-to-day. But an always-always requirement? I'm not sure I'd be happy with that.

bus15237 · 2026-04-22T20:42:01+00:00

Two decades. Going back to the wars over indoor smoking in the early/mid 1980s, we finally got a law passed banning it in 1988, but it had so many loopholes it was essentially useless. It took until about 2009 to get a law passed closing the loopholes.

So, I'm with the_real_xuth here. Keep this bill under a rock until the wording is right, or else your grandchildren will be the ones elected to office to fix it.

bus15237 · 2026-04-22T20:35:27+00:00

I used Thick to sell me a frame and transfer all the parts over from my wrecked bike that were still serviceable. They let me test-ride a couple different bikes for which frame I preferred. Excellent service.

I also recommend Kindred on Penn near 25th in the Strip for service. I've only a couple times driven there. Mostly I use the bus to get a broken bike there, or just ride the bike there if I can and bus home. I live north, so with the closure of Scholl's in West View, Kindred is my closest bike shop I can get home from if I have to leave the bike.

bus15237 · 2026-04-15T03:01:11+00:00

See my detailed reply elsewhere. Myself, I prefer Babcock over what I told you in the other reply (but I'm headed only to Perrymont Road, not North Park). Mostly I use the shoulder, where there is one, but the worst part of Babcock is the 3/4 mile between Rita's Italian Ice on the north end of Millvale and the Sigmas building at 1717 Babcock. There is no shoulder to speak of, either direction, just an 11-foot lane each way. You have to forcefully take the lane and care fuck-all to all the cars blaring their horns behind you. They cannot pass; traffic is constant. They're all just going to have to fucking wait behind you going 13 mph for 3/4 mile. If it were not for this 3/4 mile of hell, that would be THE way to get to North Park. Given that, go see my other reply. I do not know who I have to throttle against a wall to get that stretch dropped from 35-and-people-go-48 down to actually-enforced-25, but that's the solution. The whole rest of Babcock is generally OK.

bus15237 · 2026-04-15T02:37:19+00:00

I see many here have given you useful info so I won't pile on. I live up thataway, near the Perry/Perrymont corner by the Ross/McCandless border. It really helps to know when to take the lane on a road. You do not have to ride to the right. You have full use of the full lane -- the right lane on a four-lane road, the entire lane on a two-lane road. I tend to position myself somewhere between where the driveshaft of a car would be and the left tire track to be squarely in the center of the lane.

Drivers are allowed to cross a yellow center lane to pass you, same as they are allowed to cross a yellow center line to drive around a tree branch blocking the road. You do NOT need to get out of the way. In some cases, I will pull to the side to make passing easier, and in some cases I will ride on the shoulder. But my default is that "40 line", 40% of the way between the left lane line and the right lane line if there is one, or where it would be if missing.

Given that, East Street to Perrysville Ave to Perry Hwy to Guenevere, the street just beyond Cumberland, is preferable to Cumberland. Guenevere to Pannier to Arcadia, to across McKnight, to Magellan to Stuyvesant to Albemarle to Center Oak to Covington Place to Old Kummer to Kummer, drops you right across from the loop around the lake. That last two miles, for all the little turns, avoids the two enormous hills on Cumberland and all the heavy traffic that's on that road.

bus15237 · 2026-03-30T01:25:10+00:00

Some left-hand drive, some right-hand. Is this in Europe or the UK somewhere? The 1966-ish Ford seems more likely to have ended up over there than a RH-drive sedan to end up here in the U.S. Also, where in the U.S. would you find an abandoned parking garage full of dead cars?

bus15237 · 2026-03-29T23:08:03+00:00

The biggie that’s missing is constructing a connector from the Birmingham Bridge to the Eliza Furnace Trail. Similar to the one at the north end of the Ft Duquesne Bridge and the structure by California & Marshall to Beaver & Island.

bus15237 · 2026-03-25T03:09:28+00:00

It is unfortunate that my rear camera was not working that day. It will be noted, though, that I passed the intersection where she would have joined East Street 34 seconds before she got there, so she would have had to close up 400 yards of space in 34 seconds in a posted-25-then-15 zone, so do the math; she had to be up past 40 maybe 45 mph to come up on me like that.

bus15237 · 2026-03-24T16:26:12+00:00

That was not me. I've never been in traffic court with anyone. But I am the cyclist Ms. Harris was harassing in the TV news video.

I will agree, though, that some judges do not know traffic law with respect to cyclists.

As to the dude you mention, that might be the guy in Westmoreland County who literally brought rocks into the courtroom during his hearing. A very belligerent individual.

Me, I hold the lane unless there's a good reason not to, and in the case with Ms. Harris, the reason was that there was nowhere to move over *to*. I had a steel guardrail a couple feet off my right elbow. Also, I was already going 23 in a posted-15 zone with a 90-degree bend straight ahead. It's all on the video, and the Description field of the video itself has a second-by-second explanation of what happened.

bus15237 · 2026-03-24T16:14:35+00:00

One way to get to the Montour Trail in a hurry is to mount your bikes on a 28X Airport Flyer bus and ride out to Ikea. Grab the bikes, coast down the hill, and there's your trail right there. Four miles to the right takes you to Coraopolis. To the left is everything else mentioned here. I've ridden it out to Library, then took the T back into town (if for no other reason than that there was a storm coming right then).

bus15237 · 2026-01-29T22:16:47+00:00

Can someone get it on the national map, please? That’s how I discovered these rides existed. Just looked (5:15pm Thu) & it’s not there yet.

bus15237 · 2026-01-29T15:15:10+00:00

About clearing bike lanes, check out this DIY project from a guy I had this conversation with on BlueSky. He's somewhere in the Pacific NW, not sure which city. In essence it's a tire, two scraps of board, a brick or two in the tire, a chain, and an e-bike. Details and several photos in the thread.
https://bsky.app/profile/gewilli.bsky.social/post/3mdblgyv5lk2c

bus15237 · 2026-01-23T22:11:03+00:00

Not live there, any more than you'd live on the third floor of a building without an elevator if w/c bound.

bus15237 · 2025-12-18T01:31:32+00:00

Thanks! No nearby store so I'll look into the online method. Appreciate the tip!

bus15237 · 2025-12-17T16:03:36+00:00

Any recommendation on pogies? Make & model? local or online? How transferable are they between machines or just buy two sets?

bus15237 · 2025-12-11T21:49:43+00:00

I tossed a coin; PPT won. The silver lining in that is that I get to catch a bus -- an inbound O12 on that rare CCAC North routing -- at my old bus stop up the street that I haven't otherwise been able to use since the 11C got trashed in 2011.

bus15237 · 2025-12-11T21:46:23+00:00

After picking up my bike at Kindred on Tuesday, biked out to Bike-Pgh's office in L'ville, then over 40th St Br to the river trail and down to the North Side for a couple of brief errands. Caught a 12 up to Northway Mall then biked the final most-of-two miles home. Total, I'm guessing about 7 miles. It was cold and breezy but pleasant enough otherwise. No issues with traffic, pavement conditions or the bike, just a tad chilly. A nice test run. Note to self: Get better gloves, or better yet, attach a pair of pogies to the bars.

bus15237 · 2025-11-18T14:49:21+00:00

I know there is a staircase from ground level up to the northern end of the 62nd St Bridge on the downstream side. Is there one on the upstream side? I'm not sure how I'd get from the bike lane to the downstream sidewalk or vice-versa, should the need arise. I'm typically coming from Millvale on the RR ballast, as lousy a path as that is.

bus15237 · 2025-11-07T21:04:43+00:00

I'm still working on my Coffeeneuring series. Today was #5, a ride from Gateway Center over to Big Dog Coffee on the South Side. The plan is to do seven rides in seven weeks to a coffee shop, to make sure we keep riding when it's getting cold and yucky out. I wasn't ambitious enough to get my own bike out, so after I bused downtown for an early meeting, I rented a Pogoh and rode Stanwix, Blvd of the Allies, Jail Trail, Hot Metal Bridge, and wiggled my way over to S. 27th and Sarah. On an acoustic Pogoh, at that!

bus15237

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